Prometheus 6

A defining moment for Zimbabwe
Bill Saidi (2008-07-03)

It may be too early to speak of a positive response to calls for a government of national unity. It would be most encouraging to conclude that both parties are agreed on the essence of a GNU. But this would not be an accurate or even remotely hopeful analysis of the scenario. First, there is the violence in which unarmed citizens have been victims of mayhem. Secondly, there is the unresolved question of who should head this GNU - Tsvangirai or Mugabe. If this were going to turn out to be a defining moment for Zimbabwe, you could argue, with good reason, that both men would lower their own personal expectations in favour of their country’s and their people’s. But would that be realistic? asks Bill Saidi.

In essence, what came out of the African Union summit in Egypt, which presumably ventilated the Zimbabwean imbroglio thoroughly, was to leave it to the people to gird their loins for what might turn out to be a bruising or an amicable struggle to rescue the country from the brink of a disaster.

Before the African Union made its call, both Mr. Mugabe and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change had ruled out a negotiated settlement based on power-sharing of the kind that emerged from Kenya’s post-election violence earlier this year.

“Kenya is Kenya; Zimbabwe is Zimbabwe,” George Charamba, Mr. Mugabe’s spokesman said. “We have our own history of evolving dialogue and resolving political impasses the Zimbabwean way. The Zimbabwean way, not the Kenyan way. Not at all.”

African Union Calls for Settlement in Zimbabwe
By KENNEDY ABWAO and ALAN COWELL

SHARM EL SHEIK, Egypt — The African Union Tuesday urged the creation of a government of national unity in Zimbabwe to heal the nation’s deep political wounds following President Robert Mugabe’s triumph in a one-candidate election widely condemned as a sham.

The 53-nation body, Africa’s most authoritative group, made the call after a two-day gathering of African leaders marked by divisions over the handling of the crisis in Zimbabwe. While President Omar Bongo of Gabon endorsed Mr. Mugabe’s presidency, Botswana urged the suspension of Zimbabwe from African forums because its participation would ‘’give unqualified legitimacy to a process which cannot be considered legitimate.”

If anyone but the AU handles it, the AU's goes the way of the old OAU. 

Mr. Mugabe’s decision to attend the African summit here was apparently designed as a defiant assertion of his place among African leaders, ready, if necessary, to challenge his peers to prove their own democratic credentials.

At his last campaign rally last Thursday, Mr. Mugabe “said he was prepared to face any of his African Union counterparts disparaging Zimbabwe’s electoral conduct because some of their countries had worse elections record,” the state-run Herald newspaper reported Monday.

And it's not like their records after those spotty elections are that much better than Mugabe's either. 

Justice has to start somewhere, but I don't see anyone holding the moral high ground just yet. I just see folks at various depths in the valley of the shadow of death.

As Walter Rodney observed, “It is typical of underdeveloped economies that they do not -- or are not allowed to -- concentrate on those sectors of the economy which in turn will generate growth and raise production to a new level altogether, and there are very few ties between one sector and another so that, say, agriculture and industry could react beneficially on each other.”

Earlier allegedly “developmental trade” strategies, such as the EU’s “Everything But Arms” deal, haven’t worked, because of strict rules of origin and serious supply-side constraints. There is simply no capacity in African firms to penetrate Europe given this continent’s small production runs and high transport costs.

As Keet suggested, it therefore may be time to question trade itself -- not merely the mythical “export-led growth” shibboleth -- in part because climate change will soon invoke hefty taxes on ships (whose dirty bunker oil sends vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere).

How Europe underdevelops Africa and how some fight back
Patrick Bond and Richard Kamidza (2008-06-17)

In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided-and-conquered. Turns in the class struggle might have surprised Walter Rodney, the political economist whose 1972 classic “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” provided detailed critiques of corporate looting.

In early June, the British-Dutch firm Shell Oil – one of Rodney’s targets - was instructed to depart from the Ogoniland region within the Niger Delta, where in 1995 Shell officials were responsible for the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa by Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. After decades of abuse, women protesters, local NGOs and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) gave Shell the shove. France’s Total appears next in line, in part because of additional pressure from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.

Across the continent, exploitation by other European capitalists and politicians has become so extreme that something has to break. Although it was six months ago that the European Union’s ultramanipulative trade negotiator, Peter Mandelson, cajoled 18 weak African leaderships -- including crisis-ridden Cote d’Ivoire, neoliberal Ghana and numerous frightened agro-exporting countries -- into the trap of signing interim “Economic Partnership Agreements” (EPAs), a backlash is now growing.

In Haiti in 2002 and 2003, the IRI helped consolidate the opposition to the democratically elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide. “Several of the people who had attended IRI trainings were influential in the toppling of Aristide,” reports Mother Jones. The U.S. ambassador to Haiti at the time even suggested that the IRI was instrumental in Aristide’s downfall.

In 2002, then-IRI president George Folsom applauded the failed Venezuelan coup against President Hugo Chavez. “Last night, led by every sector of civil society, the Venezuelan people rose up to defend democracy in their country,” he said in a statement released by the IRI while the coup was still under way.

McCain’s Meddlers
By Mukoma Wa Ngugi, June 2008 Issue

President Bush endorsed John McCain even before Mike Huckabee dropped out of the race. It was back in 2005 at an International Republican Institute (IRI) dinner. President Bush introduced John McCain as an “outstanding” IRI board chairman and as “a man of honor and integrity, and great personal courage.”

McCain has served as board chairman since 1993. During the past fifteen years, under the cover of spreading democracy and a free market economic system, the IRI has helped install governments friendly to the United States and undermined others.

Despite its reputation for destabilizing popularly elected governments, McCain touts his experience in the IRI as an example of what he would do if elected President. “Given my decades of involvement in promoting democratic values, it is safe to assume that I will remain a supporter of legitimate democracy-building groups,” McCain told The Arizona Republic.

The future of African liberation will be informed by a new mode of politics where ordinary African men, women and children will be able to revel in the idea of Africa for the Africans at home and abroad and tear down the borders of oppression and control which were created in 1885. The future of Pan Africanism and the AU must reinforce the traditional respect for the elders and should raise up a new tradition, respect for young people. This new tradition calls for Africa to lead the world in the use of all means to support the emancipation of African women and girls and to end all forms of oppression.

African Liberation Day: the people must prevail
Horace Campbell (2008-05-22)

In this essay, Horace Campbell looks at the importance of Africa Liberation Day, its changing relevances as Africans are betrayed by the architects of first independence and how, through struggle, we can reclaim and fulfill its promise.

INTRODUCTION

On May 25, 2008, peace loving peoples all over the world will celebrate African Liberation Day. This will be the fiftieth anniversary of the setting aside of a day to commemorate those who sacrificed for the liberation of the African peoples at home and abroad. In 1963, the Organization of African Unity was established in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Then, the main emphasis was on the liberation of territories from colonial rule. At the end of apartheid in 1994 new ideas of liberation were placed on the agenda for Africa. Questions of health, food security, environmental justice, decent education, the rights of women, the politics of inclusion and cultural freedoms were placed as the core of the liberation of Africa. African women at the grassroots are campaigning for a new form of popular power where African peoples will have the voice to intervene in the political process where they live and where they work. These men and women at the grassroots seek to give meaning to political participation and realize the dream of C.L.R. James who envisioned that ‘every cook can govern.’ This form of politics elevates the political participation of the people beyond periodic voting. African youths at home and abroad are looking forward to new institutions and new sites where the ideas of peace, love and human dignity will prevail.

On the other hand

The hosts of the Beijing Olympics should bring home the freighter and its unwanted cargo and reflect on whether China intends to become a compassionate global citizen or the very type of capitalist predator it fought a revolution to defeat.

...any American chastising any other nation about becoming a capitalist preditor ought to be ashamed of his hypocrisy.

Stopping the weapons flow
Three African nations bar the 'Ship of Shame' from delivering its deadly cargo to Zimbabwe.
April 24, 2008

It's a rare moment when three African nations, in an effort to forestallviolence, block a shipment of weapons to a neighboring country in political turmoil. It's perhaps even a historic development when those weapons were sold by a great power and were bound for a government that is not under United Nations sanctions and has every legal right to buy arms -- though no moral right to do so. So let us praise the courageous peoples of South Africa, Mozambique and Zambia for refusing to allow the Chinese freighter An Yue Jiang to unload its deadly cargo: 77 tons of rockets, mortars and ammunition, manufactured by a Chinese state-owned enterprise, purchased by the government of Zimbabwe and virtually certain to be used by President Robert Mugabe to repress his opposition following an election that he may have lost.

I had come to our awe-inspiring capital only to realize that I no longer believe in our promise to the world that a better life exists for you here if you are smart and hardworking. If you don't agree, just ask a D.C. cabdriver.

Less of a Land Of Opportunity
Sunday, April 20, 2008; B08

Last week, I visited Washington for a routine meeting, but what I experienced on my trip was more than mundane: It was eye-opening. Of course, there were the little things I noticed, such as the fact that there are still people in this country who smoke, that white men in suits seem to remain the dominant paradigm and that the Kennedy Center looks much better at night than during the day (but, to be fair, who or what doesn't?). The most enlightening part of my visit, however, came during a cab ride from Dulles International Airport to my hotel in the District.

Across Globe, Empty Bellies Bring Rising Anger
By MARC LACEY

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Hunger bashed in the front gate of Haiti’s presidential palace. Hunger poured onto the streets, burning tires and taking on soldiers and the police. Hunger sent the country’s prime minister packing.

Haiti’s hunger, that burn in the belly that so many here feel, has become fiercer than ever in recent days as global food prices spiral out of reach, spiking as much as 45 percent since the end of 2006 and turning Haitian staples like beans, corn and rice into closely guarded treasures.

Saint Louis Meriska’s children ate two spoonfuls of rice apiece as their only meal recently and then went without any food the following day. His eyes downcast, his own stomach empty, the unemployed father said forlornly, “They look at me and say, ‘Papa, I’m hungry,’ and I have to look away. It’s humiliating and it makes you angry.”

That anger is palpable across the globe. The food crisis is not only being felt among the poor but is also eroding the gains of the working and middle classes, sowing volatile levels of discontent and putting new pressures on fragile governments.

author: Houston A. Baker asin: 0231139640 binding: Hardcover list price: $24.95 USD amazon price: $16.47 USD

Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era by Houston A. Baker isn’t properly described by its title because it covers a bit more than Black intellectuals. It reminds me a lot of Harold Cruse’s Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. It’s roughly three parts analysis and one part vengeance. Prof. Baker takes aim at a wide array of target, from John McWhorter (for failing to live up to Dr. King’s example) to Irving Kristol (for creating the political movement he feels was key in undermining Black interest). He draws on the writings of Dr. King and W.E.B. DuBois to establish his position, yet never claims to present more than his personal reactions.

U.S. Army Set to Recruit Citizens
The Nation (Nairobi)
6 April 2008 |
By Angelo Izama
Kampala

Ugandans who want a career in the United States military, can sign up at the annual convention of the Uganda North American Association, organisers say.

American military recruiters will set up a booth at this year's UNAA convention in Orlando, Florida, and seek out professional Ugandans, said Lt. Frank Musisi, himself an officer in the US Army.

Lt. Musisi, who comes from Kalangala District on Lake Victoria, is the current president of UNAA. He said the US military would also advise Ugandans on the "proper channels" to follow in enlisting. The announcement, which is also on the UNAA website (www.unaa.net), is set to cause a rush to this year's convention that takes place from August 29 to September 1.

Fortunately, under current law, TPS can be granted by the executive branch alone if the president feels a country would benefit from having some time to breathe. While a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would say only that Mr. Preval's letter is "being evaluated," we hope Mr. Bush will take a positive stand.

Help for Haiti
The U.S. should temporarily stop deportations.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008; A18

THE UNITED STATES occasionally grants immigrants from countries in extreme economic or political turmoil "temporary protected status," or TPS, which means U.S. removals to those countries will stop for a specified period. The designation is given to people from countries or parts of countries that have ongoing armed conflicts, recent environmental disasters or other conditions that prevent nationals from being returned home safely.

The USofA backed an invasion to unseat a new government in Somalia that brought peace and commerce back after ousting an ineffective "internationally supported" government (like that government actually got any international support).

Why? Because they are "Islamicists." And this is what we get...this is what SOMALIA got...as a result.

Somalia’s Government Teeters on Collapse
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

MOGADISHU, Somalia — The trouble started when government soldiers went to the market and, at gunpoint, began to help themselves to sacks of grain last week.

Islamist insurgents poured into the streets to defend the merchants. The government troops took heavy casualties and retreated all the way back to the presidential palace, supposedly the most secure place in the city. It, too, came under fire.

Mohamed Abdirizak, a top government official, crouched on a balcony at the palace, with bullets whizzing over his head. He had just given up a comfortable life as a development consultant in Springfield, Va. His wife thought he was crazy. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

“I feel this slipping away,” he said.

By its own admission, the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia is on life support. When it took power here in the capital 15 months ago, backed by thousands of Ethiopian troops, it was widely hailed as the best chance in years to end Somalia’s ceaseless cycles of war and suffering.

But now its leaders say that unless they get more help — international peacekeepers, weapons, training and money to pay their soldiers, among other things — this transitional government will fall just like the 13 governments that came before it.

Judith Jamison to Retire in 2011
By JENNIFER DUNNING

Judith Jamison, artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, announced on Thursday that she would retire in 2011. She plans to maintain her connection to the company, which she joined as a dancer in 1965, as artistic director emerita.

Appointed just weeks after the death of Alvin Ailey, the troupe’s founder, in December 1989, Ms. Jamison (pronounced JAM-ih-son) continued building the organization into what is arguably the world’s most successful modern-dance troupe. Under her leadership, the company built a gleaming new $56 million headquarters at Ninth Avenue and 55th Street in Manhattan.

She informed the Ailey dancers and stage crew late Thursday afternoon in a backstage studio at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, where the troupe is performing as part of a 26-city American tour. In New York, the announcement was made simultaneously by Sharon Gersten Luckman, the company’s executive director, to staff members gathered in a fifth-floor studio at the Ailey building.

George Bush Visits Africa to promote the US Africa Command
Horace Cambell (2008-02-14)

Horace Campbell look at Bush's visit as an attempt to further militarize the continent and consolidate US holding.

One year after the announcement that he United States government was going to accelerate the militarization of Africa, President George Bush is embarking on a journey to Africa to coerce African societies to align themselves with the neo-conservative agenda of the present US administration. President George Bush will visit five African countries between February 15 -21. The countries are Benin, Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda and Tanzania. George Bush is a lame-duck President who cannot visit real global players so this visit to Africa is an effort to shore up the credentials of the neo-liberal forces in Africa while promoting the conservative ideas of abstinence as the basis of the fight against the HIV –AIDS pandemic.

Exactly one year ago, in February 2007, President Bush of the United States of America announced that the Defense Department would create a new Africa Command to coordinate U.S. government interests on the continent. Under this plan all governmental agencies of the US would fall under the military, i.e, USAID, State Department, US Department of Energy, Treasury, and Department of Education etc. Already within the US academic community, the interests of the Pentagon has been placed before all other interests.

In pursuance of the plans for the militarization of Africa, the US Department of Defense announced the appointment of General William “Kip” Ward (an African American) as Head of this new Military command. On September 28, 2007, Ward as confirmed as the head of this new imperial military structure and on October 1 2007, the new command was launched in Stuttgart, Germany. The major question that is being posed by African peace activists and by concerned citizens is, why now? Why is a lame duck President seeking to gain more support in Africa?

By Inviting Bush We Are Dishonouring Ourselves
Hamza Mustafa Njozi (2008-02-12)

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men” – Abraham Lincoln

It would seem to me that there are certain moral limits beyond which no one can cross without forfeiting one’s honour and human dignity. Our seemingly voluntary decision to invite and to entertain a hated war criminal for four days in our beautiful land will probably go down in history as marking the darkest moment in our political history so far. I recall, not without pride, that in 2003 as members of the University of Dar es Salaam Academic Assembly [UDASA], we prevented the then U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania from visiting the Mlimani main campus. The university’s long-standing intellectual tradition was too noble to be soiled by a representative of a war criminal who was, and still is, butchering innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is as it should be. Intellectuals should keep the beacon of freedom and justice burning even during the darkest night of unbridled tyranny.

And now, Kwame Nkrumah’s worst fears have come to pass. Tanzania, a former Frontline State, is feverishly preparing itself to participate in a macabre dance with the deadliest twenty-first century harpy, “a monster who entices its victims with sweet music.” Tanzania is apparently following the footsteps of Uganda and Ethiopia. In whose interest? Let us begin by listening to the sweet music as performed by the U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania and sickeningly echoed by some of our leaders.

It has been suggested that the Bush Administration actually has three primary items on its agenda:
1) making Africa another front in the Administration’s war on “terrorism”;
2) protecting U.S. access to African oil, mineral wealth and other raw materials; and
3) putting the U.S. in a better position to compete with China for domination of Africa’s resources.

Africom threatens the sovereignty, independence and stability of the African continent
A position paper of the National Conference of Black Lawyers
Mark P Fancher, Jeffrey L Edison & Ajamu Sankofa (2008-01-24)

The National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) concludes that the mission of Africa Command (Africom) infringes on the sovereignty of African states due to the particularity of Africa’s history and Africa’s current economic and political relationship to the United States.

Further, Africom is designed to violate international law standards that protect rights to selfdetermination and that prohibit unprovoked military aggression.

Africom is also likely to become a device for the foreign domination and exploitation of Africa’s natural resources to the detriment of people who are indigenous to the African continent.

NCBL opposes Africom in the strongest terms and calls upon people of African descent in the U.S. to avoid military service to ensure that they will not be ordered to carry out missions on behalf of Africom, or any military unit or program engaged in violating international law, committing crimes against humanity, or committing crimes of any kind that threaten the peace of any continent.

If by tribe we mean a social group that shares a single territory, a single language, a single political unit, a shared religious tradition, a similar economic system, and common cultural practices, such a group is rarely found in the real world. These characteristics almost never correspond precisely with each other today, nor did they at any time in the past.

Tribe promotes a myth of primitive African timelessness, obscuring history and change.

What is in the word tribe?
Africa Focus, Africa Action and H-Net Africa contributors on Western media coverage of Africa
Pambazuka editors (2008-01-22)

Pambazuka editors give you the war on the word "tribe"

What’s in a word? What does the word “tribe” carry? Here below Pambazuka Editors give you a few snippets of what is a long struggle to get US Mainstream media to stop using a racist and stereotypical lens in its coverage of Africa. You can find the fascinating discussion at www.h-net.org/~africa. We end with an excerpt from an Africa Action essay [www.africaaction.org/bp/ethall.htm] on the word.

Africa Focus [http://www.africafocus.org/docs08/ethn0801.php] narrates that in his December 31 New York Times dispatch from Nairobi, Jeffrey Gettleman argues that the Kenya electoral crisis, "seems to have tapped into an atavistic vein of tribal tension that always lay beneath the surface in Kenya but until now had not provoked widespread mayhem." Gettleman was not exceptional among those covering the post-election violence in his stress on "tribe." But his terminology was unusually explicit in revealing the assumption that such divisions are rooted in unchanging and presumably primitive identities.

However, Africa Focus gives an update indicating that since that particular bulletin on Gettleman’s use of language: “ Gettleman's coverage of Kenya in the New York Times has avoided the indiscriminate use of the word tribe in favor of "ethnic group," and has noted the historical origins and political character of the continued violence in the country, as well as its links to ethnic divisions”.

But Peter Alegi from Michigan State University in an H- Net Africa posting says and then asks: “While Gettleman (Times' EastAfrica bureau chief) seems to have toned down his use of "tribe" thanks to our protests, but isn't substituting "ethnic group" for it a minor victory?

Um...

Remember the post titled Print this and hang it by your TiVo that listed PBS' Black History Month lineup? Well, it was last year's listing. I'm prett sure I was the only one that missed the year soI'm pretty sure you didn't hang it by your TiVo. But you should hang this one.

PBS CELEBRATES BLACK HISTORY MONTH WITH AN EXTENSIVE LINEUP OF SPECIAL PROGRAMMING

Arlington, VA — January 10, 2008 — PBS broadcasts programming created by and about African Americans year-round, from public affairs to history to independent film to kids programming. In celebration of Black History Month, February 2008, PBS will broadcast a lineup of new and encore presentations honoring and exploring African-American history.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is joined by Maya Angelou, Morgan Freeman, Tina Turner and other prominent African Americans in AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES 2, a sequel to the series The New York Times called “the most exciting and stirring documentary on any subject to appear on television in a long time.” Other program highlights include PRINCE AMONG SLAVES, a documentary about an African prince who was enslaved in Mississippi for 40 years before finally achieving freedom; and INDEPENDENT LENS “Banished,” the story of three counties that forcefully banished African-American families from their towns 100 years ago. 

Also new in February: an examination of the Tuskegee Airmen in RED TAIL REBORN; LEGACY: BEING BLACK IN AMERICA, which features an intriguing discussion of race consciousness, integration and equity in the U.S. today; and AN EVENING WITH QUINCY JONES, a rare look into the life of the music mogul.

The groundbreaking second season of EYES ON THE PRIZE also airs during Black History Month on PBS. EYES ON THE PRIZE II returns to TV for the first time since the mid-1990s. Other encore presentations include the first season of EYES ON THE PRIZE; SLAVERY AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA; season one of AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES; and INDEPENDENT LENS “Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes.”

PBS KIDS GO!sm will feature “GO! Figure” facts on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, as well as throughout the month of February. These fun and educational facts will pop up during favorite PBS KIDS GO! programs CYBERCHASE, ARTHUR, MAYA & MIGUEL and FETCH! WITH RUFF RUFFMAN. Online, pbskidsgo.org will feature games and e-cards related to African-American history and the contributions of famous African Americans.

First-rate programming with a depth and breadth that can only be found on PBS, these programs document and examine the rich heritage and cultural contributions of African Americans.

Let me begin by pointing to the question of ethnicity and say this: In the same way you ought to be surprised to meet a white American denying the existence of racism in American politics, so should you be when you meet an African denying that ethnocentrism is deeply entrenched in African politics. Racism is a historical creation that serves a function – so is ‘tribalism.’ In the same way that leaders in the West manipulate race and fear for political goals, so do African leaders. Ethnocentrism can be benign or extremely vicious depending on its conductor. Ethnocracy, like a racist power structure, exists to the extent it is able to obscure for the victim and the activist the root causes of economic, political and social exploitation. It misdirects.

Let us also consider Kwame Ture’s (Stokely Carmichael) reminder that we should not mistake individual success for collective success. The majority of Kenyans -- Luos, Kikuyus, Luhyas etc -- are poor. The 60 percent of Kenyans living under two dollars a day cut across all ethnicities. The Kikuyu elite live at the expense of the Kikuyu poor; it is the same for other ethnicities. There is much more in common between the poor across ethnicities, than between the elite and the poor of each ethnicity. Racism, nationalism, and ethnocracy all ask that the poor die in the defense of economic and social structures that keep them poor. It is no surprise that those who have been both dying and doing the killing in Kenya in the past week are the poor. Yet they are killing along ethnic, not class, lines.

Let us not find revolutionaries where there are none
A look at the Kenyan opposition party
Mukoma wa Ngugi (2008-01-10)
Mukoma Wa Ngugi argues that rather than being a people power movement, Kenya’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) is modeled after political parties that consolidate democracy for International capital and US Foreign Policy. He discusses the differences between a people powered movement and one such as ODM that employs techniques modeled after the Ukrainian orange revolution and the ouster of Aristide in Haiti

One cannot fully grasp what is happening in Kenya and Africa without considering the changing nature of opposition movements and the differences between a people powered movement, or a democratic revolution, and a plethora of movements that consolidate democratic institutions for international capital while flying under the radar of democracy.

Mr. Odinga and President Kibaki are not really ethnic leaders, but in the days since the disputed election they have stoked tribal paranoia and used it to cement electoral loyalty.

No Country for Old Hatreds
By BINYAVANGA WAINAINA
Nairobi, Kenya

THIS thing called Kenya is a strange animal. In the 1960s, the bright young nationalists who took over the country when we got independence from the British believed that their first job was to eradicate “tribalism.” What they really meant, in a way, was that they wanted to eradicate the nations that made up Kenya. It was assumed that the process would end with the birth of a brand-new being: the Kenyan.

Compared with other African nations, Kenya has had significant success with this experiment. But it has not been without its contradictions, though they had never really turned lethal until now.

Washington's embrace of the Kibaki regime has caused some awkward and unexpected blow-back in the current crisis.

The eruption of postelection violence appears to have caught U.S. diplomats flat-footed, political analysts in both countries say, because Washington is too cozy with Kenya's often-corrupt ruling elite. An embarrassed State Department retracted a too-hasty congratulation to Kibaki after international monitors declared the vote-counting deeply suspect.

"The U.S. has in our view gone back to a Cold War paradigm where it supports any regime as long as it fights America's war on terrorism," said Maina Kiai, head of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. "The result is that the Americans have leverage with Kibaki but credibility almost nowhere else within Kenya."

U.S. has big stake in steering Kenya back from brink
Country reeling from postelection violence is strategically vital in counterterrorism and aid efforts in the volatile Horn of Africa
By Paul Salopek, Tribune foreign correspondent Tribune correspondent Bay Fang contributed to this report from Washington
11:58 AM CST, January 5, 2008

NAIROBI, Kenya

Mary Wambui sat dazed with grief under a tree on the outskirts of this embattled African capital, her pauper's hut looted by a gang of thugs, her sister recovering from rape in a local hospital and all her worldly possessions stuffed into a plastic bucket salvaged from the ashes of Kenya's recent spasm of election violence.

"Americans won't care about this," Wambui, 18, said, pressing a fist to her mouth as if to still her quavering voice. "They will just say we are hopeless, like another Somalia."

It is the Kenyan people who have lost the election
Firoze Manji (2008-01-03)

Kenya is entering a protracted crisis. No one really knows who actually won the presidential elections. Given the overwhelming number of parliamentary seats won by the ODM adn the dismissal of some 20 former ministers who lost their seats, it seems likely that the presidential results probably followed suit. But it is no longer really a matter of who won or lost. For one thing is certain: it is the Kenyan people who have lost in these elections.

That the elections results were rigged – of that there is little doubt. The hasty inauguration, the blanket banning on the broadcast media, the dispersal of security forces to deal with expected protests – all these have given the post election period the flavour of a coup d’etat. What was not expected was the speed with which the whole thing would unravel. The declaration of the members of the Electoral Commission that the results were indeed rigged only added to the growing realisation that a coup had indeed taken place.

No matter their personal ambitions and resentments, they must be brought together and pushed to come up with a solution that will calm their followers and restore Kenyans’ faith in their democratic system — before the damage becomes irreversible.

Ambition and Horror in Kenya

The murderous tribal violence that has spread through Kenya in recent days would be horrifying anywhere. It is particularly tragic to see this happening in a country that seemed finally to be on the path to a democratic and economically sound future. There may still be a chance to retrieve some of these hopes. That will likely require stepping back from the suspicious and hastily declared election results that sparked this ugly upheaval.

Officially, those results gave a second term to President Mwai Kibaki, despite independent reports of egregious irregularities. Even the chairman of Kenya’s national election commission now says that he was pressured into an early declaration and cannot say who won.