Focus on Africa

Obama's Father Among Secret Files on Kenyan Students

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 06:04:00 GMT

By Sanchia Berg Today programme

Mr Obama senior came to America in 1959 and began a degree in business administration

US officials complained Kenyan students were becoming "anti-white" in the year Barack Obama's father enrolled at university, previously secret files released at the National Archives in Kew reveal.

US President Barack Obama wrote with pride of his Kenyan father's studies in the US in his memoir Dream From My Father.

He wrote how he had been "selected by Kenyan leaders and American sponsors to attend a university in the United States joining the first large wave of Africans to be sent forth to master Western technology and bring it back to forge a new, modern Africa".

But British colonial authorities in Kenya, and the US State Department had concerns about the first large wave of Kenyan students, of which Barrack Obama Sr was part, according to the records released by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The file lists the Kenyans, who began studying in the US in 1959, including one "OBAMA Barrack H", who enrolled at the University of Hawaii. At the age of 23 he was the institution's first African student.

'Anti-white'

Funds for the students had been raised by the African-American Students Foundation in the US, and as part of their campaign they said that "in Kenya today higher education is not available to Africans".

British officials took offence at this. The Information Office at the British Embassy in Washington DC put together a briefing note in September 1959 saying it was "quite untrue".

A diplomat said that 451 Kenyans were studying in higher education - in Africa, the UK, and Canada - on bursaries provided by the Kenyan government.

The US president has said his father was the University of Hawaii's first African student

He questioned the calibre of students getting scholarships to US universities suggesting diplomats might "at your discretion" point out that those Kenyans going to the US held only "lower grades of school certificate", as those on higher grades were studying in Africa.

He also said that the students had been personally selected by the scheme's sponsors, who had picked candidates almost entirely from their own tribal groups.

"The motives behind this enterprise, therefore, seem more political than educational," the note stated.

"The arrival here of these students, many of them of indifferent academic calibre and ill-prepared for the venture, is likely to give rise to difficult problems," it said.

The British embassy in Washington consulted the US State Department. They were, apparently, "as disturbed about these developments as we are", according to one telegram back to London and Nairobi.

US officials had told the British diplomat that Kenyan students had a poor reputation, for falling into "bad hands" and "becoming both anti-American and anti-White".

But both British and American officials considered nothing could be done.

"The best we can hope to achieve is to exert some influence over them while they are here," wrote the official.

There is no record of whether Barrack H Obama was approached by any British diplomat.

He continued his studies, and married Anne Durham in 1961 - who gave birth to their son, Barack Obama, later that year.

A Kenyan Official Lectures Meles' Representative on Democracy

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:27:00 GMT

Setting record straight on regional politics and ‘Operation linda nchi’

By Farah Maalim

My attention has been drawn to an article published by The Standard On Saturday on March 24 by Shemsudin Roble, Ethiopian Ambassador to Kenya.

While I initially hesitated to comment and give credence to the commentary by the ambassador on the regional dynamics, I, however, felt it important to clarify certain misinformation and erroneous aspects pertaining to my interview with K24 on March 15 at least for the benefit of Kenyans and other people in the region. I wish to clarify the following issues:

Democracy in Kenya

While Kenya is a vibrant democracy in the region, Ethiopia is certainly the complete opposite. In Kenya today, any person who decides to offer oneself for public office must be ready to be held to account for his/her acts of commission or omission, be it the President, Prime Minister and other Government officers, including MPs. This surely is a political context that cannot be countenanced in Ethiopia.

I suppose then that possibly the Ethiopian ambassador, coming from a very dictatorial regime, may not comprehend the dynamics of a liberal democracy like we have in Kenya. The Constitution of Kenya is one of the most progressive legal documents in Africa. As a Kenyan knowledgeable in political economy and political history of the Horn of Africa, our Constitution guarantees freedom of expression, even if others may not agree.

It is open knowledge that those opposed to the regime in Addis often find themselves in jail, exile or in the graves. No wonder there is a steady stream of Ethiopians always caught in Kenya as illegal immigrants fleeing the harsh and autocratic practices. For centuries, successive regimes in Ethiopia validated themselves through the barrel of the gun.

Empire builders such as Tewodros, Yohannes, Menelik, Iyasu, Haile Selassie and Mengistu Haile Mariam were killed in wars, executed or forced into exile, save for Emperor Menelik. The current regime in Ethiopia rose to power through a protracted guerilla war using the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front. Today in Ethiopia with an exception of the Amhara, Tigray and Southern nationalities, all the other regions/nationalities host armed liberation movements that are fighting Addis Ababa.

The Afar Liberation Front, the Oromo Liberation Front, the Ogaden National Liberation Front and the Beni-Shangul/Gambela are some of the movements involved in a violent endeavour to change the status quo in Addis Ababa. The regime in Addis Ababa must be prepared to give a chance to dialogue.

Operation Linda Nchi

I forgive the ambassador for his failure to listen actively to spoken words. As a patriotic Kenyan leader, I never stated that I am opposed to the operation Linda Nchi. While I fully support the operation in Somalia by Kenya’s Defence Forces to eliminate the threats by criminal gangs, I nevertheless cautioned and qualified my support by expressing the need for a quick withdrawal strategy even as our patriotic forces got in. I raised alarm that we may not have learnt lessons from interventions by other powerful forces that failed in the recent past due to the perception of being viewed as foreign occupation forces. I would hate a situation where our defence forces are stuck or bogged down in internal political dynamics of Somalia, especially given the goodwill shown by the people of Somalia to our troops. I called for a quick intervention and then withdrawal and not long term occupations. Is this what the ambassador calls opposition to Linda nchi?

Kenya Defence Forces must limit their operations to safeguarding and protecting Kenya’s territorial integrity and creation of a buffer zone along the border managed and controlled by friendly Somali government forces and civil administration. We cannot afford to have a meaningless antagonism with Eritrea or Somalia.

The ambassador says my discussions were malicious and untruth. Let him say the historical facts to prove me wrong.

Sudan, South Sudan Access Each Other of Attacks, Talks Delayed

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 01:51:00 GMT

By REUTERS

ADDIS ABABA/KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan and South Sudan on Sunday accused each other of launching attacks in the oil-producing area straddling their border after talks aimed at ending the worst hostilities since Juba declared its independence were delayed.

The United Nations and the United States fear the border clashes, which broke out on Monday, could escalate and re-ignite a civil war between the mainly Muslim north and the South where most adhere to Christian and animist beliefs.

Sudan said South Sudan's army had attacked the Sudan side of the disputed Heglig oil field area, the scene of several clashes in the past days, state news agency SUNA said.

"The (Sudanese) armed forces are now dealing with the enemy forces," army spokesman Sawarmi Khalid Saad told SUNA.

There was no immediate response from South Sudan, which accused Khartoum of having bombed two areas on the oil-producing southern side of the border.

"The government of Sudan attacked Manga today at two in the morning," Pagan Amum, head of South Sudan's negotiating team, told reporters in Addis Ababa, where the African Union is trying to restart talks between the neighbors.

"Panakuach, also in Unity State, has been subjected to aerial bombardment today, including attacks by helicopter gunship," he said. "As we speak, Sudan is bombing South Sudan."

Sudan's army spokesman denied the allegation.

South Sudan became independent from Khartoum under a 2005 peace agreement that ended decades of civil war that killed 2 million people.

Both sides were supposed to resume talks this weekend but African Union officials said key members of Sudan's delegation, such as its defense minister and the chief-of-staff of its army, had yet to arrive.

Sudan's delegation said it was committed to talks as Khartoum wanted peace, without giving a time frame.

"The government confirms that dialogue with South Sudan is the right way to solve all issues and to have peace between the two states," the delegation said in a statement, SUNA reported.

Amum accused Khartoum of trying to delay the talks.

"The government of Sudan did not send the leader of their team. It is now clear that they have different intentions," he said.

As well as agreeing a halt to further hostilities, the two sides need to decide how much the landlocked South must pay to export its crude oil through Sudan. Juba has shut down its entire oil production to stop Khartoum taking oil as compensation for what it calls unpaid transit fees.

Both countries have yet to mark the 1,800 km (1,200 mile)border, much of which is disputed, or found a solution to the disputed border region of Abyei. Both sides also continue to accuse one another of supporting rebels on each other's territory.

(Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Alison Williams)

Two Sudans Near Brink in Oil Dispute

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:15:00 GMT

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

KHARTOUM, Sudan — Sudan and the breakaway nation of South Sudan have been locked in an exceedingly dangerous game of brinkmanship over billions of gallons of oil, seizing tankers, shutting down wells and imperiling the tenuous, American-backed peace that has held — just barely — between the two countries after decades of war.

Not for years have north-south relations been so poisonous, with a proxy war between the two nations that has already flared into direct Sudan-South Sudan clashes. The jagged, disputed frontier separating Sudan from its newly independent neighbor is now probably the most incendiary fault line in Africa, with big armies that fought each other for generations massing on either side.

After emergency talks to prevent a full-fledged conflict, the two sides agreed to a nonaggression pact late on Friday, yielding to intense pressure from the African Union, the United States and China — a major oil partner for both sides — to move beyond the language and tactics of mutual destruction. But few analysts see any easy solutions to the heated push and pull over oil.

Both sides desperately need the oil to run their governments, feed their people and stamp out spreading rebellions within their borders. And theoretically, both sides need each other. The conundrum of the two Sudans is that 75 percent of the oil lies in the south, but the pipeline to export it runs through the north. Because of this, oil was once thought to be the glue that would hold the two nations together and prevent a conflict. Now, it seems, oil is becoming the fuse.

When South Sudan broke off from Sudan last year, after years of guerrilla struggle, its independence was heralded as the triumphal capstone ending one of Africa’s deadliest civil wars. But the question of how exactly the two sides would share oil profits loomed ominously over the separation, unresolved. Now that both nations are struggling to make it on their own, the issue has proved to be as prickly — and perilous — as many feared.

It was South Sudanese oil that drove Sudan’s economic boom of the past decade and made the repression by Sudan’s Islamist government (which is still heavily penalized by the United States) tolerable to many Sudanese. When South Sudan declared independence, it took billions of dollars’ worth of oil with it, gutting Sudan’s economy and creating one of the deepest crises that President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has faced in his more than 20 years in power.

Mr. Bashir is now battling high inflation, a shrinking economy, student protests and several simultaneous rebellions — in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile State — as well as genocide charges related to the massacres several years ago in Darfur, and stiff American sanctions.

At the same time, South Sudan, one of the poorest countries on earth, is facing a major food crisis and heavily armed ethnically based militias that have been sweeping parts of the countryside, killing hundreds and making a mockery of the South Sudanese security forces.

Stoking the tensions, Sudan and South Sudan are covertly backing rebels in each other’s backyards, leading to border clashes and relentless aerial bombings. The more than 1,000-mile border between them is now effectively closed, with millions of pounds of emergency food and just about all trade held up in a two-way stranglehold.

Before the emergency accord on Friday, the situation was so precarious that many saw only violent outcomes. “I, personally, expect full-fledged war,” said Mariam al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, a leading opposition politician in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital. “This is like the previews before a film.”

In the fight over oil, the south has refused to turn over royalties for using Sudan’s pipelines. Sudan upped the ante in late December by seizing oil tankers filled with South Sudanese crude. Then, the south took the drastic step of abruptly shutting down all of its oil wells, a measure that could quickly bring the economies of both north and south to their knees. South Sudanese officials have admitted they are using their oil to squeeze Khartoum to make concessions on all sorts of issues, including the disputed area of Abyei, insisting that oil production, about 350,000 barrels a day, will resume only after “all the deals are signed.”

The south has even threatened to sit on its oil for years while it builds an alternative pipeline through Kenya. But it is not clear how the new country would survive that long; oil provides about 98 percent of government revenue. Experts question whether the Kenya pipeline is even feasible. It would have to run uphill, requiring many expensive pumping stations, and most likely slice across Jonglei, a South Sudanese state that, with all its marauding militias, is essentially a war zone these days.

In Khartoum, many people are still struggling to swallow the fact that the south is gone. Nobody likes the new map of Sudan. It used to be Africa’s biggest country. Now it looks as if it has been crudely amputated, with the ragged edges of a raw wound.

“I still can’t get used to it,” said Nada Gerais, a sales manager in Khartoum. “It looks, looks ...,” she struggled for the right word. “Weird.”

Mrs. Gerais is a perfect example of the nose dive Sudan’s economy has taken. She works in a meticulously polished Nissan dealership that used to sell 50 cars a month. Now, sometimes, it is down to five. She is thinking of switching to pharmaceuticals or food.

“People can stop buying cars, but they can’t stop eating,” she explained.

During the past decade, Sudan’s oil wealth fueled new factories, roads, countless shish kebab joints and plans for a futuristic minicity, a billion-dollar airport and the entire reconfiguring of this capital to include a breezy promenade along the Nile.

But so many of these plans have been shelved. High-rise buildings stand half-finished, and the plummeting value of the Sudanese pound has pushed electronics, books and even tomatoes out of reach for many.

Officials in Khartoum say the south owes them nearly $1 billion in pipeline fees, money needed to keep their economy from collapsing, and they recently sold some of the oil from the seized tankers before releasing them. South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, said the amount Khartoum wanted, $32 per barrel, was “exorbitant” and “completely out of international norms.”

Sabir M. Hassan, a Sudanese government negotiator, said that the north was willing to be flexible, but that the southerners were “too emotional” and still saw themselves as rebels.

“If you give them two choices, they’ll choose the one that hurts the north, not the one that helps the south,” Mr. Hassan said.

South Sudanese leaders say the same about Khartoum, which has blockaded roads leading south and recently held up humanitarian shipments, all to punish the south at the cost of millions of dollars in lost business.

Many political analysts wonder whether Mr. Bashir will be able to survive all these crises. But it is hard to see who would replace him.

Sudan’s political opposition is deeply divided and run by white-bearded septuagenarians. The rebel movements do not have much support in Khartoum. Sudanese students started an Arab Spring-like movement last year, but they failed to gain any traction. The security forces were quick to arrest protesters and string them up from ceiling fans.

And Sudan has a resilience that transcends the turmoil. Every Friday, in a dusty ring on Khartoum’s outskirts, hundreds of Nuban men gather to watch traditional wrestling. Ethnic Nubans are leading the rebellion against Khartoum in the Nuba Mountains. But there is little evidence of that here.

“Things are fine,” said one elderly spectator.

Just as he was about to elaborate, a young wrestler scooped up his opponent and body-slammed him in the dirt.

“You see that!” the old man hollered. “My God, I love this.”

South Sudan shoot-out at Unity state peace talks

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:54:00 GMT

By bbc.com

At least 37 people have been killed in South Sudan during a shoot-out at a peace meeting aimed at ending recent violence, officials said.

Officials from three states and the UN had met for talks in the remote town of Mayendit in Unity state in an effort to reduce inter-ethnic tensions.

Those killed in the gun battle included civilians, but most were police.

The talks were called after a series of clashes, including one in which 74 people died earlier this week.

Thousands of people have been displaced in the violence.

According to the UN, Friday's incident occurred after a row broke out at the meeting. Four trucks arrived filled with gunmen, who opened fire indiscriminately.

The gunmen included policemen from different units, soldiers and security guards, according to AFP news agency.

One member of the UN peacekeeping mission was wounded in the shoot-out.

South Sudan's Deputy Defence Minister, Majak D'Agoot, told the BBC it was triggered after "a problem occurred" between police from Unity and police from neighbouring Warab state.

"Each side thought they were attacked," he said. "It was a problem largely produced by lack of effective command and control."

Correspondents say security in South Sudan, which became independent from Sudan last July, is one of the country's greatest challenges.

The BBC's James Copnall in South Sudan's capital Juba says a lack of discipline is perhaps unsurprising as fighters make the transition from a rebel movement to a government force.

Hundreds of people have also been killed in a series of tit-for-tat cattle raids in Jonglei state in recent weeks.

The African National Congress Turns 100 yrs

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:59:00 GMT

Vincent Darracq - On January 8, the African National Congress (ANC), South Africa's ruling party, will celebrate its centenary in the dusty town of Bloemfontein, where it was founded. What are its achievements, its failures and its future in post-apartheid South Africa?

When the ANC was launched in 1912, it was as a response by African educated elites to the creation in 1910 of the Union of South Africa: this new pact between Afrikaners and British settlers signed the reconciliation of white people on the back of indigenous Africans after the Boer war and entrenched racial discrimination. In that context, the ANC's goal was to unite African people behind the objective of achieving a non-racial South Africa.

After decades of exile, underground struggle and mass mobilization, the ANC's efforts finally paid off, and the apartheid regime was abolished. Accordingly, South Africa's 1994 first non-racial elections ushered in a new era.

This new post-apartheid, non-racial and democratic South Africa is, in itself, the ANC's major achievement. South Africa now has an inclusive political system, with one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, free and fair elections and legalist institutions. Racial groups which used to be manipulated against each other now coexist under the same laws: the race war hasn't occurred.

The post-apartheid regime has constructed its own set of unifying narratives, the most powerful one being Nelson Mandela, and South Africa is now stabilized. In the early 1990s, when there was uncertainty about the future of South Africa and fears of a white extreme right-wing coup, this could not be taken for granted.

So the ANC is firmly in power, with more than 60% of the vote, and even if its support seems to erode, its electoral prospects are good in the absence of any credible challenger for the black African vote. However, the ANC is now going through an identity crisis and is facing organizational and moral challenges.

First, the ANC's political culture is undergoing traumatic changes. The party's historical political culture, born out of democratic centralism and the underground experience, emphasizes party discipline and unity. This iron discipline allowed the party to close ranks during the anti-apartheid struggle but appears to be difficult to maintain today.

In the new democratic South Africa, it is equally hard to justify a lack of transparency over internal affairs. An influx of younger members is shaking the party's traditions. The ANC finds itself split between the worst of both worlds: internal differences are still emphatically denied, but behind the scenes, factionalism and indiscipline are undermining the party. The emergence of Julius Malema is only a symptom.

The party's worst enemies are greed and a lack of vision. Thabo Mbeki, former president of South Africa and the ANC, had many well-known faults but he had a vision for the country. His fights against the ANC's partners the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which in the form of the Triple Alliance formally governs South Africa, were over political and economic directions. Today, one would struggle to understand what the Zuma government stands for. It seems that competition for tenders within the new elite has supplanted ideology as the main bone of contention. Factional struggles unfolding between the Zuma, the Motlanthe, the Sexwale, the Phosa or the Mbalula of this world are only marginally related to ideological differences. Instead, they mainly revolve around government positions and business interests.

When ANC delegates gather in Bloemfontein and celebrate the party's heroic past, they should take one minute to ask themselves: what is the ANC's vision for South Africa for the next 100 years? If this question is left unanswered, the ANC will turn itself into a mere vehicle for the aspirations of a powerful new ruling class located at the intersection of politics and economics. In that case, South Africa's best democratic prospects may lie in a fundamental change in party politics.

The ANC has always been something of a coalition. Both left and right within the ANC have regularly threatened to split the Triple Alliance, as did the breakaway Congress of the People party in 2008. But attempts have thus far failed. A more fundamental split might leave South Africa with two mass political parties with credible struggle credentials, a left-wing one and a centre-one, competing for the black African vote. Because of its very success the ANC as we know it may have to commit the ultimate sacrifice in order to complete its mission and guarantee South Africa's, and the ANC's, remarkable democratic achievement.

Vincent Darracq is a Visiting Fellow of the Africa Programme of Chatham House.

Oromo rebel group in surprise drop of secession demand

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:43:00 GMT

By ARGAW ASHINEPosted Tuesday, January 3 2012 at 09:52

Ethiopia's oldest armed rebel group, the Oromo Liberation Front(OLF) has reportedly announced that it is abandoning its long held secession agenda and says it will now fight for unity and freedom.

Political commentators analysing what would be a remarkable and significant move in Ethiopian politics say it could potentially add weight the opposition to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government.

The rebel group was established in the late 1960s and was recently together with Al-Shabaab and Al-Qaeda designated as a terrorist organisation by the Ethiopian government.

"The new OLF political programme will accept the new Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia that will work for the betterment (sic) of all of its citizens, neighbouring countries and international communities," a statement released by the OLF National Council partly read.

"The OLF National Council also focused on the timely demand of working with other democratic forces in forming the new Ethiopia that will guarantee and protect the fundamental rights of all peoples in Ethiopia," it added.

The former rebel group expressed its readiness to work closely with other political organisations to topple Mr Meles. It was not immediately clear if the new position enjoys wide endorsement among Oromo factions.

During its extraordinary conference held on Monday in Minnesota in the US, which is the home of thousands of ethnic Oromo, the group launched its revised political position which envisages unity.

Change core ideology

OLF leader General Kemal Gelchu said through an online video message that OLF has decided to change its core ideology and would instead fight for justice and democracy in Ethiopia.

"We [have] decided to fight against the dictators along with other Ethiopians and political groups," said Gen Gelchu, who is a former Ethiopian army general who defected five years ago and is based in Eritrea together with a small number of defected soldiers.

According to the political commentators, the new OLF position if confirmed to have widespread support boosts the legitimacy of the rebel group among the more than 35 million (40 per cent) Ethiopians who belong to the Oromo ethnic group.

Mr Kassahun Addis, a US-based Ethiopian political commentator, told Africa Review that the new position comes as response to the long simmering ideological and leadership crisis within the OLF.

OLF knows that the secessionist agenda that has for long been the defining mark of OLF has marginalised the majority of non-Oromos and also a significant number of Oromos, he said.

"They have concluded that the Oromo problem cannot be solved separately from the much bigger question of democracy and freedom in the country," he added.

Dominated

The Ethiopian government under Mr Meles is dominated by his native Tigray ethnic group which represents only 4 per cent of the 82 million-strong population. It has been criticised for its massive crackdowns and isolation tactics against the Oromo people.

OLF once partnered with the Meles Zenawi-led Ethiopian People Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) party to overthrow the military regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991.

The OLF boycotted the resulting Ethiopian transitional government in 1993 and launched an armed fight against the Meles government after hostility and mistrust erupted between the two groups.

Subsequently, the OLF's military wing has been defeated on various fronts after the government waged massive military offensives against the rebels.

In 2007 Ethiopia and Kenya signed a cross border security deal which helped the Ethiopian government to crush the OLF rebels' base in the border area.

Addis Ababa had accused the OLF of bombing and carrying out attacks against civilians in Ethiopia.

According to New York-based Human Rights Watch, more than 300 ethnic Oromo individuals and home-based political party members have bee jailed over alleged terrorist activities.

According to a recent Ethiopian anti-terrorism law, media organisations based in Ethiopia are not allowed to report about the rebel group.

South Sudan Turns to English

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:53:00 GMT

By JOSH KRON

MOGADISHU, Somalia — The new nation of South Sudan has expressed a desire to join the Commonwealth, a group composed mainly of former British colonies, and said that it would change the language used in schools from Arabic to English. The two actions further cement its pivot from the Arab world of northern Africa toward the largely Anglophone east.

South Sudan declared independence from Sudan in July, ending decades of civil war in which the Arab-dominated north tried to forcibly convert the south to Islam, building mosques and burning down villages.

A spokesman for the Commonwealth, Manoah Esipisu, said Saturday that South Sudan had “expressed an interest in joining” the organization, formerly known as the British Commonwealth.

“An informal assessment will be taken by the secretary general,” and then member states will be consulted, Mr. Esipisu said in a telephone interview from Perth, Australia, where the group was holding a summit meeting. He said the process was estimated to take two years.

In a separate development, officials announced this week that the language used in schools would be changed from Arabic to English.

Though much of South Sudan’s population grew up speaking Arabic, the country has instituted changes in the way it is run to reflect its political aspirations, as well as its close geographic and economic proximity to East Africa.

Uganda and Kenya, both former British colonies, are among South Sudan’s largest trading partners, and government officials have spoken of building an oil pipeline to Kenya to connect to the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa as an alternative to sending its oil to the northern Sudanese government in Khartoum.

This month, South Sudan also reiterated its interest in joining the East African Community economic bloc, which it neighbors.

“We are not dragging our feet,” said President Salva Kiir, according to a statement issued by the bloc, “we are coming.”

An African Chief in Cabby's Clothing

Sat, 13 Aug 2011 01:01:00 GMT

An African Chief in Cabby’s Clothing

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

BEFORE dawn, when most New Yorkers are fast asleep, Isaac and Elizabeth Osei have already been working for hours. On a recent morning, Mr. Osei drove his wife from New Jersey to the half-abandoned outer blocks of Midtown Manhattan to oversee the 4:30 a.m. transfer of their fleet of 50 taxis. With Ms. Osei leading the way and a sliver of moon still hanging in the sky, they scouted three square blocks to make sure all of their taxis had been picked up by drivers. Then, over the screeches emanating from auto-body shops and the smell of gasoline wafting from a Hess station crammed with cabs, they surveyed their troubled taxis just as sunlight faintly appeared over Manhattan.

At 6 a.m., they drove to the Upper West Side, reconfigured the spare tires they keep in their trunk and picked up clothing, a mirror and a table, which a friend was donating to a charity drive organized by the Oseis. The couple, who are immigrants from Ghana, struggled to tie the mirror to the roof of their car, then drove back to their Chelsea office lined with worn-out wood paneling and faded carpeting.

By 7:30, Ms. Osei had taken her place in her thronelike office chair — she is the president of Napasei Taxi Management Corporation, after all — while Mr. Osei, who is vice president, took a more modest seat nearby. Then they prepared for the next 12 hours of fighting parking tickets, getting taxis inspected and helping drivers who came in to pick up their cash.

But the Oseis call this grueling schedule a vacation compared with the real holiday they have ahead. On Wednesday, when they board a flight to Ghana, their roles will suddenly and drastically shift. As they cross the Atlantic Ocean, Mr. Osei will become Nana Gyensare V, a chief of the Akwamu people, who oversees the residents of five towns across the Eastern Region.

After arriving in Accra, the capital of Ghana, he will don a delicate gold crown, take a seat on his throne or stool and work 20-hour days out of his 10-room palace. Rather than focus on taxi tune-ups and inspections, Mr. Osei will assume judicial and other powers, like mediating family disputes. Ms. Osei, who is happiest talking about chassis and alternators, will have to fulfill the responsibilities of a chief’s wife by running women’s groups in each town and helping with preparations for a 1,000-person banquet in September, at which Mr. Osei will bless the yam harvest. Residents are waiting to eat the yams until after Nana Gyensare’s arrival.

“Here we are very busy — but at least I don’t have my people around me here, because I am more free,” Mr. Osei, a stout and succinct man more prone to chuckles than words, said of his life in New York. He nodded at his wife and added, “At times, she gets angry because she can’t even see me.”

Many immigrants in New York lead double lives: restaurant dishwasher in Queens and family patriarch in Mexico, or manicurist in Midtown and financial provider back in China. But Mr. Osei’s story is far more extreme. It’s as if he spends summer vacation with the hybrid responsibilities of a mayor and a royal, said Richard Rathbone, a professor at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies who has done research near the towns Mr. Osei oversees.

As Ghana has grown more stable in recent years, Professor Rathbone said, emigrants are returning and accepting these chiefly roles. They have many of the social responsibilities of politicians, but they also carry the historical gravitas of a royal title.

“He’s connected with the past and he symbolizes the past,” Professor Rathbone said of Mr. Osei.

Mr. Osei, one of 19 children, never expected to be a chief. The title, which passed through his mother’s family, had been given to an older brother, and Mr. Osei moved to New York three decades ago to carve out his own life. He started driving a taxi and bought a medallion in 1982. Within a few years, he had gotten married, had two daughters and had opened a restaurant in Harlem. But he soon divorced and found himself wiped out financially.

Mr. Osei saw Elizabeth Otolizz for the first time when she stopped to eat in his restaurant in the late 1980s and he pointed out that she had spilled okra on her blouse. She moved to New York in 1986 and worked as a home health nurse, a newspaper deliverywoman and a taxi driver. She spilled out stories about the celebrities she had met, like Snoop Dogg, and the times she had been beaten up by customers. She carried in her purse masses of wires that she used to make emergency taxi repairs.

When Mr. Osei went back to driving a taxi, he would occasionally spot Elizabeth at airport taxi stands and chat. Then, when he saw her driving her taxi, he would ask her for her phone number at stop lights. But Elizabeth, who was getting over a previous relationship, demurred.

In 1991, Mr. Osei’s taxi medallion was about to fall into foreclosure, and Elizabeth offered to go into business with him. She borrowed $1,500 from an African grocery store owner and alternated with Mr. Osei driving his Chevy Caprice in 12-hour shifts to help pay off the loan. Soon, Elizabeth decided she was ready to take their friendship beyond a trade-off of taxi keys. In 1995, they wed in New Jersey, had two sons and slowly and steadily built a small taxi empire.

But in 2006, after his brother died of complications related to diabetes, Mr. Osei was called back to Ghana to assume the title of chief. Suddenly, Mr. Osei was being carried on a palanquin, conducting judicial hearings and officiating at festivals. Ms. Osei still laughs when she describes the expression on her husband’s face when he returned from that first trip back to Ghana.

“They spoil you,” Ms. Osei said of her husband’s staff members in Ghana. “When you get to J.F.K., they don’t pick up your suitcases.”

But Ms. Osei seems to have embraced her husband’s responsibilities. At 8 a.m. on a recent day, after a long morning of checking on their taxi fleet, the Oseis sat down in a diner in Midtown and ordered breakfast. Just as Mr. Osei began to eat, his cellphone started to peal with calls from Ghana. While Mr. Osei finished eating, Ms. Osei answered the calls and started relaying the details of work that lay ahead, like funerals, charitable walks and social projects. (The Oseis are especially proud of having installed toilets in some Ghanaian towns.) She seemed to have made peace with the coming journey.

“When I get to Africa, I have to worship him,” she said with a hint of frustration in her voice and a broad, mischievous smile. “When I get back, he has to worship me.”

China Spreads Aid in Africa, With a Catch

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Uneasy Engagement
By SHARON LaFRANIERE and JOHN GROBLER

WINDHOEK, Namibia — It is not every day that global leaders set foot in this southern African nation of gravel roads, towering sand dunes and a mere two million people. So when President Hu Jintao of China touched down here in February 2007 with a 130-person delegation in tow, it clearly was not just a courtesy call.

And in fact, China soon granted Namibia a big low-interest loan, which Namibia tapped to buy $55.3 million worth of Chinese-made cargo scanners to deter smugglers. It was a neat illustration, Chinese officials said, of how doing good in Namibia could do well for China, too.

Or so it seemed until Namibia charged that the state-controlled company selected by China to provide the scanners — a company until recently run by President Hu’s son — had facilitated the deal with millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks. And until China threw up barriers when Namibian investigators asked for help looking into the matter.

Now the scanners seem to illustrate something else: the aura of boosterism, secrecy and back-room deals that has clouded China’s use of billions of dollars in foreign aid to court the developing world.

From Pakistan to Angola to Kyrgyzstan, China is using its enormous pool of foreign currency savings to cement diplomatic alliances, secure access to natural resources and drum up business for its flagship companies. Foreign aid — typically cut-rate loans, sometimes bundled with more commercial lines of credit — is central to this effort.

Leaders of developing nations have embraced China’s sales pitch of easy credit, without Western-style demands for political or economic reform, for a host of unmet needs. The results can be clearly seen in new roads, power plants, and telecommunications networks across the African continent — more than 200 projects since 2001, many financed with preferential loans from the Chinese government’s Exim Bank.

Increasingly, though, experts argue that China’s aid comes with a major catch: It must be used to buy goods or services from companies, many of them state-controlled, that Chinese officials select themselves. Competitive bidding by the borrowing nation is discouraged, and China pulls a veil over vital data like project costs, loan terms and repayment conditions. Even the dollar amount of loans offered as foreign aid is treated as a state secret.

Anticorruption crusaders complain that secrecy invites corruption, and that corruption debases foreign assistance.

“China is using this financing to buy the loyalty of the political elite,” said Harry Roque, a University of the Philippines law professor who is challenging the legality of Chinese-financed projects in the Philippines. “It is a very effective tool of soft diplomacy. But it is bad for the citizens who have to repay these loans for graft-ridden contracts.”

In fact, such secrecy runs counter to international norms for foreign assistance. In a part of the world prone to corruption and poor governance, it also raises questions about who actually benefits from China’s projects. The answers, international development specialists say, are hidden from public view.

“We know more about China’s military expenditures than we do about its foreign aid,” said David Shambaugh, an author and China scholar at George Washington University. “Foreign aid really is a glaring contradiction to the broader trend of China’s adherence to international norms. It is so strikingly opaque it really makes one wonder what they are trying to hide.”

Until recently, wealthy nations could hardly hold themselves out as an example of how to run foreign aid, either. Many projects turned out to be tainted by corruption or geared to enrich the donor nation’s contractors, not the impoverished borrowers. But over the past 10 or 15 years, some 30 developed nations under the umbrella of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D.) have made a concerted effort to clean up their assistance programs.

They demanded that foreign money be awarded and spent transparently, using competitive bidding and outlawing bribery. Increasingly, they also are also pushing to give borrowers more choice among suppliers and contractors, rather than insisting that funds be recycled back to the donor nation’s companies.

China, which is not a member of the O.E.C.D., is operating under rules that the West has largely abandoned. It mixes aid and business in secret government-to-government agreements. It requires that foreign aid contracts be awarded to Chinese contractors it picks through a closed-door bidding process in Beijing. Its attempts to prevent corrupt practices by its companies overseas appear weak.

Some developing nations insist on independently comparing prices before accepting China’s largesse. Others do not bother. “Very often they are getting something they wouldn’t be able to get without China’s financing,” said Chris Alden, a specialist on China-African relations with the London School of Economics and Political Science. “They presume that the Chinese are going to give value for money.”

Development experts say they have tried to convince the Chinese government that better safeguards and a more open process will enhance its efforts to gain influence and business. If its projects collapse because of kickbacks or inflated costs, they argue, China will end up exporting not only goods and services, but a reputation for corruption that it is already battling at home.

But Deborah Brautigam, the author of a coming book on China’s economic ties with Africa titled “The Dragon’s Gift,” says Beijing is hesitant to hobble its companies with Western-style restraints before they have become world-class competitors.

Thinking Business, Not Ethics

“The Chinese are kind of starting out where everyone else was years ago, and they see themselves as being at a disadvantage,” Ms. Brautigam said. “The Chinese don’t particularly want a big scandal. That doesn’t further their interests. They just want their companies to get business.”

Sometimes they get both. In 2007, the Philippines was forced to cancel a $460 million contract with the Beijing scanner company, Nuctech Company Ltd., to set up satellite-based classroom instruction after critics protested the company had no expertise in education.

It also canceled a $329 million contract awarded to ZTE Corporation, a state-controlled Chinese communications company, after allegations of enormous kickbacks. ZTE denied bribing anyone, but the controversy has lingered. Last month an antigraft panel recommended filing criminal charges against two Philippines officials in connection with the contract.

A Manila-based nonprofit group, the Center for International Law, has mounted a legal challenge against still another Chinese contract in the Philippines, to build a $500 million railroad. Professor Roque, who leads the center, contends that the price of China’s state-owned contractor “was simply plucked out of the sky.” Officially, China’s directive to its companies is toe an ethical line overseas.

“Our enterprises must conform to international rules when running business, must be open and transparent, should go through a bidding process for big projects and forbid inappropriate deals and reject corruption and kickbacks,” Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, told a group of Chinese businessmen in Zambia in 2006.

But China has no specific law against bribing foreign officials. And the government seems none too eager to investigate or punish companies it selects if they turn out to have engaged in shady practices overseas.

Indeed, it has an added incentive to look the other way because of the state’s ties to many foreign aid contractors — connections that sometimes extend to families of the Communist Party elite.

In January, for example, the World Bank barred four state-controlled Chinese companies from competing for its work after an investigation showed that they tried to rig bids for bank projects in the Philippines. But two of those companies remain on the Chinese Commerce Ministry’s list of approved foreign aid contractors, according to its Web site.

The Namibia controversy is especially delicate because until late last year, the contractor’s president was Mr. Hu’s son, Hu Haifeng. The younger Mr. Hu is now Communist Party secretary of an umbrella company that includes Nuctech and dozens of other companies. As soon as allegations against the company surfaced this summer, China’s censors swung into action, blocking all mention of the scandal in the Chinese news media and on the Internet.

“This is a signal to everyone to back off,” said Russell Leigh Moses, an analyst of Chinese politics in Beijing. “Everyone goes into default mode, because once you get the ball rolling, no one knows where it will stop. No one wants their rice bowl broken.”

Nuctech has denied any wrongdoing in court papers filed here in Windhoek. A spokeswoman said the company had no comment because the matter was unresolved. China’s Commerce Ministry and other government agencies did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Namibia’s anticorruption investigators allege that Nuctech funneled $4.2 million in kickbacks to a front company set up by a Namibian official, who split the funds with her business partner and Nuctech’s southern Africa representative, a Chinese citizen.

A Deal Ends in Arrests

China has promoted Nuctech as one of its global “champions.” In 10 years the company has gained customers in more than 60 countries, marketing advanced-technology scanners that help detect contraband or dangerous materials inside cargo containers. Nuctech’s spokesman says it is the only Chinese company that makes such equipment.

The Namibian government was interested in equipping its airports, seaports and border posts with scanners to comply with stricter regulations on international commerce. On a state visit to China in 2005, Hifikepunye Pohamba, Namibia’s president, visited Nuctech’s headquarters and factory, according to court testimony. The following year, Nuctech sent a representative, Yang Fan, to Windhoek, Namibia’s capital.

Hu Jintao’s visit to Windhoek a few months later opened up an option for finance. “China says the sky is the limit. Just say what you want,” said Carl Schlettwein, the permanent secretary of the Namibian Finance Ministry, who participated in the negotiations.

At first, Mr. Schlettwein said, the talks stalled because Namibia was unwilling to grant China access to its substantial mineral deposits in exchange for lines of credit. Once China dropped that condition, Namibia agreed in principle to a $100 million, 20-year-loan at a 2.5 percent interest rate, then well below the market. “Purely from a financial point of view, it was a fine deal,” Mr. Schlettwein said.

Namibian officials decided to draw on the credit line to finance most of the cost of the scanners. Mr. Schlettwein, who negotiated the scanner contract, said he wanted to seek competitive bids from scanner suppliers around the world, but Chinese negotiators refused.

“They said ‘that is not our system,’ “ he said. “ ‘We tell you from whom you buy the equipment.’ All of us, including the minister, were very worried about the nontransparent way of doing things,” he said, but reasoned that the Chinese government “will not unduly cheat us.”

Last March, less than a week after the Finance Ministry paid Nuctech an initial $12.8 million, Mr. Schlettwein’s unease turned to distress.

A Windhoek bank official, following the strictures of Namibia’s new money-laundering act, called to ask why Nuctech had deposited $4.2 million in the account of a consulting company set up by Tekla Lameck, a Namibian public service commissioner.

Mr. Schlettwein, who says that he has never met Ms. Lameck and that she had nothing to do with the scanner purchase, alerted Namibia’s anticorruption commission. In July, Ms. Lameck, her business partner and Nuctech’s representative in Windhoek were arrested on suspicion of violating Namibia’s anticorruption law. All three have denied wrongdoing.

Investigations Galore

Investigators charge that Nuctech agreed to hire Ms. Lameck’s consulting company, Teko Trading, in 2007, a month after President Hu’s visit. Nuctech agreed to pay Teko 10 percent of the contract if the average price of one scanner was $2.5 million. If the price was higher, Nuctech would pay Teko 50 percent of the added cost. A subsequent agreement fixed the amount of commissions at $12.8 million, according to court records.

At his bail hearing last month, Yang Fan, Nuctech’s representative, said his company hired Teko because “Teko explained how to do business here in Namibia.” He did not elaborate. But in 2007, another Namibian official complained to the anticorruption commission that Ms. Lameck had introduced herself to the Chinese Embassy in Windhoek as a representative of Swapo, Namibia’s governing political party. She claimed that no business could be done in Namibia without Swapo’s involvement, the complainant said.

Investigators have been seeking Nuctech’s explanation of the affair for more than two months. There is little sign the company has complied with their requests, although investigators say they remain hopeful.

Namibia’s chief national prosecutor, Martha Imalwa, traveled to Beijing in July, hoping to question officials from Nuctech and another company involved in a separate inquiry. But according to her deputy, Danie Small, Ms. Imalwa was allowed to present questions only to the international division of China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate.

A court has temporarily frozen $12.8 million in Nuctech’s assets while the inquiry continues. Meanwhile, at Namibia’s Finance Ministry, Mr. Schlettwein is belatedly trying to determine what other buyers paid for comparable scanners. When he asked South African officials for pricing information, he said, he was told Nuctech’s contract there is also under investigation.

Perhaps predictably, competitors say Namibia agreed to pay far too much. Peter Kant, a vice-president at Nuctech’s American rival, Rapiscan Systems, said that comparable equipment and services costs about $28 million, or $25 million less than Nuctech’s contract.

Mr. Schlettwein last month tried to send a letter through official channels to Rong Yonglin, Nuctech’s chairman, to ask that the contract be renegotiated. But a Chinese Embassy official in Windhoek refused to accept the correspondence, saying he knew no one with that name.

Stephen Castle contributed reporting from Brussels, and Carlos H. Conde from Manila. Jonathan Ansfield contributed research from Beijing.

Zimbabwe Seeks ‘Indigenous’ Control of Companies

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 05:00:00 GMT

By MICHAEL WINES

JOHANNESBURG, June 26 — Zimbabwe’s government has put forward legislation that would require virtually all publicly traded companies to cede controlling interests to “indigenous” citizens, raising the possibility of a sizable redistribution of the country’s remaining wealth at a time when its economy is collapsing.

The draft legislation, which was published Monday, would mandate that a 51 percent stake in the companies be transferred to Zimbabweans who were “disadvantaged by unfair discrimination on the grounds of his or her race” before April 1980, when the nation won independence from white rule.

The government calls it a plan for black empowerment, while critics label it a bid to shore up crumbling political support for Zimbabwe’s president, Robert G. Mugabe. Given that Mr. Mugabe’s party dominates Parliament, the measure will almost certainly pass.

The legislation would establish a government fund to help citizens buy stock in public companies, and would allow the government to reject any corporate mergers, acquisitions, investments and other transactions in which so-called indigenous Zimbabweans did not hold a 51 percent stake. It was unclear, however, how Zimbabwe’s bankrupt government, beset by hyperinflation and a currency crisis, would finance the transfers.

Nor was it apparent how the companies’ new controlling stakeholders would be chosen. The law apparently contemplates black workers at companies taking stakes in their employers, a move that would surely win Mr. Mugabe some public support as he prepares for what could be a difficult re-election campaign in early 2008.

Empowerment programs that transfer corporate stakes to black shareholders are not unusual. South Africa’s government sponsors a highly successful, but much criticized, program that has transferred large blocks of corporate stock to workers and managers, and has helped make multimillionaires of a handful of well-connected businessmen.

Mr. Mugabe’s critics, however, say the proposal is a scheme to loot the remainder of Zimbabwe’s economy for the benefit of political insiders and backers of the president. To them, the legislation evokes the specter of Mr. Mugabe’s seizure of thousands of white-owned farms early this decade, mostly without compensation, in what was then called a redistribution of land to poor blacks. Instead, many of the best farms were awarded to leading figures in Mr. Mugabe’s government and his ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front.

Rather than confiscating stakes in companies, however, the legislation envisions a more gradual, potentially compensated transfer of ownership.

At the same time, the government began an effort to rein in Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation, officially about 4,500 percent, but described by private economists as approaching 20,000 percent. A cabinet-level task force on price controls ordered factories and sellers to cut the prices of certain basic goods and services by as much as 50 percent — to levels that existed roughly one week ago.

Mr. Mugabe’s minister of industry and international trade, Obert Mpofu, said that increased prices were unjustified and that they were “a political ploy engineered by our detractors to effect an illegal regime change against the ruling party.”

Shopkeepers throughout the country ignored the decree, according to several Zimbabweans interviewed by telephone on Tuesday. “No one is even thinking about freezing prices,” said one member of the ruling party, on condition of anonymity because of a fear of retribution.

That person and others interviewed Tuesday suggested that both the price decree and the ownership legislation reflected an increasingly frantic effort by Zimbabwe’s rulers to contain the damage from an economy that has moved in recent weeks from steep decline to outright free fall.

Inflation is now so steep that Zimbabwe’s currency is virtually worthless. The plummeting Zimbabwe dollar, now trading on the black market at about 130,000 to one United States dollar, collapsed last week to as low as 400,000 to an American dollar before recovering. The drop was almost certainly the result of Zimbabwe’s reserve bank flooding the black market with freshly printed bills, seeking to buy scarce foreign currency to pay its own debts.

Prices change daily, if not hourly; one news report last week noted that golfers at a Harare country club were paying for their 19th-hole drinks before teeing off after discovering that prices were rising while they were on the course.

The nation’s industrial production, estimated to be running at only 30 percent of capacity, is grinding to a halt in many places. “The rapid rise in prices is a killer for all concerned,” said Iden Wetherell, an editor at the weekly Zimbabwe Independent newspaper in Harare. “What you’re seeing now is people not bothering to go to work. It’s not worth it when their incomes are consumed entirely by transport costs. Things are deteriorating exponentially here.”

Mr. Mugabe’s critics and a Harare economist said Tuesday that the “indigenization” legislation would almost certainly make Zimbabwe’s economic havoc even more severe by driving away the few foreigners still willing to invest in the country. The flight of foreign capital has been a crucial element in Zimbabwe’s economic decline, and until the draft legislation was published, the government had been courting Chinese investors and other outsiders, albeit with little success.

“The investment environment here is very fragile, and this is the kind of stuff that, even if it were warming up, would kill it,” said the economist, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation by the government. “Obviously, it’s going to scare even more people away.”

Foreign firms with stakes in Zimbabwean businesses reacted cautiously to the proposal. “This is still a draft piece of legislation, which means it is open for general comment,” said Ross Linstrom, a spokesman for Standard Bank Group of South Africa, which has a subsidiary in Zimbabwe. Implats, a South African mining giant with a large platinum mine in Zimbabwe, said through a spokesman that it had already ceded part of its Zimbabwe reserves to the government and that it believed that it was already in compliance with the law.

The government has said that the law will apply to all companies, including the foreign banks and mining firms that power much of what is left of the economy. However, legislation that would have transferred a 51 percent stake in mining firms has lain dormant in Parliament for months, after mining firms protested that it could lead to chaos and steep drops in production. More recently, the government has indicated that it might nationalize some sectors of the industry, like coal and uranium mining, but that it would impose less stringent rules on some other sectors.

Some critics noted that one effect of the legislation would be to make a huge pool of corporate stock available for distribution to lucky Zimbabweans — factory workers and black managers, perhaps, but also those with political influence. Some of Mr. Mugabe’s closest allies have become fabulously rich, even by Western standards, during his 27 years in office, those critics say.

Moreover, Mr. Mugabe has frequently doled out patronage to ensure that his close allies remain close. Earlier this month, Mr. Mugabe handed out more than 1,000 Chinese tractors and some 30 harvesters to members of the ZANU-PF ruling party’s central committee, high-ranking officers in the army and air force, provincial and national officials in the Central Intelligence Organization, and ministers and deputy ministers in the government, among others.

Should the proposal become law, one member of the ruling party predicted, corporate stakes would follow suit. “The situation is desperate here,” that person said. “And so we are taking desperate measures.”

In a World on the Move, a Tiny Land Strains to Cope

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Border Crossings
By JASON DePARLE

MINDELO, Cape Verde — Virtually every aspect of global migration can be seen in this tiny West African nation, where the number of people who have left approaches the number who remain and almost everyone has a close relative in Europe or America.

Migrant money buoys the economy. Migrant votes sway politics. Migrant departures split parents from children, and the most famous song by the most famous Cape Verdean venerates the national emotion, “Sodade,” or longing. Lofty talk of opportunity abroad mixes at cafe tables here with accounts of false documents and sham marriages.

The intensity of the national experience makes this barren archipelago the Galapagos of migration, a microcosm of the forces straining American politics and remaking societies across the globe.

An estimated 200 million people live outside the country of their birth, and they help support a swath of the developing world as big if not bigger. Migrants sent home about $300 billion last year — nearly three times the world’s foreign aid budgets combined. Those sums are building houses, educating children and seeding small businesses, and they have made migration central to discussions about how to help the global poor. A leading academic text calls this the “Age of Migration.”

But it is also the age of migration alarm, as European ships patrol African coasts to intercept human smugglers and new fences are planned along the Rio Grande. Countries that want migrant muscle and brains also want more border control. Many of them see illegal migrants as a security threat, especially in a terrorist age, and worry that large-scale migration, even when legal, can undercut wages, require costly services and subject national identities to bonfires of religious and cultural conflict.

The stakes can be seen here in Mindelo, a semicircle of barren hillsides that gaze out at the only sign of natural life, a beckoning sea. In a country with little rain and a history of famine, migration began as a necessity and became part of the civic DNA. You can dine at Café Portugal, drink at the Argentina bar and stroll Avenida da Holanda.

Yet Holland — the Netherlands — now requires would-be migrants to pass a test on Dutch language and culture. Other countries have raised the cost of visa applications, discouraged applicants by requiring them to travel to the Cape Verdean capital, Praia, and placed new penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants. While the Netherlands has long been a favorite destination for residents of this island, a Cape Verdean song now warns that “Holland belongs to the Dutch.”

Watch out
Because they can make you go back swimming
And you’ll get home with seaweed in your teeth

Mindelo, Cape Verde’s second-largest city, contains 63,000 people and about as many variations on the migrant’s tale. On the hillside neighborhood of Monte Sessego, Maria Cruz, 70, beams at the living room suite her son sent from Rotterdam. Out toward the airport, Stenio da Luz dos Reis, 17, studies Dutch and hopes to join his mother in the Netherlands. Down by the beach, Orlando Cruz, 46, stares at vacant tables. He fell off a ladder in New Jersey and used the insurance money to start a hotel and restaurant, which are now nearly empty.

As construction racket fills her half-finished house, Evanilda Lopes, 27, speaks freely about the fraudulent papers that got her to the Netherlands. As he hustles change for his H.I.V. medication, Manuel Gomes, 41, is equally frank about the crimes that got him deported from Providence, R.I. He moved there as a child and grew up wild — selling drugs, stealing cars and burglarizing homes. Now like hundreds of others deported here from the United States, he finds himself a man without a country, exiled to a world no less foreign for having been the place of his birth.

“You have a Cape Verdean here who would cut his right arm off to go back,” said Mr. Gomes, who lives in a one-room hovel without running water or electricity.

If Cape Verde is the Galapagos of migration, Jorgen Carling, a Norwegian geographer, is its Darwin. A rising star on the academic circuit, Dr. Carling, 32, visited Cape Verde 10 years ago, taught himself Kriole, the local language, and has been returning ever since.

“Cape Verde is a showcase of the contradictions and frictions of global migration,” he said. “It is in a quite dramatic transition — from being so dependent on migration to trying to cope with a world in which borders are closing.”

The tensions he cites abound. Migration reduces poverty. But it increases inequality between migrants and others back home. Migration can express family devotion. It can also strain family bonds.

And while migration may be at record levels, so is the frustration of people who want to migrate but cannot. That is because as migration grows, the desire to experience its economic rewards grows even faster.

“Migration is probably more important to more people than it has ever been,” said Dr. Carling of the International Peace Research Institute, a nonprofit group in Oslo. “But what characterizes the world today is also the feeling of involuntary immobility.”

These conflicts can be seen in a block home on a dusty hill where migration unites and divides four generations. At 79, the owner, Antonia Delgado, is old enough to remember famines, and she spent decades living in a shanty made of used oil drums. Thanks to the money her son sent from the Netherlands, she has four rooms, electric lights and indoor plumbing.

But she no longer has the son. He stopped calling more than five years ago, and she is not sure if he is alive. “I’m very worried,” she said. “He helped me so much.”

Now she relies on money sent by a second family migrant, her granddaughter Fatima, a nanny in Portugal. That brings Ms. Delgado monthly support of $135, but leaves her raising her granddaughter’s son, an 11-year-old with a missing front tooth and irrepressible smile.

The boy, Steven Ramos, is sorting through parallel complexities. His mother’s salary buys school supplies, martial arts lessons and the occasional DVD. But she left five years ago and has come home only once. His father works in the Netherlands and rarely calls. Steven called him “ingrote” — for ungrateful — choosing a Cape Verdean term for migrants who forget those left behind.

Though Steven’s mother now has a work permit, she cannot get a visa for Steven, who has spent his childhood thinking their reunion was imminent. He cried when her recent visit ended but cast her departure in traditional Cape Verdeans terms, as something natural, necessary and good. “I cried, but I wasn’t sad because I knew she needed to go,” he said. “ She went to give us better conditions.”

An Identity Linked to Migration

Without migration, Cape Verde would not exist. The 10-island chain, 385 miles off the coast of Senegal, was uninhabited until the 15th century, when Portugal settled it with two migrant streams — Europeans and African slaves. Cape Verde became a creolized mix of both continents and a supply depot for the slave trade.

Mass emigration began in the late 1800s on whaling ships that brought Cape Verdeans to New England. It continued after World War II with European guest-worker plans, which sought temporary labor but brought permanent settlement.

Those same plans brought Turks to Germany, South Asians to Britain and North Africans to France, and a generation later, many Europeans remain concerned about continuing cultural conflicts. “We asked for workers, but we got people,” is a famous European lament.

Cape Verde gained independence from Portugal in 1975, about the time the guest-worker plans ended. Still, Cape Verdean migration continued — legally (through family reunification laws) and illegally (through visitors who stay after visas expire). Many people here travel on tourist visas, then seek a European or American citizen to marry, often of Cape Verdean ancestry.

Migration is so central to their identity, Cape Verdeans often boast that emigrants outnumber the people who remain. That is true, Dr. Carling said, only when counting emigrants and their descendants. By that standard, he estimates there are 460,000 Cape Verdeans on the islands and 500,000 overseas, including 265,000 in the United States. “Sodade,” the hit by Cesaria Evora, a Mindelo resident and a Grammy award winner, conveys “longing, longing, longing for my island.”

Some scholars argue that migrants form a record share of the world’s population, though weak data make historical comparisons difficult. Despite current alarm, migration is likely to grow. Rich economies with aging work forces need labor. Workers in poor countries need jobs. Border crossings are hard to prevent, and the rewards of moving have never been greater. The average pay raise awaiting today’s unskilled migrants, in inflation-adjusted terms, is about twice as high as that which greeted migrants a century ago, during the last great period of global migration.

Economists generally argue that migration has helped rich economies expand by supplying needed labor, though some low-skilled domestic workers may suffer wage reductions because of increased competition.

From the start, Cape Verde has embraced its emigrants — as kinsmen, investors, lobbyists for foreign aid, safety valves for population growth and eventually as voters. With migrant help, Cape Verde has doubled its per capita income since 1990, to about $2,100, a high figure by African standards. Remittances, the sums that migrants send home, make up 12 percent of the gross domestic product and once were twice as high. Migrants elect their own representatives to the National Assembly.

More broadly, however, development experts are split on the effects of migration. Remittances feed and shelter the poor, and migrants sometimes return with new business contacts and ideas. But migration can also drain countries of talent and promote dependency, among individuals and governments. No country has climbed out of poverty through migration alone. Despite the economic progress here, the unemployment rate hovers above 20 percent and the fastest-growing industry, tourism, is dominated by low-wage jobs.

While Dr. Carling admires Cape Verde’s ability to invent itself as a nation beyond borders, he also sees problems with the constant emphasis on departures. It can weaken relationships, he said, leave marriages short-lived and promote indifference among students and workers. “The possibility of relying on remittances — and the prospect of going abroad one day — can alienate you from the environment here,” he said.

Even as Cape Verdeans struggle to get out, others are migrating in. This, too, is characteristic of the age of migration — most “sending” countries are also “receiving” countries, underscoring how universal the phenomenon is. Nearly half the migrants from poor nations move to other poor nations.

Mindelo, on the island of São Vicente, is filled with Chinese shopkeepers chasing new markets and West African peddlers fleeing homelands torn by war and worse poverty. Many hope to move on to the Canary Islands, which are part of Spain, aboard dangerous smuggling boats on journeys that kill hundreds if not thousands every year.

“This is life and death,” said Emmanuel Kofi Cathline, a local peddler who migrated from Ghana 17 years ago and once made money here helping migrants book the illegal journeys. Though crackdowns have chased him from the business, he remains loyal to what might be called the global migrants’ creed. “If a place is no good, change it,” he said. “Go to another place!”

A Test of Optimism

For all the rising barriers, many Cape Verdeans remain confident they will leave. Mr. da Luz dos Reis, the teenager studying Dutch, answered the door in a blaze of sartorial optimism: orange shorts and orange shirt — can you guess the Dutch national color? — with the word “Holland” stretched across his back.

His mother left for the Netherlands six years ago to work as a maid, and his younger sisters just joined her. Having passed his 16th birthday, Mr. da Luz dos Reis was left behind, with a workbook containing 100 questions in Dutch.

Thirty will appear on a test. No. 62 asks if it is important to learn Dutch quickly. (It is.) No. 59 asks if wife beating is permissible. (It is not.) Mr. da Luz dos Reis pays $70 a month for a tutor and must take the test in Dakar, two hours away by plane. But he is not one to gripe.

“It’s good,” he said of the test. “Then we get there with an idea of what it’s like.” Besides, he added, “it’s their country.”

Across town, Evanilda Lopes, 27, has more experience and less optimism. A stylish woman with rhinestones on her Coco T-shirt and blond extensions in her hair, she was raised on reports of fashion and comfort from six older siblings in Europe. She left school at 17 and spent five years seeking a tourist visa, which arrived only after she had created a fictitious bank account and job. “It was the way I could go,” she said.

Things soured in the Netherlands. Her aunt lined up three Dutch men for her to marry, but Ms. Lopes rejected them all. The atmosphere in the house grew hostile. Ms. Lopes moved in with a Dutch plumber, and they had a child they named Giovanni. Cohabitors in the Netherlands have residency rights, but when the relationship expired so did her permission to stay.

She came home last fall with a cache of the luxury goods she had gone to Europe to find — belts, handbags, sandals, perfume. She sold them on the streets and made enough money to start building a home for her and Giovanni, 5, who has just come home to a country he does not know.

Ms. Lopes alternately calls her time in the Netherlands a blessing and a curse. “I was young and I didn’t know life was so hard,” she said. With a half-finished house and half-formed plans, she has her shoes on one shore, her mind on another and her innocence lost somewhere in between.

Interview with a Sudanese Communist Leader

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 05:00:00 GMT

By Ahmed Elzobier

June 19, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — The leader of the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) has called on the Sudanese government to acknowledge crimes committed in Darfur and to assume its responsibility.

Ibrahim Nugud

In an interview with the Sudan Tribune, Mohamed Ibrahim Nugud, the Secretary General of the SCP said that Khartoum has to "admit to all the crimes they have committed in Darfur, in any venue of their choosing, be it in the International Criminal Court or inside Sudan – they have to admit what they have done”

Nugud also, accused the Sudanese government of backing the Jajaweed militia and urged their disarmament "because [the authorities] have funded and trained them and made the whole situation so complex and tragic."

The communist leader praised the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed on January 9, 2005 between the Sudanese government and the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement

"The CPA as an end result is a positive agreement; it stopped the war, opened the road to peace, and gave southern Sudan the right for self-determination after a referendum."

However, he regretted that the CPA "addressed many issues in abstract terms and did not take into account the experience of the Sudanese political movements."

Asked on the seriousness of the ruling National Congress Party the (NCP) to implement the CPA, Nugud said "they are just using delaying tactics, and they are also actively bribing and corrupting the SPLM members."

He also expected lack of fairness, accuracy and transparency in the next general elections to be held during 2009.

“The political parties will delude themselves if they think the NCP will allow fair and free elections to take place. We have to be alert because they will defraud the election and they may even use some techniques that we might not be able to spot."

Speaking about the ongoing preparation for the fifth Congress of the party, the secretary general said that regional conferences are organised in different cities around Sudan.

He further reiterated the commitment of the SCP to the Marxist orientation. "We think Marx’s analysis of capitalism in the 19th century was useful and we use his methods as a tool to examine the current situation. We are advocating socialism in a multi-party system." He said.

The following is the text of the interview with an introductive presentation:-

PROFILE:

The Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) founded in 1946, was a major force in Sudanese politics and one of the two most influential, along with the South African Communist Party, until 1971.

In 1946 the party was known as the Sudanese Movement for National Liberation (SMNL). It supported the struggle for national independence, gained by the Sudan in 1956, after which the SMNL changed its name into al-Hizb al-Shuyu`i al-Sudani (Sudanese Communist Party). It was the founder of the Sudan Workers’ Trade Union Federation (SWTUF) in 1950 and had strong ties with the organizations of railway workers and cotton growers. Recruiting its members among workers, students and new professionals, the party remained a rather weak political force but joined the Front of Opposition Parties (FOP) against the military regime of 1958, which was brought down by the October uprising of 1964. In 1967 the Muslim Brotherhood succeeded in having the SCP outlawed as an atheist organization but it re-established itself as the Socialist Party of the Sudan. Divided on its position towards the ‘Free Officers’ of Ja`far al-Nimeiri who took power in 1969 after the failure of a counter coup d’état by communist officers in 1971, the party was outlawed again and its leader Abd al-Khaliq Mahjub executed. Continuing its activities underground the SCP did not regain its legal status until 1985. After the military takeover of 1989 the SCP, being banned once again, joined the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) which aims at democracy and autonomy for the south of the Sudan.

The NDA was founded as an un¬derground organization in Khar¬toum in September 1989, only three months after the military coup by General Omar al-Bashir, who, in June 1989, was responsi¬ble for putting the present regime of the National Islamic Front in power. The NDA was formed from all the Sudanese opposition par¬ties. Their leaders operated from Cairo, since it was impossible for them to develop political activities in Sudan itself.

The Sudan Tribune interviewed Mr. Mohamed Ibrahim Nugud, the Secretary General of the Communist Party since 1972, who is known to be a pragmatic and shrewd political operator. He has been involved in politics since the early 1950s and has spent almost all his political career working underground. Following the Aboud regime (1958–64) he was elected as a Member of Parliament in 1965, and then went into hiding from 1971 to 1985 and was arrested in 1989. In 1990 he was released under house arrest until 1994 and then again went into hiding till 2006.

After the 1985 uprising, the party introduced this new political leader for the first time in a rally at Khartoum University; many people admired his political humor, wit and self-effacement. Mr. Nugud was elected as Member of Parliament in 1986 representing the Al Amarat & Aldiem constituency in Khartoum. His parliamentary performance was mesmerizing and amusing and people still remember his first statement about the Sudan budget, when he dissected with endearing Sudanese proverbs and anecdotes the proposed budget by Al Sadig Al Mahadi’s Government.

However, many ex-Communist Party members criticized him for slowing down the process of change in the structure and political direction of his party and stifling free debate within the party institutions.

To his credit this veteran political leader proved to be an astute political survivor and is largely responsible, and of course with his party colleagues, for the Communist Party still being an integral part of the country’s political map. Although suffering from an ever-dwindling membership since 1989 the Party has earned the respect of the Sudanese in general and the other Sudanese political parties.

In this interview Mr. Nugud addressed many key issues ranging from the Independence of Sudan, privatization and corruption in Sudan, the Darfur crisis, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the Communist Party, Marxism and Socialism in Sudan.

HISTORY, POLITICS AND THE ECONOMIC SITUATION IN SUDAN:

Since independence Sudan has lacked political stability and many reports now describe this country as potentially a failing state – what in your opinion went wrong? Who do we have to blame if this country disintegrates?

Nugud: There are many issues that have not been resolved since independence – the Southern Sudan situation, Darfur and Eastern Sudan, and the grievances in the far North of Sudan. In general the main issues of what we know now as marginalisation in term of ethnicity, culture or socio-economic injustice has never been taken seriously since the independence of Sudan. These issues should have been tackled much earlier. In relation to southern Sudan, unfortunately the failure started with a series of broken promises the Sudanese politicians told the southern Sudanese MPs before independence, including that “if you vote with us we will give you federal status in the south”. The southern MPs believed them and voted for the independence of Sudan, but the northern Sudanese politicians reneged on their promises.

Of course, people from the marginalised regions did not feel that independence brought any benefits to them. Northern Sudan (from north Khartoum to Halafa) was more advanced at the time than most of the country, but now you’ll find the population of Umbada (a densely populated area in the city of Omdurman) is more than the northern sate population, and there is huge depopulation in that region as well at the moment.

We in the SCP have always maintained that Sudanese political forces have not addressed the main independence issues seriously, even if we look back at the TV footage of Independence Day during the change of the flags ceremony. How come they never thought of involving any southern Sudanese, beside Ismeal Al Azahri (First Prime Minister of Sudan representing the unionist party) and Mohamed Ahmed Al Mahagoub (Umma Party leader), in this symbolic ceremony?

The entire nation supported independence but the Sudan National Political movement missed that rather crucial moment to make serious changes in the country. Unfortunately the practice of Arabisation and Islamisation in the south has also started since that time and even political leaders such as Sheikh Ali Abdelrahman — a leading Unionist Party Member — are among the first people to lead Arabisation and Islamisation programs.

The ruling political parties failed to maintain power after independence and handed the government over to the military generals, lead at the time by General Ibrahim Aboud in 1958 (the Aboud regime). However, the October uprising in 1964 was a landmark in the political history of Sudan. It has two main features; firstly, all the slogans came from a grassroots level across the country, secondly, the new forces (trade unions, students’ movements etc) dominate the streets and through demonstrations and civil disobedience the issues of social change became part of the political agenda. Also in October, while the Sudanese Communist Party became high profile, there appeared on the horizon the Islamist Movement working in the opposite direction to the SCP social change program.

The October uprising addressed three very important issues: Firstly, finding a solution to the southern Sudan problem through a round table conference which took place in 1965, and for the first time the issue of regional autonomy status to the south (proposed by the Communist Party since 1956) became accepted by all political forces. Secondly, the reform of the local and tribal administrative laws. Thirdly, the reform of Sudan’s civil service, especially the bureaucratic structure that collaborates with Aboud’s regime.

What went wrong?

Nugud: October’s slogans have not been transformed into a real policy. Looking back at the southern Sudan issue starting from the unfulfilled promises by the Sudanese politicians, Aboud’s regime tried to resolve the issue militarily and failed. The October 1964 uprising round table conference recommended a regional autonomy status to the south, but the recommendation was not implemented by the ruling parties during the second democratic period from 1964–69. Al Nimeiri’s regime after 1969 adopted the round table conference recommendations and succeeded in signing a peace agreement with the rebels in Addis Abba in 1972. But Al Nimeirie also reneged on his promises and the war started again in 1983.

SPLM and Garang learned from their past experience and the cycle of broken promises and they decided that the problem is not only southern Sudan, the problem is all Sudan. I think it’s a far-sighted vision and that is why all the negotiations of peace agreements are now being done outside the country and with international monitors. Our political party’s contribution in that period was towards the idea of civil disobedience as a method of overthrowing Aboud’s regime. Our attempt was successful and with the help of nationalist army officers the regime resigned and a new government was formed. To sum it up all, the vital issues since independence have not been resolved in Sudan. All the other African countries, except maybe Egypt and South Africa, are still struggling with post-independence issues as well.

Can you tell us about the political atmosphere before the 30th June 1989 coup?

Nugud: The political atmosphere was positive and there was a kind of guarded optimism, especially after Garang and Al Merghani’s (Democratic Unionist Leader) peace initiative in November 1988. The political parties agreed to hold a national conference to address the issue, however the ruling party at the time, the Umma Party lead by Al Sadiq Al Mahadi, chose to oppose the initiative. It may have been political jealousy or because he doesn’t trust Grang or Al Merghani. I think that was a grave miscalculation and he chose to ally himself with the more right-wing position lead by the National Islamic Front (NIF) at the time. Then the army commanders wrote a memorandum in February 1989. Although the points raised were reasonable, our party warned that this could invite any reckless military officer to use these points as a reason to topple the democratically elected regime. However, the army commanders’ memorandum created a new momentum and all the political parties came together in the Republican Palace in Khartoum and a new government was formed including all the parties except the NIF. Contact was made with the SPLM and a date was set to activate the Garang and Al Merghani’s peace initiative and the possibility of success was high – that could have been a Sudanese solution to the issue of the south in 1989.

In 1988 all the Sudanese political parties signed what is known as the Defence of Democracy Pact, except the NIF – what happened to it?:

Nugud: Regarding the Defence of Democracy Pact, unfortunately it had been just a declaration of principles, there was no mechanism or procedure in place to support it in terms of committees from all political parties organising an immediate resistance to any military coup. Even inside the parliament, when the failed military coup before 30th June lead by General Elzobier became known, nobody took any action to activate the Pact. Inside the army there was incomprehensible complacency and negligence while the army’s commander, Lieutenant General Fathi Ahmed Ali, engaged in a series of briefings with his sub-commanders about their situation. His private secretary at the time, someone named Saeid Al Hassein, was involved with the 30 June military coup conspirators, and helped them to know the details of the army’s movement by taking advantage of his strategically sensitive position. He was later appointed as Governor of Kordofan after the 30 June 1989 coup d’état.

It was reported early last month that you participated in a meeting with other political leaders (Omer Al Bashier, Al Sadiq Al Mahadi, Hassan Al Trabi) in relation to the National Reconciliation Initiative chaired by Siwar Al Dahab. What was discussed and what was the outcome of your meeting?

Nugud: The National Reconciliation Initiative committee contacted us and said they wanted to listen to the Sudanese parties’ opinions on the current political situation. Myself and two other party members met them and we stated our opinion. However, the committee finished its report and they decided to present the outcome to the Sudanese parties’ political leaders. I thought our representative Dr Alshafia Khadir would attend that ceremony but they insisted that I should attend. I did so at Siwar Al Dahab’s house and we were informed that the committee had finished its report and no discussion took place, and we had dinner and that’s all. We will respond to its recommendations soon.

Do you think these kinds of initiatives will achieve anything?

Nugud: As an initiative it’s not really bad, it has proposed some solutions within the current political status and we can’t ignore its validity, but it will not cancel out other private parties’ initiatives on issues like Darfur, CPA… etc.

You know, after the military coup, which was radical Islamist in nature, there was no compromise with anybody. Then the opposition formed the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) as an umbrella and they succeeded in involving the SPLM for the first time in this new alliance. The NDA succeeded in achieving the 1995 Asmara declaration which was a kind of road map to solving Sudan’s problems (which was later included in the Naivasha agreement).

The regime went in a very radical direction. Then September 11 happened and the Sudan Government was cornered by the American and international communities and they gave everything the Americans wanted, including intelligence files.

All the issues that we used to resolve as Sudanese now came under the supervision and monitoring of the international community. The international community was not just involved as an observer, they became active actors in Sudanese issues. They delivered food to our IDPs and they supported and act as guarantor of the Naivasha Agreement through The Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the Friends of IGAD – Norway, Italy, Great Britain, and the United Sates of America – and the agreement will be monitored by the UN, so things have changed in Sudan.

Now, if you look at the Darfur issue, I think Darfurians in the Diaspora learned from the south experience and they were very clever, they took their case to the international community and people listened to them. They have played a vital role in the mobilisation of international opinion and now the Darfur crisis has become part of the daily diet of every American family.

Although, as Sudanese opposition, we brought about the 1995 declarations, Sudan was already burning in the east, the south, the Nuba Mountains and Darfur.

This is the trap we are now in, that Sudan is under the control of the international community. We brought this on ourselves due to a series of failures throughout our political history. Although as a party we alerted others to this unfolding tragedy, we don’t have enough influence to change the course of history.

A few weeks ago your party participated in a workshop organised by the Institute of Democracy and Electoral Advancement (IDEA). The workshop addressed issues such as political reforms, democracy inside the parties, and the electoral laws. Do you think the opposition parties, including your own party, are prepared for the general election in 2008/09?

Nugud: Listen, in Sudan if you are in opposition you will never lose. There have been many complimentary messages and articles in various newspapers in the last few days because of our efforts in relation to press freedom and especially the contribution of our parliamentary members in the annual budget debate. Our parliamentary team sat here in this room with a team of the party’s economists for hours and they examined and analysed the budget items thoroughly. In the parliament our MPs gave the Financial Minister a hard time. We received some complimentary messages from people who we considered our enemies. Sadly people outside Sudan don’t know these details and they are far removed from the situation.

I think all the efforts against this government since they took power will make fighting for election a continuation to that struggle.

I think losing a great leader like John Garang will have some effect. In retrospect I think Garang acted without the required cautiousness in that type of situation – how come he allowed himself to travel in someone else’s plane, and during the night? What was so urgent to discuss with Museveni anyway? I think this a really a big tragedy and an unnecessary loss for all of us. I think there was no conspiracy, just a tragic accident that could have been avoided.

Back to your question, I think political parties could be ready to enter the election, but the political parties will delude themselves if they think the National Congress Party (NCP) will allow fair and free elections to take place. We have to be alert because they will defraud the election and they may even use some techniques that we might not be able to spot. Sudanese people are in desperate need and the NCP have access to the state finance they could use this advantage in providing services to the people for election purposes.

PRIVATISATION

One of the deadliest policies that affected the majority of Sudanese people is NCP’s privatisation policy, including the health service, and the education sector. What is your party’s view on this issue?

Nugud: Privatisation is now an international trend, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union which escalated the current phenomenon. However, in Sudan privatisation has been done in favour of the ruling party and not for the benefit of the national economy. There were some successful and profitable public sector companies that should have remained in the public sector, such as The Leather Tannery Company. Privatisation was a policy imposed by the World Bank & International Monetary Fund (IMF) and aimed at destroying the gains of the Nationalistic movement after independence.

In general the whole privatisation process which took place in Sudan went into the pockets of the National Islamic Front members. For example, there was a Bank named Niema which doesn’t exit any more, it simply disappeared and people took money from the bank and did not repay it. Including high ranking members of the NCP party. And another example, Bank Omdurman Al Watani (The National Bank of Omdurman) which is literally financing the Sudan army. All the leading figures in the NCP took money without any of the regular financial procedures and recently people discovered that this Bank could not pay a simple cheque of, say, one million Sudanese pounds ($500,000). The paradox is that Al Bashier himself is the president of this bank.

In education, private schools were limited before the current privatisation policy, however, many new private schools have now opened because of the collapse of the government financed schools, and even universities are owned by individuals. Privatisation in Sudan is part of a capitalist direction, unlike the usual status after independence where the public sector provided income for the State to finance services to the people… and now we have lost all of that.

CORRUPTION

Sudan is now considered one of the most corrupt countries in the world, what do you think is the reason this country has a high level of corruption?

Nugud: The matter of corruption is linked to your previous question, take the issue of government tenders for example. There are now eight companies within a holding company named Danfodio and every tender related to the government’s economic activities has to come through this company. With no regard to the issue of conflict of interest, the Governor of Khartoum owns a number of companies involved in the construction of roads, buildings and parks that you see around Khartoum. What is really astonishing now is that the land in Khartoum, with its despicable infrastructure and services, is far more expensive than London. The companies are all owned by the government and no one knows where the profits go, and the Chinese are involved in all this corruption as well, especially in the oil sector. This is by far the most corrupt regime ever in the history of the country. The ruling party has made this country its private property.

How can all this be resisted?

Nugud: Since December 2006 there have been more than 40 strikes in Sudan. These strikes are not because people want a salary rise or improved working conditions, these people went into strikes because they did not get paid. I think that to have more than 40 strikes in six months is a high percentage by any account and this has never happened before in the history of strikes in Sudan, although strikes are illegal according to the current laws. This simply show you the people’s readiness to fight for their rights.

I have traced back the history of strikes in Sudan from 1903 up to the beginning of the trade union movement in 1947. I find that we now have some of the worst laws regulating the trade unions in the history of Sudan and as a result workers have lost their rights. One example – in one day in the early 1990s the Deputy Governor of the Nile State, Mr Mohamed Al Hasan Al Amien, made more than 3,000 railway workers redundant and literally destroyed the railway in Sudan, which was considered by all standards to be the cheapest and safest means of transport in the country.

COMPREHENSIVE PEACE AGREEMENT

What is your party’s view on the implementation of the CPA?

Nugud: The CPA as an end result is a positive agreement; it stopped the war, opened the road to peace, and gave southern Sudan the right for self-determination after a referendum. However, one of its shortcomings is that it addressed many issues in abstract terms and did not take into account the experience of the Sudanese political movements. Just look at the Abyei problem, it could have been resolved in a different way if they had taken our Sudanese experience into account if they invited the elders of both tribes (Dinka & Misseriya) and previous civil administrators in the area. It would be far more beneficial if the sponsors of the agreement invited the Sudanese political leaders to give advice as part of their more than 22 think tanks that advised them on different components of the agreement. All this was built around the notion that the NCP appeared to be powerful. This idea was essentially triggered by a paper presented by Dr Francis Deng entitled “One state with two systems”. The agreement is exactly that, one state with two systems, and it divided power exclusively between the SPLM and the NCP and never paid any attention to other, differing, Sudanese political opinions. This is the main defect of the agreement. They thought that because the old political parties had failed and now they had the NCP under their control and they had them cornered through their record of human rights abuses and terrorism charges, the NCP would now listen to them.

Do you think the NCP is serious in implementing the agreement?

Nugud They are just using delaying tactics, and they are also actively bribing and corrupting the SPLM members.

ABOUT THE SUDANESE COMMUNIST PARTY:

I have come across many reports describing your party as, even now, the second largest Communist Party in Africa and the Middle East after the South African and Iraq Communist Parties. How do you react to that?

Nugud: To say that we are one of the biggest parties in Africa or the Middle East is not really true. All this comes from Al Nimeiri’s regime when he used to brag that he had destroyed the biggest Communist Party in Africa

In the 61 years since 1946 your party has become an integral part of the Sudan political map, by any accounts it was an epic journey. How did your party manage to survive against all the odds over the years?

Nugud: There was no heroism, since it started the party has been connected to people’s movements, trade unions, workers, teachers, farmers, and students working in the local areas, especially during election periods. I think, in general, the Sudanese political movement has succeeded in keeping its identity and political structure despite the totalitarian regimes and dictatorships that have mostly ruled Sudan during the post-independence period. I think credit should go to the nature of the entire Sudanese political movement and it’s not something that is exclusively associated with our party. The international socialist/communist movement gave us status and support. Also, the type of people who joined the party have not entered it for romantic reasons, they came through workers’ unions, students’ movements, and whenever there was a vacuum that could be filled by another cadre, this gave us the ability to compensate for our losses. We also learned from our experience during Aboud’s regime how to improve our party’s underground methods in protecting ourselves and the party. As a party we do not depend on tribe or sect, we only depend on our membership, and our expansion after October 1964 had helped us. All of these factors have enabled the party to survive three military dictatorships aiming to destroy it.

The Cold War period gave us a status which was much bigger than our actual size and influence. In reality there were no miracles and nothing heroic and all other political parties have done the same, most of our skills have just been accumulated through trial and error.

Who supports your party?

Nugud: Since the start of the first Marxist cells back in 1946, they quickly transformed into practical units operating among workers and mobilising the streets. Although we have never had a properly democratic period to allow us work freely and recruit, nevertheless, the party has supporters among workers, farmers, students, women’s groups, minority groups, in the Nuba Mountains, in the South and in Darfur.

How do you react to people who describe your party as much weaker today than in 1960s or 1980s – your membership is dwindling, you have lost prominent members of your party, you have very limited influence in current political affairs and are on the political margins of Sudan?

Nugud: We know all about that, we have members being made redundant and losing their jobs, and some of our members have left the country and live in exile, but we are working on regaining our strength.

It has been reported that your party is organising this year’s 5th conference. What issues will you be addressing in this conference?

Nugud: There is a discussion paper that has been circulating around the party since the 1990s, and because of the political situation we were not able to set any time for a discussion period. Now we have summarised the discussion outcome and the summary will be introduced in the party conference. We will also present a political report covering the period from the 4th conference, a paper on the party manifesto and constitution. Also there will be reports on the situation from other communist parties in the world.

Now we have started regional conferences in many cities around Sudan. These conferences will address their tasks and duties and will present their recommendations and representatives. We have a conference organising committee which will be responsible for all the logistics, and we also have a constitution committee, manifesto committee, recruitment and membership committee.

What is your view now on totalitarianism in general, could it be justified under any ideological justification, socialist or Islamist or nationalist?

Nugud: In short, we were against totalitarian regimes and one-party systems, even before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Is your party still Marxist? Do you it still consider Marxism as relevant to the complex world we live in now?

Nugud: We are still committed to our Marxist orientation. We think Marx’s analysis of capitalism in the 19th century was useful and we use his methods as a tool to examine the current situation. We are advocating socialism in a multi-party system.

THE DARFUR SITUATION:

What do you think the solution should be to the Darfur crisis?

Nugud: The solution for the Darfur crisis: Firstly the Government should admit to all the crimes they have committed in Darfur, in any venue of their choosing, be it in the International Criminal Court or inside Sudan – they have to admit what they have done. Secondly, the Janjweed should be disarmed by the Government because they have funded and trained them and made the whole situation so complex and tragic.

Going back in history, during the 1976 agreement with the Nimeiri regime, there was talk of the Savana belt (from Darfur to the southern Blue Nile) in order to maintain and protect Sudanese Arabic and Islamic culture. There is also the land issue, and the pastoralists actively engaged in evicting African tribes from their fertile land, and the deliberate act of burning villages and looting people’s belongings that was part of the general plan.

After Rwanda and Yugoslavia the international community decided not to allow such things to happen, there is no solution unless the people who suffered from these acts are compensated and safely returned to their villages.

There are also the geopolitic factors involving Chad, Sudan, Libya, France and the USA.

Finally, Mr Nugud, you wrote a well-known book a few years ago about slavery in Sudan, what prompted you to investigate this issue?

Nugud: My motives came from my thinking that there are three issues that have shaped Sudanese society’s psychological make up – slavery, African beliefs, and Sufism. The documents available to me at the time in the Sudan Records Office were on slavery, so I wrote the book from the limited sources available there. I just wanted to find how the Sudanese society had been shaped? That is all.