Just over two years ago a friend of mine Kayode Ogundamisi wrote a piece “Are you a Black man? Don’t go to Russia” in which is spoke of the racism experienced by African students in Russia…..

It is a shame that the Russian government is turning a blind eye on the growing level of attacks on foreign students and residents in Russia. Students of the international university in Moscow are the worst victims. I was shown video evidence of acid attacks and knife cuts. One African student, Nigerian Mukaila Odedina remains paralysed from an attack from right wing thugs in front of a Russian police station in Moscow, speaking with Mukaila brought tears to my eyes. He is in his final year and would have been a medical doctor in September 2005 now he cannot even raise a flight ticket back home; all contact with the Nigerian embassy yielded no result.

I remember meeting a Zimbabwean woman in 1990, who was to become a good friend, speaking about her similar experience whilst a student in the Soviet Union. “From Russia With Hate” is a video documentary by Christof Putzel which investigates neo-nazi groups in Russia. It’s bad enough that that racist violence is described as “out of control” but many of the skin heads have support from the government….One member of the Duma is interviewed condoning the violence because the “government is not doing enough [about immigration]” A very disturbing documentary particularly when looked at in the context of the British government’s increasingly anti-immigration rhetoric and accompanying legislation - one suggestion from Russia is to take away the citizenship of Russian women who marry foreigners!

Thanks Emeka for the link

Tags:
Russia
Neo-Nazi
Racism

W.TEC launched the Networking For Success Project in Lagos, Nigeria……….Future projects need online volunteers to act as mentors, and cash, books, software, computers. Contact W.TEC via their website.

The Networking for Success project will teach women how to use Web 2.0 tools and other ICTs to effectively develop and advance their work. Participants will learn how to use these tools to initiate and manage projects; as well as identify networking opportunities with other organisations.

Blogger, Rosemary Ekosso’s novel “House of Fallen Women” is published by Langaa RPCIG in Cameroon. Also the African Books Collective now has a RSS feed or you can subscribe to email updates.

House of Falling Women is a powerful story about the oppressive weight and irrationality of tradition, gender and class inequality, a desperate yearning for freedom and dignity, and a journey of self discovery, empowerment, and redemption.”

The Struggle for the City on mass evictions in India resulting in thousands of “conservation refugees”.

While many governments now involve indigenous groups in environmental conservation, India is on the verge of creating what might become the largest mass eviction for conservation ever. Groups like India’s Adivasis have come to be called “conservation refugees.” But many conservationists now say conservation initiatives are doomed to fail without them.

This reminds me of the eviction of thousands of Basarwa people from the Kalahari Game Reserve by the Botswana government to make way for diamond mines and more recently to make way for tourists… More here.

Two new Palestinian initiatives - Palestine Think Tank and Yalla Palestine both started by Haitham Sabbah and friends.

The Palestine Think Tank is a

site containing news, analysis, art and more to further the cause of justice for Palestinians. It concentrates on many aspects of the resistance, but also focuses on the issues affecting the entire Middle East. ………. Contributors include Khalid Amayreh, Ramzy Baroud, Adib Kawar, Ernesto Paramo, Wael Al Saad, Nadia Hasan, Iqbal Tamimi, Richard Jones, Nahida Izzat, Razan Al Ghazzawi, Khaled Islaih, Steve Amsel, Ben Heine

Yalla Palestine is a social bookmarking site for Palestinian news. I liked this short piece on the Nakba from Desert Peace “Palestine Remembered - 60 Years Later”

“We came and turned the native Arabs into tragic refugees. And still we dare to slander and malign them, to besmirch their name. Instead of being deeply ashamed of what we did and trying to undo some of the evil we committed … we justify our terrible acts and even attempt to glorify them.”

Tags:

Web 2.0 + Nigeria
Conservation Refugees
Botswana
India
Palestine

Mazisi Raymond Kunene was born in Durban, South Africa, in 1930 [12th of May]. He graduated from the University of Natal with a paper on traditional and modern Zulu poetry. In 1959 he obtained a grant to complete his doctoral dissertation in London.

From this point on Kunene dedicated himself to the struggle for freedom of African countries. He worked for institutions such as the Afro-Asian Writers Committee and founded the South African Vocational Programme for refugees in Tanzania and Zambia.

In 1966 he was officially banned from his home country along with 45 other authors. He was one of the founding members of the Anti-Apartheid Movement and became Chief Representative for the African National Congress in Europe and USA in 1962.

Kunene received support from notables such as Picasso, Chagall, Giacometti, Moore and Rauschenberg when he established the South African Exhibition Appeal in 1972.
[more…]

Was I wrong

Was I wrong when I thought
All shall be avenged?
Was I wrong when I thought
The rope of iron holding the neck of young bulls
Shall be avenged?
Was I wrong
When I thought the orphans of sulphur
Shall rise from the ocean?
Was I depraved when I thought there need not be love,
There need not be forgiveness, there need not be progress,
There need not be goodness on the earth,
There need not be towns of skeletons,
Sending messages of elephants to the moon?
Was I wrong to laugh asphyxiated ecstasy
When the sea rose like quicklime
When the ashes on ashes were blown by the wind
When the infant sword was left alone on the hill top?
Was I wrong to erect monuments of blood?
Was I wrong to avenge the pillage of Caesar?
Was I wrong? Was I wrong?
Was I wrong to ignite the earth
And dance above the stars
Watching Europe burn with its civilisation of fire,
Watching America disintegrate with its gods of steel,
Watching the persecutors of mankind turn into dust
Was I wrong? Was I wrong?
© Mazisi Kunene
[source…]

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Two important events from the DRC - The one month campaign against sexual violence in the DRC took place between March 17-April 17th and coincided with a new law to ending the crimininalisation of children by accusing them of witchcraft. The campaign was funded by the UN Population Fund. However the question is in a country where tens of thousands of women have been raped and mutilated why did this campaign end after just one month. What happens now? The rapists remain free, and no one has been called to account for their crimes. Jacques Depelchin of the Otabenga Alliance raises two important questions -

Is it too harsh to ask oneself whether the campaign stopped after one month because that is what had been budgeted by the UN and other supporting NGOs, and agencies? Could it be that in a country like the DRC, moral and ethical values have been so badly eroded that nothing can be done unless one is paid for it–including getting rid of crimes like sexual violence against women and children,? The dominant mindset is not just one that is standing above us. It has taken root within ourselves. It has taken root within the minds of those who are the primary victims of its dominance.

If sexual violence were to be considered, like slavery, as a crime against humanity, would one be so nonchalant toward it? From 1791 through 1804, the Africans who had been enslaved in Haiti got rid of slavery. They did not achieve this through one month campaigns and fundraising exercises. They had no support from outside, no human rights organization

Then, the mindset of the enslavers accepted as normal that Africans were meant to be slaves. Step by step, over centuries, the mindset of the enslavers has enslaved parts of humanity to the notion that women and children are fair game for the abusive sexual behavior and pleasure of men.

The points raised by Jacques are equally applicable to the sexual violence and torture against women in South Africa of whom lesbians are a specific target. The stigma of rape is not on the rapist but on the women who are raped and this is the same mindset whether in the DRC, South Africa, the Niger Delta, Haiti or here in the UK. The UN has the resources to the maintain a continual campaign against sexual violence in the DRC as well as the resources to bring justice to the thousands of women survivors of some of the most horrific acts of sexual violence - Funding a one month campaign is pathetic and in fact could very well cause more harm against women who have come forth and spoken out about the crimes commited against them. What happens to them when the UN is gone and the campaign ended - the rapists remain free.

The second event is the continued assassination threat against Professor Wamba dia Wamba and Deputy Kiakwama of the Otabenga Alliance who has been actively protesting the continued brutality by the government of the DRC against the people of the “Bas-Congo (Lower Congo)–especially toward members of the Bundu dia Kongo (BDK), a “movement for the cultural and spiritual emancipation of the Congo people” For more information on this see the Otabenga Alliance website.

Tags:
DRC
Wamba dia Wamba

When time works against us
and weighs at the heart
somewhere in a foreign land,
night turns to day, and
the fashion in shop windows
I pass on my way from work
into djellabas, the smell
of restaurants into kuskus
on a market day,
hands all out, stretched
to acknowledge this gift,
walking in the shadow
of African women, men,
with their fear of anchored boats
on coastal fronts. History
in the present. On
a young night that is day
I go inland where spear battles musket,
and I join in the fight on the river
that filled with blood, our phagocyte
impi sieging their laager in anger.
On the metro of the morning,
Le Monde in my hands and
work on my mind, there’s always
a part of Africa that yearns
for me, for my presence, my flesh,
beyond the chatter of the train
needling underneath the capital
into the reconciliation of our lifetime,
before the evening of my days.
© Rethabile Masilo

Related links:
– Encounter South Africa
– Andries Pretorius
– Dingaan kaSenzangakhona