RIP, Madiba

 

"I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal, which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

CAR rebel victory throws resource deals into doubt

12/06/2013 9:02 am

CAR rebel victory throws resource deals into doubt
 
By Michael Deibert

FDI Magazine


(This article first appeared in FDI Magazine. Please read the original article here.)

As the Central African Republic reels from the instability brought about by the overthrow of its government, observers are questioning South Africa’s role in the country, resource deals signed by the previous regime could be undone.

When François Bozizé, the president of the Central African Republic (CAR), was overthrown in March 2013 by a ragtag band of militiamen and child soldiers, few observers thought it heralded a brighter chapter in the history of one of Africa’s more tragic countries.

The Central African Republic, or Centrafrique, as it is known in French, is a former French colonial territory whose colonial history was marked by widespread forced labour and often outright slavery. The country's first prime minister died in a mysterious plane explosion in 1959, and independence eventually saw a coup by French-trained general Jean-Bédel Bokassa, a recipient of the Croix de Guerre who went on to become one of the continent’s most garish tyrants, crowning himself emperor in 1977 as his countrymen starved. Coups and counter-coups continued before elections in 1993 saw Ange-Félix Patassé ascend to the presidency, only to be overthrown by his former chief of staff, François Bozizé, a decade later.

Rise to power

Mr Bozizé had been orbiting around circles of power for years before his victory. The background of the man who has replaced him, however, is more obscure. Michel Djotodia is a former low-level government official who lived and studied for many years in the former Soviet Union, and who was only one of many leaders of the Union des Forces Démocratiques pour le Rassemblement, a rebel group that preceded the Séléka rebel coalition he led to power. Mr Djotodia was unanimously elected CAR’s president in mid-April by a transition council after a ballot in which he was the only candidate.

By the time the Bozizé government fell in March, nearly 300 South African soldiers were in the CAR defending his regime. As rebels stormed the capital Bangui in March, 13 South African soldiers were killed and 27 wounded. South African soldiers later expressed anguish when they realised that many of those they were fighting were mere children (the recruitment of children under the age of 15 to fight in combat is a war crime prosecutable by the International Criminal Court).

South African presence

South Africa’s involvement in the CAR has as much to do with business deals linked to the former's ruling African National Congress (ANC) party as it does with regional solidarity. A report by South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper concluded that the country’s “military involvement in the Central African Republic has from the start been entwined with ANC-linked deals”.

The South African oil exploration company DIG Oil, which is closely linked to the ANC, boasted a Bozizé-era oil concession in CAR’s south-west, near the town of Carnot.

A public-private partnership company, Inala Centrafrique, was registered in 2006, with ownership divided between the South African entity Serengeti Group Holdings (65%) and the CAR government (35%). The former company was majority owned by ANC grandee Joshua Nxumalo. The venture appeared chiefly designed to gain access to diamond mines in CAR. The DIG Oil and Inala Centrafrique deals appear to be only two of many.

Shortly after Mr Bozizé was overthrown, Mr Djotodia announced that the new government would be reviewing all resource deals signed by the previous regime, including DIG Oil’s and the contract awarded to the China National Petroleum Corporation for rights to explore for oil near CAR’s border with Chad. The move is somewhat reminiscent of a special parliamentary commission chaired by Christophe Lutundula in the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose 271-page June 2005 report found that many contracts signed during that country’s civil wars were either illegal or of little value.

Mr Djotodia’s public comments have also indicated a possible shift toward seeking investment in CAR from the EU. Whether or not the Djotodia government’s review of foreign investment marks a serious attempt to increase transparency in the country’s resource deals remains to be seen, but the signs of good governance are thus far not encouraging.

The UN high commissioner for human rights says that a pattern of violence has continued in the country following Mr Bozizé’s overthrow, including cases of summary executions and sexual violence. Disgruntled members of the Séléka rebel coalition have been demonstrating in the capital over pay they say they were promised, and angry citizens recently killed a 17 year-old Séléka fighter, as resentment of the rebel coalition – now ensconced at the five-star Ledger Plaza Bangui hotel – continues to grow.

Haiti’s Aristide should be greeted with prosecution, not praise

Haiti’s Aristide should be greeted with prosecution, not praise

By Michael Deibert

The indictment late last year by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of six prominent Kenyans for their roles in violence following that country’s disputed 2007 elections was a welcome sign for those seeking to hold politicians accountable for their crimes. Though the ICC has badly bungled what should have been its showpiece case - against the ruthless Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga - the Kenya indictments nevertheless represented a welcome extension of its continuing mission.

To those of us who have seen Haiti’s political convulsions first-hand over the years, that Caribbean nation makes a compelling case for attention by the ICC as perpetrators of human rights abuses often go unpunished or are even rehabilitated in subsequent governments. With one despotic former ruler (Jean-Claude Duvalier) having recently returned and another (Jean-Bertrand Aristide) announcing his intention to do so, one Haitian case, in particular, would seem tailor-made for the ICC’s attention.

In February 2004, in the midst of a chaotic rebellion against Mr. Aristide's government, the photojournalist Alex Smailes and I found ourselves in the central Haitian city of Saint Marc, at the time the last barrier between Aristide and a motley collection of once-loyal street gangs and former soldiers who were sweeping down from the country's north seeking to oust him.

Several days earlier, on 7 February, an armed anti-Aristide group, the Rassemblement des militants conséquents de Saint Marc (Ramicos), based in the neighborhood of La Scierie, had attempted to drive government forces from the town, seizing the local police station, which they set on fire.

On 9 February, the combined forces of the Police Nationale de Haiti (PNH), the Unité de Sécurité de la Garde du Palais National (USGPN) - a unit directly responsible for the president’s personal security - and a local paramilitary organisation named Bale Wouze (Clean Sweep) retook much of the city. By 11 February, a few days before our arrival, Bale Wouze - headed by a former parliamentary representative of Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas political party named Amanus Mayette - had commenced the battle to retake La Scierie. Often at Mayette’s side was a government employee named Ronald Dauphin, known to residents as "Black Ronald,”often garbed in a police uniform even though he was in no way officially employed by the police.

When Alex and I arrived in the town, we found the USGPN and Bale Wouze patrolling Saint Marc as a single armed unit. Speaking to residents there - amidst a surreal backdrop of burned buildings, the stench of human decay, drunken gang members threatening our lives with firearms and a terrified population - we soon realized that something awful had happened in Saint Marc.

According to multiple residents interviewed during that visit and a subsequent visit that I made to the town in June 2009, after government forces retook the town - and after a press conference there by Yvon Neptune, at the time Aristide’s Prime Minister and also the head of the Conseil Superieur de la Police Nationale d'Haiti - a textbook series of war crimes took place.

Residents spoke of how Kenol St. Gilles, a carpenter with no political affiliation, was shot in each thigh, beaten unconscious by Bale Wouze members and thrown into a burning cement depot, where he died. Unarmed Ramicos member Leroy Joseph was decapitated, while Ramicos second-in-command Nixon François was simply shot. In the ruins of the burned-out commissariat, Bale Wouze members gang raped a 21-year-old woman, while other residents were gunned down by police firing from a helicopter as they tried to flee over a nearby mountain. A local priest told me matter-of-factly at the time of Bale Wouze that “these people don't make arrests, they kill."

According to a member of a Human Rights Watch delegation that visited Saint Marc a month after the killings, at least 27 people were murdered there between Feb. 11 and Aristide’s flight into exile at the end of the month. Her conclusion supported by the research of the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains, a Haitian human rights organization.

Following Aristide's overthrow, several members of Bale Wouze were lynched, while Yvon Neptune turned himself over to the interim government that ruled Haiti from March 2004 until the inauguration of President René Préval in May 2006.

Held in prison without trial until his May 2006 release on humanitarian grounds, a May 2008 decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found the Haitian state had violated the American Convention on Human Rights in its detention of Neptune, though stressed that it was "not a criminal court in which the criminal responsibility of an individual can be examined.” Neptune ran unsuccessfully for president in Haiti’s recent elections.

After being jailed for three years without trial, Amanus Mayette was freed from prison in April 2007. Arrested in 2004, Ronald Dauphin subsequently escaped from jail, and was re-arrested during the course of an anti-kidnapping raid in Haiti's capital in July 2006. Despite several chaotic public hearings, to date, none of the accused for the killings in La Scierie has ever gone to trial. At the time of writing, Mr. Aristide himself continues to enjoy a gilded exile in South Africa, his luxurious lifestyle and protection package bankrolled by South African taxpayers.

Frustratingly for the people of St. Marc, far from being supported in their calls for justice, the events they experienced have become a political football among international political actors.

The United Nations independent expert on human rights in Haiti, Louis Joinet, in a 2005 statement dismissed allegations of a massacre and described what occurred as "a clash", a characterization that seemed unaware of the fact that not all among those victimized had any affiliation with Haiti's political opposition.

The Institute for Justice and Democracy (IJDH), a U.S.-based organization, has lauded Mr. Dauphin as “a Haitian grassroots activist.” The IJDH itself maintains close links with Mr. Aristide’s U.S. attorney, Ira Kurzban, who is listed as one of the group’s founders, serves on the chairman of board of directors and whose law firm, according to U.S. Department of Justice filings, earned nearly $5 million for its lobbying work alone representing the Aristide government during the era of its worst excesses. By comparison, the firm of former U.S. congressmen Ron Dellums received the relatively modest sum of $989,323 over the same period.

When I returned to St. Marc in June of 2009, I found its residents still wondering when someone would be held accountable for the terrible crimes they had been subjected to. Amazil Jean-Baptiste, the mother of Kenol St. Gilles, said simply "I just want justice for my son.” A local victim’s rights group of survivors of the pogrom, the Association des Victimes du Génocide de la Scierie (AVIGES), formed to help advocate on residents’ behalf, but have had precious little success in what passes for Haiti’s justice system, broken and dysfunctional long before January 2010's devastating earthquake.

Though Mr. Aristide remains something of a fading star for a handful of commentators outside of Haiti- most of whom have not spent significant time in the country, cannot speak its language and have never bothered to sit down with the victims of the Aristide government's crimes there - to those of us who have seen a bit of its recent history firsthand, the words of veteran Trinidadian diplomat Reginald Dumas - a man who does know Haiti - seem apt, that Mr. Aristide "[acquired] for himself a reputation at home which did not match the great respect with which he was held abroad.''

The ICC has sometimes been criticized for acting as if war crimes and crimes against humanity are simply African problems, taking place in distant lands. The people of St. Marc, only a 90 minute flight from Miami, know differently. As Mr. Aristide currently loudly voices his desire to return to Haiti from his exile in South Africa, doubtlessly transiting several ICC signatory countries (including South Africa itself) in the process, the case of the victims of St. Marc is one admirably deserving of the ICC’s attention.


Michael Deibert is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University and the author of Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories Press). He has been visiting and writing about Haiti since 1997.

Photo © Michael Deibert

2008: A Reporter's Notebook of the Year Gone By

I was fortunate enough this past year to report from five continents, something of a personal milestone for me. The work began in Paris and continued throughout Africa, including several months in the Democratic Republic of Congo which left me distressed at the plight of the civilians there and the international community's apparent inability or unwillingness to end their suffering. It continued with a return to Central America, where I was left charmed by Nicaragua, though dismayed at its political situation, and found Guatemala, that most evocative of Latin American countries, seemingly drowning in an ocean of blood and a hail of bullets. The results of my investigation into the causes of the latter will appear in the Winter 2008 edition of the World Policy Journal, published by the World Policy Institute in New York City.

Though such events do not leave one overly optimistic for the future, there was one notable cause for celebration this year: The election of Illinois Senator Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States, the first African-American to hold that post. Obama’s election resulted in scenes of jubilation in the United States and beyond, and served as a powerful "answer," in Obama's words, to "anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy." After the eight disastrous years of the administration of George W. Bush, it is my hope that Obama lives up to the slogan that he used throughout his campaign, change we can believe in. The United States and the world at large certainly needs it.

Based in Australia for the next few months, where the affects of climate change are increasingly present, I hope that my travels in the coming year will enable me to report on a more humane, more just and more responsive world, where that which unites us as humanity proves stronger than that which divides us, and we prove ever less susceptible to those who would exploit such divisions.

What follows is my entire oeuvre of reportage from the year 2008. Hopefully it will be of some interest, and the stories of those contained within will hold some resonance.

Much love,

MD


The Cuba problem: A review of The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States and the Next Revolution by Daniel P. Erikson for the Miami Herald (7 December 2008)

Trial of Muslims grips Australians for the Washington Times (30 November 2008)

ECONOMY: EU Involvement in DRC Mining Project Draws Protest for the Inter Press Service (28 October 2008)

Mixed signals: What is an investor to make of Africa? for Foreign Direct Investment (7 October 2008)

Garífunas Confront Their Own Decline for Tierramérica (6 October 2008)

Nicaragua’s poisonous political brew for Folha de Sao Paulo (31 August 2008)

"Haiti Is Going From Catastrophe to Catastrophe": Michael Deibert interviews Chavannes Jean-Baptiste for the Inter Press Service (28 September 2008)

Congo: Between Hope and Despair for the World Policy Journal (Summer 2008)

Distilling the ties between Bacardi and Cuba: A review of Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba by Tom Gjelten for the Miami Herald (14 September 2008)

TRADE-AFRICA: New Technology to Sever Timber's Link to Conflict? for the Inter Press Service (8 August 2008)

CULTURE-ETHIOPIA: Debate Swirls Around Fate of Holy Sites for the Inter Press Service (3 July 2008)

A Glittering Demon: Mining, Poverty and Politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo for CorpWatch (26 June 2008)

POLITICS: Is Democracy Dangerous in Multi-ethnic Societies? An interview with Frances Stewart, Oxford University Professor of Development Economics for the Inter Press Service (26 June 2008)

POLITICS-ETHIOPIA : A Tangled Political Landscape Raises Questions About African Ally of the U.S. for the Inter Press Service (21 June 2008)

Ethiopia's Urban Poor Cannot Afford To Eat: Interview with Abera Tola, Director of Oxfam's Horn of Africa regional office for the Inter Press Service (21 June 200*)

TRADE-AFRICA: EU Seeks to Subdue Competitive China for the Inter Press Service (15 May 2008)

RIGHTS: In South Africa, Zimbabwean Refugees Find Sanctuary and Contempt for the Inter Press Service (4 May 2008)

"We Mustn't Think as South Africans That We Have Won the Day": An interview with Bishop Paul Verryn for the Inter Press Service (4 May 2008)

DRC: With Rebel Leader's Indictment, a Tentative Step to Accountability for the Inter Press Service (1 May 2008)

HEALTH-DRC: Water Everywhere, But Is It Safe To Drink? for the Inter Press Service (24 April 2008)

POLITICS-DRC: Cautious Calm Settles Over War-scarred Ituri Region for the Inter Press Service (17 April 2008)

Why I am voting for Barack Obama for Michael Deibert, Writer (15 April 2008)

Extraction from chaos: Embattled by war and corruption but laden with large deposits of diamonds and copper, DR Congo is largely avoided by investors. Might that change? for Foreign Direct Investment (10 April 2008)

The Fruits of Reform: Mozambique, whose history has been blighted by a long liberation struggle and years of civil war, is starting to reap the benefits of recent macroeconomic reforms for Foreign Direct Investment (10 April 2008)

Failure To Renew DRC Expert's Mandate Draws Criticism for the Inter Press Service (1 April 2008)

POLITICS-DRC: In a Governmental Vacuum, Yearnings for a Lost Empire for the Inter Press Service (21 March 2008)

A Review of Peter Hallward’s Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment for Michael Deibert, Writer (16 March 2008)

A Humanitarian Disaster Unfolds in Eastern DRC for the Inter Press Service (1 March 2008)

Fidel's view: A Review of Fidel Castro: My Life by Fidel Castro and Ignacio Ramonet for the Miami Herald (27 January 2008)

Adieu, Miriam Makeba

Miriam Makeba, the great South African singer who chanted in the key of resistance against the apartheid regime in her native land, passed away today while doing what she did best: Lending her luminous musical gifts in defense of liberty and in defiance of tyranny.

The 76 year-old Makeba passed away from an apparent heart attack while performing at a concert in Italy in support of Roberto Saviano, an Italian journalist whose exposé of the Camorra organized crime syndicate in Naples in his book Gomorrah has earned him death threats and worse.

Coming only a year after the murder of South African reggae legend Lucky Dube, it may seem another terrible blow to the music scene in that country, where I first ventured in a very moving visit that brought me face-to-face with Robert Mugabe's brutality and South Africa's own tortured history earlier this year. But like all eternal voices, such as those of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Woody Guthrie, the music of Miriam Makeba will continue to give succor and sustenance to oppressed and downtrodden people the world over. Amen, Miriam, and ayibobo.

Back from South Africa

I returned to Kinshasa from Johannesburg the other days, after what was, for me, a highly instructive and enjoyable two weeks in South Africa.

Initially hoping to have a short break from pretty much three-months non-stop reporting here in Congo, I was yet again reminded of how interconnected our word is when I was presented with the heart-wrenching story of the plight of hundreds of Zimbabwean refugees sleeping rough Joburg’s downtown, and was heartened by the wit and insight of their advocate. Busman’s holiday, as usual.

I ranged not only through the thoroughly salubrious Melville area (where I met up with my old friend and fellow journalist Gretchen Wilson, who has been in South Africa since 2004) but also the heavily-immigrant districts of Hillbrow and Yeoville, where South African tongues such as Zulu and Xhosa mingle with French and Lingala. A visit to Soweto offered the opportunity me see the house where Nelson Mandela, one of the handful of politicians I still have any respect for at all, lived at one time, as well as the Hector Pieterson Museum.

Perhaps no other icon better illustrates the stupid, banal brutality of the apartheid system that governed South Africa from 1948 until 1994 than the image of the lifeless body of schoolboy Hector Pieterson carried by another young boy, Mbuyisa Makhubo, as Pieterson’s sister, Antoinette, wails beside them. Pieterson was killed on June 16, 1976, when thousands of Soweto students were protesting the imposition of the Afrikaans language - the language of South Africa’s apartheid government - as the medium of instruction (along with English) in the country’s predominantly black schools. The killing sparked the Soweto uprising of 1976, an interesting account of which by Harry Mashabela I am currently reading.

While idly browsing through the bookstore at Oliver Tambo airport, I also picked up a copy of the The Bang-Bango Club, the account by the photojournalists Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva of their years, along with fellow photogs Kevin Carter and Ken Oosterbroek, of chronicling the violent era between Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990 and South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994. It was a time during which, Marinovich and Silva, write, the forces within the country’s white power structure implacably opposed to a genuine democracy used members and affiliates of the Zulu-centered Inkatha Freedom Party as a bludgeon against the multiracial African National Congress in an effort to disrupt or even derail negations and the 1994 ballot that brought Nelson Mandela to power. The book is tough going - the photographers witnessed some truly ghastly violence, Ken Oosterbroek was fatally shot on the job and Kevin Carter later committed suicide - but it is an edifying read as the layers as the deception and collusion of that era’s violence are stripped away before the reader to reveal the naked power-play that was in fact at work. Reading about the constant money struggles of these, some of South Africa’s most well-regarded and courageous photographers, is also heartening for those of us who still do journalism for the love and mission of the craft and, as such, end up sacrificing a great deal in terms of comfort and financial security.

Walked through Kin La Belle again today, which swirls on to its own rhythm, as usual.

RIGHTS: In South Africa, Zimbabwean Refugees Find Sanctuary and Contempt

RIGHTS: In South Africa, Zimbabwean Refugees Find Sanctuary and Contempt

By Michael Deibert

Inter Press Service

JOHANNESBURG, May 4, 2008 (IPS) - As the autumn sun sets over South Africa's most populous city, the halls of downtown Johannesburg's Central Methodist Mission fill with weary figures, many far from home, seeking solace within its walls.

On every spare inch of space on the floors and narrow staircase of the mission -- and on the pavement outside -- the destitute curl up to find shelter as best they can from the chill wind that moves between the tall buildings in this city. Mixed in among them every night are hundreds of refugees from South Africa's northern neighbour, Zimbabwe, who have fled their country's slow-motion economic and political implosion.

"We sleep outside in the streets. Sometimes we spend days without eating anything; we spend weeks without working," says Owen Muchanyo, a 23-year-old secondary school teacher of mathematics and science from Chitungwiza, a town south of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare.

He has been in South Africa for three months. "It's better to sleep on the streets, where my life is somewhat safe, than to sleep in a house when my life is in danger."

Read the full article here.

"We Mustn't Think as South Africans That We Have Won the Day": An interview with Paul Verryn

"We Mustn't Think as South Africans That We Have Won the Day": An interview with Paul Verryn

Inter Press Service

JOHANNESBURG, May 4, 2008 (IPS) - Bishop Paul Verryn, who directs the Central Methodist Mission in Johannesburg, South Africa, has long been on the frontlines of the country's political struggles.

Born in 1952 in the capital city of Pretoria, Verryn came of age during the most contentious days of the fight against apartheid. After completing military training, he entered the ministry, working in the Eastern Cape Province for 11 years.

Verryn's experiences there as the chairman of the Detainees Parents' Support Committee -- which sought to aid the thousands of South Africans detained without trial at the time -- and the murder of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko while in police custody in August 1977 served as something of a political awakening for the young cleric.

Transferred to the sprawling black settlement of Soweto in Johannesburg in 1987, Verryn has continued to live there until this day.

His criticism of the powerful continued with the advent of democracy in South Africa; many recall his tearful testimony before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1997 regarding the involvement of Winnie Mandela, former wife of anti-apartheid hero and then South African president Nelson Mandela, in the kidnapping and murder of Stompie Moeketsi.

The 14-year-old anti-apartheid activist was seized from Verryn's Soweto mission by Mrs Mandela's bodyguards in 1988, and his battered body later found in a ditch. Winnie Mandela was eventually convicted of involvement in Moeketsi's kidnapping.

Today, as director of the Central Methodist Mission, Verryn has taken up another cause: the plight of immigrants to South Africa from Zimbabwe, a country that has been blighted by political violence and economic degeneration in recent years. Having thrown open the doors of his mission to these new arrivals, he saw the building raided in a controversial police action earlier this year, but has refused stop providing shelter and assistance to the Zimbabweans as they stream southward.

IPS correspondent Michael Deibert sat down with Verryn to hear his thoughts on how the mission was meeting this and other challenges.

Read the full article here.

Hillbrow Vibes

Having arrived in Johannesburg on Monday, I have thus far found the city, despite its significant social ills, to be a vibrant, dynamic face of the mosaic that is modern day South Africa, and, as such, much to my liking. Glorious, crisp clear fall weather has complimented exploring nicely. After the ceaseless grind of Kinshasa, the restaurants, bookstores, good roads and ability to speak English are also welcomed breaks. Yesterday was an opportunity to dine with a colleague from the Inter Press Service and discuss international coverage of Africa and other issues, and today I will begin to wade into the situation of Zimbabwean exile politics and the treatment of Zimbabwean refugees by the government here. And hopefully a visit to House of Nsako will find it's way into the mix, as well.

Author's note: The title of this post is a naked steal from the opening song to the album Rhythm in Blue by the great T.K. Blue, referring as it does to the Jozi neighborhood of the same name. I first saw T.K. play with Randy Weston in New York a few years back, and later became friendly with him after seeing him play at a Darfur benefit concert. The album in question is a bracing tour of African and Caribbean rhythms in a modern jazz setting, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the genre.

Back in Paris, and on the passing of Lucky Dube

After nearly two weeks in Côte d’Ivoire that gave me the opportunity to interview presidential candidates, women’s advocates, cocoa workers, business executives and Force Nouvelles rebels (and go to one of the best reggae clubs I‘ve ever been to), I am now back in Paris and back online on a regular basis.

The much-heralded transit strike of recent days proved to be no more than a minor annoyance as my friend Gerry Hadden and I strolled around the city, checking out the Confédération générale du travail (CGT) march and interviewing protesters.

Some sad news reached me from South Africa today that the reggae star Lucky Dube was killed in an apparent carjacking attempt in Johannesburg last evening. Dube’s music was very popular among the young in some of the poorest quarters of Port-au-Prince, Haiti when I was living there for several years, and I often heard in pumping out of the boom box that my friend James Petit-Frere had during my visits to his home in Cité Soleil.

I had the opportunity to tell Dube this when I met him briefly at the Hotel Montana a few years back, when he was in Haiti to play a concert as the same time I was in the country reporting. He was very gracious in his response, as one could only expect from such a thoughtful advocate of conscious reggae, a genre that sometimes seems to be threatened with extinction by the onslaught of slackness and bling and the always hard road trod by the genuinely righteous.

“We've got to come together as one,” Dube sang in one of his most famous song. “The cats and the dogs have forgiven each other/What is wrong with us?”

Adieu, Lucky Dube. You were a shining star and you will be missed.

African Countries Stand Up to EU

African Countries Stand Up to EU

By Michael Deibert

Inter Press Servce

PARIS, Aug 28, 2007 (IPS) - Concern over getting too little in return for what they are being asked to give up has led some African nations to say "no" to some proposals for new trade relations with Europe next year.

Read the full article here.

Following Oil Boom, Biofuel Eyed In Africa

TRADE: Following Oil Boom, Biofuel Eyed In Africa

By Michael Deibert

Inter Press Service

PARIS, Jul 13 (IPS) - While oil profits have flooded into countries such as Angola and Nigeria in recent decades, some African observers see new potential for the continent in the form of increasingly in-demand biofuels.

Biofuels, loosely defined as liquid or gas fuels derived from biomass, produce significantly less ozone-damaging carbon emissions than fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum. A large swath of southern Africa, including Angola, Mozambique and South Africa, is proving fertile ground for those seeking an alternative to fossil fuels.

It is a development that has not escaped the notice of Europe.

Read more here.