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An article outlining the "resource curse" in Africa:
quote: Dakar — In Africa billions of dollars from oil, gas and mining revenues go missing, leaving populations dependent on international assistance, according to a new report on natural resource use on the continent.
The report, which details resource management in seven West African countries, was released on 2 July at the launch of West Africa Resource Watch (WARW) institute in the Senegalese capital Dakar.
Established by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), WARW is set up to provide information, training and policy advice - for policymakers and citizens alike - to foster sound and equitable use of natural resource revenues.
The launch comes just days after a group of NGOs leading the drive for the Kimberley Process - an initiative against conflict diamonds - said the scheme has failed on many counts. Across West Africa natural resource wealth has not translated into better living conditions for the people and in some cases - including in the Niger Delta - has triggered violence. Sierra Leone's vast diamond reserves fuelled armed conflict during the 11-year civil war.
"In Africa, anywhere natural resources are found in large commercial quantities people suffer and the country is locked in under-development," a WARW background paper says. "Africa's vast natural resources have devastated the continent, fuelling conflicts, corruption and bad governance."
But the so-called "resource curse" is man-made and can be reversed, OSIWA executive director Nana Tanko says.
"It is not inevitable that owning natural resources be a curse," Oladayo Olaide, WARW coordinator, said at the launch. "Countries can actually manage their resources in such a way that it becomes a blessing." WARW points to Norway and Canada - which have vast oil and other energy reserves - as examples.
According to the needs assessment report, which WARW says is a starting point for its work, West Africa has a long way to go.
The study gauges seven countries' (Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Niger and Sierra Leone) capacity to manage natural resources in a transparent, accountable, equitable and sustainable way.
None of the countries has a long-term vision of extractive resources in the national economy, according to the report; each lacks a comprehensive strategy to manage its natural resources; in most of the countries civil society participation and influence have been minimal; and restrictive laws and lack of resources block the media from playing a watchdog role.
"None [of the countries] has a long-term and nationally shared vision for moving the country from where it is now to where citizens desire to be and with the role of extractives in that scheme spelt out," the report says.
OSIWA's Tanko told IRIN governance is paramount. "If we can tackle the issue of governance on the African continent a lot of these issues tied to natural resource management will be adequately addressed," she told IRIN. "We really need a watch [mechanism] like this...and to let them [leaders] know we are watching."
WARW - based in Dakar - aims to mobilize technical and financial resources to strengthen civil society, advocate for responsible use of resources and reinforce laws and policies governing extractive operations.
Bishop Akolgo, a member of WARW's technical committee and executive director of ISODEC, a social justice NGO in Ghana, worked on the needs assessment. He said in some countries meetings held as part of the research marked the first time representatives of civil society, media, government and the private sector gathered in one room to discuss natural resource management.
"That was shocking to me because I didn't know it was that bad."
He said none of the countries knew the volume or quality of their natural resources.
While this article may sound good to some, it actually is a dangerous form of propaganda against Africans.
#1 It pretends that the wars, corruption and bad governance are simply because Africans are TOO STUPID to understand how to govern themselves and inherently corrupt. This lays the foundation for making foreign "AIDS" agencies seem like "white saviors" who are coming to save Africans from their "savage ways", as if Africans need FOREIGNERS to manage their resources and affairs. This is propaganda because it DOES NOT mention the fact that ALL things mentioned in the articles are SYMPTOMS of FOREIGN desire to control and manage African resources. It is not simply some African "magic reaction" to the fact of resources in the ground, where Africans suddenly act dumb and want to kill each other and enslave themselves as soon as they come within 100 feet of some valuable resource. Of course this is nonsense as FOREIGNERS are directly responsible for most of these problems, stemming back to the OUTRIGHT desire of Europeans to control Africa's resources since they "discovered" it.
NOWHERE does it mention that ALL of these conflicts are supported by FOREIGN industrial countries often as a MEANS to protect their ACCESS to those raw materials. Nowhere does it mention the recent TRIALS of foreign companies like Shell and Brown and Root who are accused of setting up elaborate systems of CORRUPTION in order to further their resource interests in various parts of Africa. NOWHERE is it mentioned the ARMS and FUNDING from foreign governments that supports the wars and violence in resource rich areas (how else do DIRT POOR Africans with no industry get weapons?). None of this is mentioned because that would make the "saviors" look like the demons that they are.
Of course, we are led to believe that the government of Nigeria is simply "naturally corrupt" all on its own, with no reason. It isn't mentioned the fact that MOST of Nigeria's oil is benefiting FOREIGNERS and that the country itself has a SEVERE CRISIS in energy production. Yet it has millions of barrels of oil. Are we to believe that it is simply INHERENT in Nigerians to be corrupt and DEPRIVE themselves of the benefit of their own gas and mineral resources in order to HELP foreigners make profit? Or is it the other way around: Nigeria's government has largely been put in place to CONTINUE the legacy of foreign colonial control of its resources. ALL the companies involved are DIRECTLY related to the old British colonial gas and mineral companies established under colonial administration. The "government" consisted of hand picked puppets LOYAL to the Crown in Europe. But of course, that is all done away with right? Sure.
This is simply another example of how far Europeans will go to control Africa's resources. Not satisfied with CAUSING these problems, now they want to pretend to SOLVE it, which actually means creating the notion that the ONLY way for Africa's resources to be properly used is with the MONITORING and SUPERVISION of foreigners. But why aren't they MONITORING the foreign COMPANIES that are making MOST of the money and control MOST of these resources? How can it be that the government is to blame when MOST of the resources and money taken OUT of Africa and therefore DENIED to Africans is by FOREIGNERS? Are we to pretend that FOREIGNERS taking billions of dollars OUT of Africa ever year is somehow SEPARATE from these struggles over resources? Are we to kid ourselves that these BILLIONS of dollars going to FOREIGNERS from the labor and resources of Africans is somehow BENEFICIAL to Africa? Of course not.
These PHONY monitoring agencies are monitoring the wrong people. They should be monitoring THEIR OWN back yard, as THIS is the source of the problems they are talking about. But that is obviously not want they want. They want to STIFLE the ability of Africans to operate and use their OWN resources in their best interests by creating FAKE rules to MONITOR while they allow their OWN companies to CONTINUE to rape Africa of its wealth and resources. All the while PRETENDING to want to HELP Africa:
quote: After thirteen years and countless hours by lawyers, community members, and activists around the world, Royal Dutch Shell finally settled the Wiwa v Shell case in a New York court for $15.5 million.
Plaintiffs in the case, which included Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr., and the families of other Ogoni men hanged in November 1995, charged that the Royal Dutch/Shell company, its Nigerian subsidiary, and the former chief of its Nigerian operation, Brian Anderson, with complicity in the torture, killing, and other abuses of Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and other non-violent Nigerian activists in the mid-1990s in the Ogoni region of the Niger Delta.
Shell says they settled the case as a "humanitarian gesture" to the Ogoni. Does anyone really believe that after fighting for more than a decade to keep this out of court, Shell suddenly woke up and felt great compassion for the Ogoni? Please.
Shell settled because they were scared, and they knew the evidence against them was overwhelming. They publicly say they had nothing to do with the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other Ogoni, and yet there were documents and video that they fought hard to keep out of the public eye.
Evidence that was to be introduced in the case included an internal Shell memo where the head of Shell Nigeria offered to intervene on Saro-Wiwa's behalf, if only Saro-Wiwa and others would stop claiming that Shell had made payments to the military.
Then there was this memo, requesting payment to the Nigerian military for an incident in which at least one Ogoni man died.
Witness were set to testify that they saw Shell vehicles transporting Nigerian soldiers, that they saw Shell employees conferring with the military, that they saw money being exchanged between Shell employees and military officers, and that they heard military officers, including the brutal Major Okuntimo of the Rivers State Internal Security Task Force, make admissions regarding the work they were doing on behalf of Shell.
We have known some of Shell's involvement in this tragedy for a long time. In early May of 1994, Ken Saro-Wiwa Sr. faxed me a memo authored by Major Okuntimo which read "Shell operations still impossible unless ruthless military operations are undertaken for smooth economic activities to commence" and further called for "pressure on oil companies for prompt regular inputs".
I received that fax and immediately called Ken. He said "this is it. They're going to kill us all. All for Shell." It was the last time I talked with him. Several weeks later he was arrested on the trumped up charges for which he was ultimately hanged.
In the last day, lots of people have asked me if $15.5 million is enough to compensate for the hanging of nine men, the death of thousands more, and for the destruction of an ecosystem. No of course not. But was it on par with what a jury would have awarded in this case? Yes, lawyers tell me, for sure.
More importantly, does the settlement bring relief to Ken Wiwa jr and the families of the other men who were executed? If you read Ken's thoughtful and moving piece in the Guardian , the answer is clearly yes. That alone should be cause for celebration.
Ken Sr.'s famous last words from the gallows were "lord take my soul but the struggle continues". In this moment, perhaps more than ever before, we need to heed that call to action. The settlement in this case brings satisfaction to the plaintiffs for an event that happened 14 years ago. It in no way, shape or form excuses or absolves Shell of their ongoing destruction of the Niger Delta environment
One of the central complaints of Niger Delta communities for forty years has been gas flaring, which sends plumes of toxic pollutants into the air and water of the Niger Delta. Gas flaring endangers human health, harms local ecosystems, emits huge amounts of greenhouse gases, wastes vast quantities of natural gas, and is against Nigerian law. Shell does it nowhere else in the world in volumes that are even remotely comparable to what they flare in the Delta.
But Shell is still flaring gas in Nigeria.
While there is no doubt that the settlement represented a significant victory for the plaintiffs' in this one human rights case against Shell, true justice will not be served as long as the people of Nigeria continue to suffer the terrible impact of Shell's operations. Shell estimates it would cost about $3 billion -- only 10% of just their last year's profits -- to end Shell's gas flaring in Nigeria once and for all.
But instead of putting their great "humanitarian concern" into action, Shell points the finger at the Nigerian government and demands that they pay to end this practice.
Why aren't these foreign companies who can bring MILLIONS of dollars of equipment from Dump trucks to bulldozers and MASSIVE earth moving machines, some of which are the BIGGEST in the world, NOT providing similar types of equipment TO AFRICANS as a form of FAIR compensation for the right to TAKE the wealth out of Africa? Why is it that THESE SAME companies don't EVER look at providing manufacturing capabilities for natural resources to SERVE the African market? Why is it they only care about EXPORT, without even CONTEMPLATING providing ANY capacity to deliver useful products and services TO AFRICANS? How is this simply AFRICAS fault if foreigners do NOT care enough about the welfare of Africans to BUILD INDUSTRY to serve the African continent? If they have the technology and means to transport TONS of raw materials around the world and make infrastructure and products for the people OUTSIDE of Africa, then they can absolutely do the same IN AFRICA. There is more than enough money from the profits made off Africa's resources for this to happen. The reason they don't is because THEY ARE GREEDY and because of the HISTORICAL racism in European exploitation of Africa's resources, which was NEVER intended to benefit Africans, it was ONLY to benefit Europeans. The problem is not that they cannot, but that they don't WANT to. But of course none of that is in this type of propaganda article.
Nigeria and the trans saharan oil pipeline:
quote: The idea of piping gas thousands of kilometres across the Sahara was first dreamt up more than 30 years ago, but the project remained on the drawing board pending a concrete agreement between neighbouring states and a clear funding plan.
"This, no doubt, is a major milestone ... in the commercialisation of the huge endowment of natural gas resources," Nigerian Petroleum Minister Rilwanu Lukman said at a ceremony in the capital Abuja.
The project, with capital costs estimated at $10 billion for the pipeline and $3 billion for gathering centres, would send West African gas via a 4,128 km (2,580 mile) pipeline from Nigeria via Niger and Algeria starting from 2015.
The European Union sees the Trans-Saharan project as a potential opportunity to diversify its energy sources.
"This will provide another platform for a sustainable and reliable energy supply to Europe, thus ensuring security of supply," Lukman said.
France's Total, Royal Dutch Shell ( RDSA - news - people ) and Russia's Gazprom have all expressed interest in helping Nigeria's state-run NNPC and Algeria's counterpart Sonatrach in the project.
Gazprom and NNPC agreed to invest at least $2.5 billion to explore and develop Africa's biggest oil and gas sector, including building the first part of the Trans-Sahara pipeline.
Some analysts see Russia's keen interest in Nigeria as an attempt to maintain its grip on Europe's natural gas supplies.
FOREIGN PARTNERS NEEDED ?
The three governments are expected to begin formal discussions with outside investors sometime next year.
But Algerian Energy Minister Chakib Khelil said the project may not need foreign help as the three countries already have the gas reserves, the money and the technology to build the pipeline on their own.
"We should be able to do it on our own," Khelil said. "We have the expertise and I don't think there is a problem with finance in this project."
Nigeria has estimated natural gas reserves of 180 trillion cubic feet, the seventh largest in the world. Its liquefied natural gas company Nigeria LNG says it already provides 10 percent of world supply, much of it to Europe and North America.
But it has not been able to develop its gas industry to anywhere near its full potential because of a lack of funds and of a clear regulatory environment.
The European Union, which already relies on Russia for a significant proportion of its oil and gas supplies, sees the Trans-Sahara project as one way to bolster energy security.
But sceptics point out the pipeline will run through some volatile areas. Nigeria's main militant group, responsible for attacks on the oil industry in the Niger Delta, has already threatened to sabotage the venture.
The pipeline would also pass through northern Niger, parts of which are controlled by nomadic Tuareg rebels, and southern Algeria, where Islamic militant groups have long had a presence. (Editing by Nick Tattersall, Editing by Peter Blackburn)
Note that even with this and the millions of gallons of oil pumped out of Nigeria DAILY by foreigners and added to the MILLIONS of tons of gas WASTED because of flaring by foreign companies, Nigeria is having a FUEL SHORTAGE. Obviously this article at the beginning of this post would pretend that it is simply an INHERENT affliction of the Africans themselves. However the recent SUCCESSFUL trials against SHELL and BROWN AND ROOT in FOREIGN COURTS, tell a WHOLE DIFFERENT STORY.
WHY does Nigeria have to IMPORT FUEL? And whose fault is it that there is LITTLE TO NO refinery capacity WITHIN Nigeria to not only serve Nigeria but ALL of Western and Central Africa. How does that make ANY SENSE? Right now Nigeria must IMPORT fuel for its domestic population, in a country that is PRODUCING MILLIONS of barrels of crude oil per day. Are you telling me that NOBODY ever though about creating refineries in Nigeria after ALL THIS TIME? Are you telling me that with the RECORD profits of these gas companies and their affiliated industries that there is NO MONEY to build a few refineries IN NIGERIA or to assist the Nigerians within the current joint venture to build one? Are you kidding? Such a venture would be CHUMP CHANGE. Are you telling me that there is no TECHNICAL know how even though the BIGGEST oil companies in the world have been operating there for over 50 years? ALL of this is simply NONSENSE. Not to mention the fact that out of ALL the money made off Nigerian oil, Nigeria only gets A SMALL PERCENTAGE of it and this is before it even goes to the "corrupt" government. So WHO is corrupt? The government for allowing the foreigners to walk off with MOST of the money from oil, which could be used to HELP Nigeria build infrastructure and refineries? Or is it the government which allows itself to get by on the SMALL PERCENTAGE of the actual profit made from Nigerian oil. In truth they aren't getting much of any money from Nigerian oil. This is where the accountability comes into play, which is to track HOW MUCH money out of ALL the money made off oil or other resources ACTUALLY is going to the government. It is not enough to monitor what happens to the money AFTER it goes to the government, because THAT is only a SMALL PART of a bigger problem. The BIGGER PROBLEM is the fact that these governments sign contracts allowing foreigners to walk of with 80% or more of the profits from these operations, leaving LITTLE money for the Africans to address their own needs to begin with. Yet of course, these foreign agencies don't want to do that.
quote: LAGOS, May 13 (Reuters) - Nigeria's fuel marketers are ending a months-long suspension of imports which caused the worst fuel shortages in years after the government started clearing hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidy arrears.
Wale Tinubu, chairman of the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN) and head of one of the country's largest fuel retailers Oando (UNIP.LG), told Reuters normal fuel supplies in Africa's most populous nation should be restored within a month.
"Import orders have been placed over the last two weeks. As the government's overall liability to the marketers has reduced, the marketers have responded by partially ordering what they would normally have ordered," Tinubu said in an interview.
"The ships have started coming in. I would say over the next two to four weeks there should be normalcy," he said.
Despite being the world's eighth biggest crude oil exporter, Nigeria is forced to import around 85 percent of its petroleum product needs because of the chaotic condition of its four state-owned refineries.
Nigeria's powerful fuel marketing companies, which usually account for around 60 percent of its total refined petroleum imports, suspended shipments earlier this year in protest at late payment of government subsidies.
The supply disruption caused chaos in cities around the country, with motorists having to wait hours in long queues at filling stations or buy from street hawkers illegally selling fuel in jerry cans at twice the usual price.
The government pays fuel marketers the difference between the regulated pump price, pegged artificially low to make it affordable for Nigerian consumers, and the cost of importation.
But the marketing firms -- which include African Petroleum (APET.LG) and Conoil (NTOL.LG), controlled by two of Nigeria's most powerful tycoons Femi Otedola and Mike Adenuga -- said payments had been delayed and a sharp depreciation in the value of the naira currency meant there was an additional shortfall.
"In the process of all these delays, the marketers had no choice but to stop the importation of products because we were at over $1 billion in outstanding subsidy claims," Tinubu said.
He said there was an outstanding balance of $400 million but a first tranche of $150-200 million had been approved and the remainder would probably be paid within 14 days.
quote: Though government has done everything within its powers to convince Nigerians that full deregulation is the only way out of the fuel supply crisis in the country, there appears to be a missing link between what is and what ought to be in the implementation of the policy.
Those that make up the main opposition to the deregulation policy, mainly Labour, say they are not 100 percent against the implementation of deregulation, but the fact that there are a lot of things that need to be done to create the environment that would guarantee its success.
It is common knowledge that the basic infrastructures that would facilitate the effective implementation of the policy are hardly in place. For instance, none of the nation's four refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna has been functioning at installed capacity.
The 210,000 barrels per day capacity Port Harcourt refinery could produce only 113,000 barrels per day in 2006, while the 125,000 barrels per day Warri Refinery could only produce 6,126 barrels per day and the 110,000 barrels per day Kaduna Refinery could do only 11,911 barrels per day.
In 2007, the situation was so bad that only Port Harcourt Refinery was producing only 51,835 barrels per day out of a combined capacity of 445,000 barrels per day. None of the refineries is currently producing up to 30 percent of installed capacity. Kaduna is currently undergoing turn around maintenance.
Even if the four refineries are producing at 100 percent capacity, the total products yield would be just 18.2 million litres per day, which means almost 13 million litres would still be imported augment the supply.
Besides, the 18 licenses given to investors to undertake the construction of private refineries in the country are yet to take off. The explanation was that they were unable to secure government guarantee that they would be able to get adequate supplies of crude oil for refining, and therefore could not go ahead with the plan.
Petroleum products in Nigeria are always distributed through a network of storage depots and dedicated pipelines. But, in recent times, the pipeline networks have either deteriorated with age, or have been vandalized by criminal elements. Though the alternative way of transporting the products from the refineries or ports has been through bridging by trucks, the poor network of roads has always been an issue of contention between the Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD), who often complain that their members are always exposed to the danger of frequent accidents plying on such roads.
There are seven products jetties in the country located at Calabar in Cross River, Okrika in Rivers, Warri in Delta, as well as Apapa and Atlas Cove in Lagos. There are about storage depots, out of which 22 are owned by the NNPC and managed by the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC). Out of these 22, only three are currently functional. Though a couple of private depots have been established in recent times, the number is hardly sufficient to service the needs of consumers.
For Labour, Deregulation is neither privatization nor liberalization. The kind of deregulation policy that government is contemplating about is such that market forces would be the sole determinant of prices of petroleum products, while all forms of subsidies by government would be withdrawn. In 2006, government claimed it spent N223billion on fuel subsidy, while the sum of N640billion was spent on the same purpose in 2007.
Therefore, if the policy is to be implemented, the argument of critics is that, like what obtains in other countries where deregulation is operating, everything that needs to be put in place to make the policy functional has been done, to encourage private investors participate and break the government monopoly in the importation and distribution of petroleum products.
Over the years, it is clear that despite that Nigeria is one of the biggest crude oil producers in the world, her economy is completely based on imported petroleum products. Venezuela, which is also a leading producer of crude oil like Nigeria, does not export the commodity, finished petroleum products she refines in her 18 public refineries.
In 2007, government imported 10.2billion litres of PMS, out of which NNPC accounted for 7.7billion litres (about 191 cargoes), while marketers imported 2.13billion litres (about 53 cargoes), representing about 40 percent of the total volume.
So, Labour is talking about a government that has not put in place the things that should be put in place before talking about the take off of full deregulation.
The only way out is to ensure that nation's refineries are not only made to work optimally, but that new refineries constructed to meet the growing demand for petroleum products.
If the refineries are made to work at full capacity, it will not only cut down drastically the volume of imports, but the price of fuel at the pump, since available products for distribution would not include all the foreign components that often add up to the final cost at the pump.
But not only that, but if the industry is deregulated, NIGERIAN companies should have the FIRST option to run and manage the former state owned facilities, backed by guaranteed lines of credit. Deregulation won't help unless it is NIGERIAN companies that are being built and developed to take over in the government's place.
Posts: 8897 | Registered: May 2005
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Although there's an information war over everyone's images (Africa and the West included), blabbering off in the mouth like this might not be the most swaggnificent thing to do right now. Not to mention necissarily the brightest -- sometimes playing stupid and letting the "Hammers" [like the poster here] of the world make fools of themselves has its advantages.
However, although it's not what will gets the glory i would not under estimate the power of the information war.
It is after all the difference between the "African affairs" intellinge of the posters 'akoben' and 'unfinished thought'.
Good post Doug.
Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
As an example of Neo Colonial policy under autocratic and despotic regimes in the pockets of foreign companies, LAND IS NOT OWNED BY AFRICANS. Land that Africans have been on for THOUSANDS of years is not actually OWNED by them. They are in "lease agreements", which really mean that the government can sell the land that they are on ANYTIME THEY WANT to any foreigner who wants to buy it. The locals have NO SAY and get NO PART of any money paid for such land. How is it that after all this time there is no system of land ownership FOR AFRICANS? Yet when foreigners come in they are EXPECTED to recognize the rights of FOREIGNER OWNERSHIP of African lands, a right that IS NEVER GRANTED to the African people that the GOVERNMENTS of Africa EVER RECOGNIZED? That Africans recognize the rights of FOREIGNERS to own land before the rights of AFRICANS on the same land should tell you EVERYTHING. It means that they have NO VALUE in any economic system other than peasants and laborers for FOREIGN MONEY and that their OWN GOVERNMENTS do not recognize them as THE RIGHTFUL OWNERS of their OWN LAND. Africans should not HAVE TO PAY SQUAT for deed and title to land they have been on for thousands of years. It is simply a formalization of boundaries and verbal agreements in place for MANY YEARS. But the governments WONT DO THIS, because THEY FOLLOW THE WESTERN MODEL, where land has to be BOUGHT AND SOLD. But how does someone have to buy something they have been on since BEFORE there was a WESTERN WORLD? Common sense would tell you they don't. Just like common sense would say that Africans who had their land STOLEN by WHITES in Southern Africa and elsewhere SHOULD NOT have to PAY to get it back either. How the F*CK is that? If somebody STOLE something from you, then they should give it BACK, period end of story. There is no BUY BACK for something that has been stolen. Otherwise, you may as well be saying that in reality IT WASN'T STOLEN to begin with, because by BUYING IT BACK you are ACKNOWLEDGING the right of the THIEF to ownership and PROFIT off of something that IF THEY STOLE THEY HAVE NO RIGHTS TO. But these western trained idiots don't see this or DON'T CARE. It is this that is partly the ROOT of the plight of Africas problems, because without LAND there is no WEALTH for the people as LAND is the basis of ALL WEALTH in any economic system, because it is from the LAND that you get food, water, clothing, resources and EVERYTHING ELSE you need to survive. It isn't coming out the BEHINDS of those foreigners that the governments of Africa love to kiss. And those foreigners ARE NOT interested in using African land to HELP AFRICANS, not in the least.
quote: Nairobi — Concern is mounting in Kenya that the government has leased a big slice of agricultural land to the Qatari foreign investors to produce food for export.
Land rights activists are questioning the rationale of such a move, claiming the land could be used for domestic food production. The activists say that they are privy to information that the government has leased 40,000 hectares of land to the Qatari administration for cultivation of fruits and vegetables for export.
The area in question is fertile land, with abundant fresh water in the Tana River delta, about 150 kilometres north of Mombasa.
In exchange, the activists allege the Qatar government will construct a 2.5 billion dollar port in Lamu, which will become the country's second largest after Mombasa.
Investment... but at what price?
Some may interpret the move as one to attract vital foreign investment in line with part of Kenya's development strategy, known as Vision 2030. The port deal would be a valuable stimulus to development in a part of the country that has lagged behind.
But activists are arguing that the land has potential to boost the country's declining food reserves.
"We have no problem if the food was being produced for Kenya. Isn't it the height of recklessness in leadership for the government to give out land to Qatar when Kenya is food insecure and we are literally being fed? Where is the logic?" asked Odenda Lumumba, coordinator of the Kenya Land Alliance (KLA), an umbrella body of civil society groups advocating for land rights policies.
A third of Kenya's population of 34 million is facing starvation. Earlier this year, President Mwai Kibaki declared the situation a national disaster, appealing for food relief from well wishers including international donors.
Proponents of the proposed land leasing move, some in government, have defended it, saying it will create jobs and spur development, but there are fears that the local population might be displaced from the area they have lived on for years. Up to 150,000 families in farming and pastoralist communities there depend on the land which is held in trust for the people of Tana River delta by the government, according to the KLA.
Resistance
"The land has always been used by the pastoralists for grazing. They have been resisting the move because they fear they might be denied a place to graze their animals and to farm," Lumumba added.
The local community, led by the Tana River County Council, has threatened to take the matter to court, claiming the people were not consulted.
"This is land held in trust of the people of that region by the government. In giving out the land, have you consulted them? By leasing out the land which they use to feed their animals, you are making them vulnerable to drought," says Nixon Otieno, the head of policy and governance for ActionAid.
Similar concerns have been expressed by analysts who state that the local population may not have power to bargain to their advantage.
"Smallholders who are being displaced from their land cannot effectively negotiate terms favourable to them when dealing with such powerful national and international actors, nor can they enforce agreements if the foreign investor fails to provide promised jobs or local facilities," write Joachim von Braun and Ruth Meinzen-Dick in a study released in April, "'Land grabbing' by Foreign Investors in Developing Countries". The two researchers from the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute assert that unequal power relations in land acquisition deals places the livelihoods of the poor at risk.
Meinzen-Dick told IPS that concerns over people being displaced were justified, especially "in Africa, where much of the land is held under customary tenure. That means that, officially, the government is the "owner" of the land, and they may not always consult with or get the consent of people who will be affected."
Not a done deal
Allegations of the Kenyan authorities leasing land to Qatari emerged following President Mwai Kibaki's visit to Doha in November 2008, where he attended a development conference.
But Isaiah Kabira, head of the Presidential Press Service has dismissed the allegations of a land-leasing deal. "This was just a proposal, nothing has been signed yet," he told IPS, adding, "This plan is in the initial stage, and it is the first time the matter was being discussed by the two leaders."
According to Kabira, the matter is still under discussion, and details have not been finalised.
In an interview with IPS, Dorothy Angote, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Lands revealed that communication about leasing the land had not been passed on to her. "To date I have not received any official request or communication to process any lease of land to the Qatari government. I have not seen any document of any nature on any request for any land for the Qatari government. I will be happy to share such information," she stated.
Previous problems
It is not only the proposed deal to lease land in the Tana River Delta that has raised eyebrows. In 2004, Dominion Farms Limited, a subsidiary of Dominion Group of Companies, based in the US, was leased about 2,300 hectares of land which is part of the Yala Swamp, which covers an area approximately 21,800 hectares.
Despite a Memorandum of Understanding signed between the firm, the local council and the ministry of lands stipulating that the company would confine itself to the 2,300 hectares, the firm has since expanded its activities and is reportedly using 65 percent of the swamp's total area to conduct agricultural activities.
The deal, which granted the company a 25-year lease has seen community land submerged by water due to the hydro electric generation plant constructed by the company on the River Yala, according to community representatives. This has resulted into people's homes and farms being flooded, and the loss livestock. The representatives allege that over 500 families are facing forced eviction by the company which seeks to expand its activities.
But the government has dismissed such allegations saying it is not aware of any complaints from communities in the Yala River area. Besides, Angote claims that the issue is a private matter where the firm entered into deals with private land owners and therefore the question of the government being involved does not arise.
Guidelines needed
Such scenarios, analysts contend, call for an investment code that would clearly state the procedures that a foreign investor should follow and penalties to be taken in case investments affect local populations. The current investment code that came into force in 2005 has been criticised for failing to adhere to these specifications.
"Most investors have found that as a loophole and as they come in, they just engage very powerful politicians in the negotiations and very soon you find activities on the ground without considering the impact on the locals," noted Otieno.
These concerns come at a time when a National Land Policy, the first in the country, is in the pipeline. The document was approved by the cabinet June 25, after which it is expected to be discussed and finally adopted by Parliament. The instrument, among other things, gives guidance on how foreigners can access land, and ensures that land use by foreign investors complies with environmental standards. In addition, it ensures that land use benefits first and foremost local citizens.
Transparency issues will also be addressed. "The policy will remove powers of land allocation from the Executive and its cronies, making the process more transparent because another agency - the National Land Commission - will now perform that duty," Lumumba stated.
With these deals, Kenya joins the growing number of developing countries that are granting their land to rich nations seeking to boost their food security following the enduring effects of the 2007-2008 food price crises.
Similar deals have been reached elsewhere in Madagascar, Ethiopia, Sudan, Ghana and Mali, where land ranging from 800,000 to 160,000 hectares in these countries has been allocated to foreign companies, according to a 2009 study jointly by the International Fund for Agricultural Development, Food and Agriculture Organisation, and the International Institute for Environment and Development.
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Food Pirates: Indian firms buying farm land in Africa
quote: Indian firms are not only buying land in India, but are also moving across the shores. I call them the 'food pirates' and they are on a land grab spree. If you remember, we had a blog sometimes back about outsourcing food production wherein we had listed some Indian firms who were buying land in Latin America.
The list of the 'food pirates' is expanding. Imagine 80 Indian companies buying farmlands in Ethiopia, and that too with the connivance of the Indian government. One of these companies, the Bangalore-based Karuturi Global Ltd., has already acquired 8,50,000 acres of land in Ethiopia for cultivating food crops, sugarcane, palm oil etc. The company has started to farm in 30,000 acres. The same company has also acquired land in Kenya, and claims to to hold "one of the largest agriculture land banks in the world."
These 'food pirates' also have international support. Although the FAO is unhappy with the way these land acquisitions are taking place, calling them 'neo-colonism', the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington DC., as usual is backing these initiatives. It calls for a 'code of coduct' to be followed by these companies, but otherwise does not see anything terribly wrong with such land grabs. I think the time has come to examine the dubious role IFPRI has played all along in destroying food self-sufficiency in the developing world, more so in the African countries.
Dinesh C Sharma of Mail Today has done an excellent report about how Indian firms are trying to gobble cultivable land in Africa. These companies are going to produce food for shipping it back to India taking advantage of the duty-free options that the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are being provided with under the WTO negotiations. I wonder whether the international community realises that who will produce food for the people living in the African countries where these foreign companies, including Indian business, will grow food not for the people of Africa but for shipping it backhome.
In India had allowed foreign companies to buy agricultural land and grow food for shipping it backhome, I am sure there would have been an uproar. I wonder why the people (and more importantly the political leaders and elite) of the African and Latin American countries are not opposing and driving these companies out from within their national borders. The reason is simple. The rich and elite of every country is the real beneficiary of the process of globalisation. They see nothing wrong in such destructive policies, as long as they get the benefit. They are willing to compromise on even the national security as long as it brings them profits, visible through the ever-rising stock market.
Anyway, here is the Mail Today report:
Firms buy up African farms to raise crops that will be ‘sold’ to India
By Dinesh C Sharma Mail Today, June 25, 2009
IN A NEW wave of outsourcing, Indian firms are acquiring swathes of farmland in poor African countries to produce food meant to be exported to India.
But food policy experts are lambasting the strategy as “ neo- colonialist”. They say such deals exploit the natural resources of poor countries who are themselves facing acute food shortages.
Indian firms have signed land deals in Ethiopia, Kenya and Madagascar to produce a range of food crops, including rice, sugarcane, maize, pulses, oilseeds, tea and even vegetables. Some are also investing abroad to grow the biofuel crop jatropha.
More than half of Indian FDI of $ 4.15 billion (Rs 20,000 crore) in Ethiopia at the end of 2008 was in agricultural and floricultural sectors, with investments coming from about 80 companies.
The government is providing cheaper credit lines to Ethiopian entities to produce agricultural products for export to India. It is also backing these investments through schemes like ‘Duty Free Tariff Preference Scheme’, under which Ethiopian agri-products can enter India on lower tariffs.
This indicates the motive behind Indian investments in Ethiopia is to boost agricultural products meant for export to India.
India’s small and fragmented land holdings are unsuitable for large-scale commercial farming. Water is also in short supply. So these firms are rushing to Africa, where they can acquire large contiguous tracts of cultivable land.
Most of the Indian companies involved in this new wave of outsourcing are entrepreneurial firms engaged in agro-products and floriculture that are now diversifying into agriculture production.
The government seems to be promoting the acquisition of farmland in foreign countries as an alternative to purchasing food from international markets.
Besides limited availability of water and arable land, bottlenecks in storage and distribution and expansion of biofuel production are creating uncertainties and constraints in food production.
But the Food and Agriculture Organisation ( FAO) has dubbed such deals as “land grabbing”. “It is unfortunate that the Indian government is supporting such acts,” said Devinder Sharma of the Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security. “Such deals are bound to result in civil strife in host countries in coming days.”
One of the largest land acquisition deals in Ethiopia has been signed by the Bangalore-based Karuturi Global Limited. The company’s Gambella Agriculture Project was launched by Ethiopian agriculture minister Dr Abera Deresa and Indian ambassador Gurjit Singh jointly in the first week of June.
The company says it has signed an agreement with the Ethiopian government for acquiring 8,50,000 acres of land for cultivation of food grains, sugarcane, palm oil and other crops. Already 30,000 acres of land has been brought under cultivation. And it has acquired land in Kenya too. With these two deals, the company claims to hold “one of the largest agriculture land banks in the world”.
An agribusiness company named Varun Agriculture SARL has signed a contract farming agreement with 13 local landowners’ associations in the Sofia region of Madagascar. The deals, signed on January 26, cover a land area of 1,70,914 hectares.
“We are encouraging more Indian companies to come into mainstream agriculture so they can contribute to local demand and food security,” Indian ambassador Gurjit Singh noted while addressing an Ethiopian parliamentary panel earlier this month.
The government is investing directly as well. A loan of $ 640 million (Rs 3,000 crore) has been provided to Ethiopia to boost sugar production for exports over five years. The soft loans, with an annual interest rate of 1.75 per cent, are to be repaid over 20 years. India had never before offered credit of this magnitude to any single country.
Food-importing countries with land and water constraints but rich in capital, such as the Gulf states, are at the forefront of new investments in farmland abroad, pointed out a recent report from the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute.
In addition, countries with large populations and food security concerns such as India and China are seeking opportunities to produce food overseas. These investments are targeted at developing countries where production costs are much lower and land and water more abundant.
Most land deals are taking place in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Madagascar, Mozambique, Sudan and Tanzania. The FAO report also pointed out that rising agricultural commodity prices make acquisition of land an attractive option. Agribusiness companies, traditionally involved in food processing and distribution, are entering direct production.
Although political risk remains high in many African countries, policy reforms have improved their attractiveness.
These deals have long-term implications for global agriculture.
They may impact the balance between small-scale and largescale farming and the future livelihoods of small-scale farmers. The relative importance of export-led agriculture is bound to grow, and so will the role of agribusinesses in agricultural production, processing and distribution of food.
There are ethical and environmental concerns as well. “Outsourcing food production will ensure food security for investing countries but would leave behind a trail of hunger, starvation and food scarcities for local populations,” Sharma said. “The environmental tab of highly intensive farming — devastated soils, dry aquifer, and ruined ecology from chemical infestation — will be left for the host country to pick up.”
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IMF opposes Chinese mining deal to build infrastructure in Congo
quote: Congo Will Adapt China Deal to Appease IMF Concerns (Update1) Share | Email | Print | A A A
By Franz Wild
June 5 (Bloomberg) -- The Democratic Republic of Congo will put part of its $9-billion investment agreement with China on hold to take into account concerns voiced by the International Monetary Fund, said Moise Ekanga, who oversees the accord for Congo.
The central African country has put a $3-billion chunk of infrastructure investments by their Chinese partners ”on the back-burner” to satisfy objections by the IMF that the agreement will add to Congo’s $11-billion external debt, said Ekanga, the executive-secretary of the Coordination and Monitoring Office for the Sino-Congolese Program.
“We’re the IMF’s partner,” Ekanga said today in an interview in the capital, Kinshasa. “We can’t close our ears to what they say.” This change in the Congolese position means the $3 million second-phase deliveries will be considered only after completion of the first, he added, without specifying the projects.
Last year’s agreement gives four Chinese companies including state-owned Sinohydro Corp. and China Railway Engineering Corp. rights over more than 10 million metric tons of copper deposits and 600,000 tons of cobalt. In turn, they were to invest $6 billion in building roads, railways, hospitals and schools to help President Joseph Kabila live up to election promises. A further $3 billion will go into the joint mining project.
IMF Managing-Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn last week said Congo wouldn’t qualify for $10 billion in debt relief and another $500 million in financial support until the agreement is altered.
Difficult Position
“The IMF is putting us in a difficult position because they want to cut our investment,” Ekanga said. “It’s a loss for us.”
Struck by the global financial crisis, the IMF expects Congo’s economy to grow 2.7 percent this year, down from 6 percent last year. After metal prices tumbled last year, more than half the miners in the southern Katanga province stopped output. The province holds a third of the world’s cobalt reserves and 4 percent of copper.
The IMF’s opposition to the deal represents an attempt by the West to counter China’s investments in Africa, according to Gregory Mthembu-Salter of the South African Institute of International Affairs. “It’s a confrontation between the Western donors and China in Congo,” he said in a June 2 interview. “The fall guy in this will be the Congolese.”
Credit Guarantee
The Congolese state is guaranteeing the credit from the Export-Import Bank of China, which means it should be seen as national debt, according to the Washington-based lender.
China’s ambassador to Congo, Wu Zexian, this week denied there would be any changes to the agreement. Exim Bank will be taking the risk and it doesn’t burden the Congolese state, he said.
The state will need to take on debt only if the mining project, which will repay the loan, fails, Ekanga said. This is covered by the mineral reserves supplied, he added. “There is risk everywhere in the world,” he said. “Does this mean we won’t stick with the contract? No. The risk is totally minimized.”
Congo also agreed a longer maturity on the credit, which improves the repayment conditions to meet with IMF requests, Ekanga said.
The Chinese companies have already started infrastructure investments worth over $300 million, Ekanga said. Another $400 million in developments is currently being planned, he added.
Sicomines, the joint mining venture in which Congo holds a 32 percent stake, will complete its geological study by the end of the year, Ekanga said.
Trade between China and Africa grew to $55 billion in 2006 from $10 billion in 2001 according to the IMF. Angola has received more than $5 billion, while Nigeria may benefit from a $8.3 billion railway project.
So how come they weren't concerned about the OTHER 6billion dollars that would ALSO be debt to Africa?
And why is Congo going into debt for OTHER PEOPLE to profit from? Why don't THE MINING COMPANIES pay back the debt? If they are mining in Africa, then there MUST be profits to be made, so WHY should Africa be left with the debt while FOREIGNERS walk off with ALL the profit? Why can't China FINANCE ITS OWN activities in Africa? And if AFRICANS are going to be left with the debt then WHY aren't they getting more control of the project, since THEY are going to be the once taking the DEBT LOAD? And why is a LOAN from a CHINESE GOVERNMENT BANK to finance CHINESE MINING OPERATIONS debt on CONGO? The Congolese aren't getting any of that money so WHY do they have to pay it back? Not to mention the fact that MOST of the workers in these projects will be Chinese, using Chinese equipment and setting up Chinese communities SEPARATE from the rest of the Congolese.
One word: GANGSTA economics. You pay me to rape your wife and enslave your kids and make money off them. But the IMF balks at you paying to actually get a pair of pants to wear....
Meanwhile the Great White Hope (puppet) Morgan Tsvangarai is already doing the master's bidding:
quote: Zimbabwe May Reduce Its Local Ownership Requirements (Update1) Share | Email | Print | A A A
By Thomas Biesheuvel
June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwe is reviewing a policy that compels foreign mining companies to sell as much as 51 percent of their local units to black Zimbabweans, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said.
It is “wrong” to expect companies who invest in Zimbabwe to give up as much as 51 percent, and the requirement is “far too high,” he said at an investment conference in London today.
Zimbabwe is attempting to attract investment into its mining industry after a decade-long political and economic crisis led to famine, disease and hyperinflation. Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change formed a coalition with President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party in February.
The nation’s economy is recovering after contracting every year for a decade, and the International Monetary Fund is forecasting growth of 2.8 percent this year.
Mining is “essential” to the reconstruction of Zimbabwe and the country must therefore offer incentives to potential investors, Tsvangirai said.
Zimbabwe has the world’s second-largest reserves of platinum and chrome and also has deposits of gold and coal. Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd., the world’s second-biggest platinum producer, and Rio Tinto Group, the world’s third- largest miner, own assets in the country.
To contact the reporter on this story: Thomas Biesheuvel in London at tbiesheuvel@bloomberg.net
quote: A million Chinese farmers have joined the rush to Africa, according to one estimate, underlining concerns that an unchecked "land grab" not seen since the 19th century is under way.
Some of the world's richest countries are buying or leasing land in some of the world's poorest to satisfy insatiable appetites for food and fuel. In the new scramble for Africa, nearly 2.5m hectares (6.2m acres) of farmland in just five sub-Saharan countries have been bought or rented in the past five years at a total cost of $920m (£563m), research shows.
"Lands that only a short time ago seemed of little outside interest are now being sought by international investors to the tune of hundreds of thousands of hectares," said a recent report by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). It described the huge deals reported to date as "the tip of the iceberg".
The report said farmland purchases are being driven by food security concerns, rising demand and changing dietary habits, expanded biofuel production and interest in what is, in theory, an improved investment climate in some African countries.
In fact China, well known for its interests in minerals and oil, appears to be one of the more modest "neocolonialists" of African agriculture. Vast tracts of the continent's arable but fallow land are being bought by companies from India, South Korea, America and several oil-rich, food-poor Arab nations.
Lorenzo Cotula, senior researcher at the IFAD, said: "The role of China needs a more subtle analysis. We found that in Africa, China is not one of the big players in terms of acquiring large tracts of land. There is South Korea, there are Gulf-based countries, and there are also western institutions."
Wealthy corporations have pioneered controversial African mega-farms to outsource food production and use cheaper labour. In India, such mega-farms are seen as more efficient than the traditionally small, family-run holdings throughout the country.
Indian farming companies, backed by government loans, have bought hundreds of thousands of hectares in Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Senegal and Mozambique, where they are growing rice, sugar cane, maize and lentils to feed their domestic market.
A report published in April by the International Food Policy Research Institute revealed the extent of "land grabbing" by foreign investors in Africa. Since 2006, the UK-based Lonrho corporation leased 25,000 hectares for rice in Angola; China secured 2.8m hectares for a biofuel oil palm plantation in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and Qatar leased 20,000 hectares for fruit and vegetable cultivation in exchange for funding a $2.3bn port in Kenya.
In Ethiopia alone, the report found, India invested $4bn in agriculture, including flower-growing and sugar estates; the UAE secured 5,000 hectares for tea in a joint venture with East Africa agribusiness; Germany's Flora EcoPower secured 13,000 hectares for biofuel crops; Britain's Sun Biofuels secured land for jatropha, a biofuel crop; and unknown Saudi investors leased land in exchange for $100m in investment.
In Madagascar, the South Korea's Daewoo wanted to secure 1.3m hectares to grow corn, but the deal collapsed for political reasons. In Nigeria, Britain's Trans4mation Agric-tech secured 10,000 hectares, while an unknown Chinese company secured 10,000 hectares for rice.
Sudan has also been a prime target: Egypt secured land to grow 2m tonnes of wheat annually; Jordan secured 25,000 hectares for livestock and crops; Kuwait secured a "giant" strategic partnership; Qatar set up a joint holding company to invest in agriculture; Saudi Arabia leased 10,000 hectares for wheat, vegetables, and livestock; South Korea secured 690,000 hectares for wheat; and the UAE is investing in 378,000 hectares after already securing 30,000 for corn, alfalfa, and possibly wheat, potatoes and beans.
Critics argue that countries are selling their land assets at the expense of smallhold farmers and hungry populations. The institute's report warned: "Unequal power relations in the land acquisition deals can put the livelihoods of the poor at risk. Since the state often formally owns the land, the poor run the risk of being pushed off the plot in favour of the investor, without consultation or compensation."
quote: Gwynne Dyer: Neocolonialists' African land grab By Gwynne Dyer
In the past two years, various non-African countries—China, India, South Korea, Britain and the Arab Gulf states lead the pack—have been taking over huge tracts of farmland in Africa by lease or purchase.
This is to produce food or biofuels for their own use. Critics call them "neocolonialists", but they will not be as successful as the old ones.
The scale of the land grab is truly impressive. In Sudan, South Korea has acquired 690,00 hectares of land to grow wheat. The United Arab Emirates, which already has 30,000 hectares in Sudan, is investing in another 378,000 hectares to grow corn, alfalfa, wheat, potatoes, and beans. In Tanzania, Saudi Arabia is seeking 500,000 hectares.
Even bigger chunks of land are being leased to produce biofuels. China has acquired 2.8 million hectares in the Democratic Republic of Congo to create the world's largest oil-palm plantation (replacing all that messy rain-forest and useless wildlife with tidy lines of palm trees), and is negotiating for two million hectares in Zambia to grow jatropha.
British firms have secured big tracts of land in Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Tanzania.
Only rarely is there protest from local people. One striking exception is in Madagascar, where the announcement of a 99-year contract to lease 1.3 million hectares to South Korea's Daewoo corporation to grow corn helped to trigger the recent revolution.
"Madagascar's land is neither for sale nor for rent," said the new leader, Andry Rajoelina, who cancelled the deal.
After the revolution, it turned out that another 465,000 hectares of land in Madagascar had been leased to an Indian company, Varun International, to grow rice for consumption in India.
That deal is also being cancelled by the new government—but elsewhere, the acquisition of huge tracts of African land by Asian and European governments and companies goes ahead almost unopposed.
Why Africa? Because that's the last place where there are large areas of good agricultural land that aren't already completely occupied by local farmers. There are usually some peasants scratching a living from the land, but they are few and poor, and they can easily be bought or driven out.
For the foreigners, the lure is profit, or food security, or both. For those who are investing in biofuels, there are real profits to be made, at least in the short term. But for those seeking food security, the new African food resources will probably become unavailable just when they are needed most.
The surge in grain prices in 2007-2008 drove many countries that depend heavily on imported food to start acquiring African farmland. The immediate reason for a doubling or tripling of the price of wheat, rice and corn (maize) was a couple of local crop failures and the diversion of large amounts of American corn into biofuel production, but the underlying cause was that the global food supply is falling further and further behind demand.
Since 1945 the world's population has tripled, and so has its food production, growing at an average of about three percent annually through the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, and most of the '90s. But for most of the past decade, grain production has essentially flat-lined, while the global population has gone on growing.
By 2006, just before the prices soared, the world grain reserve—the amount that is left in the storage bins each year just before the new harvest comes in—had shrunk from 116 days of food for everybody in the world in 1999 to only 57 days.
Last year's generally good harvests brought prices back down, but the outlook for this year is dire, with drought in about half of the world's main grain-growing areas.
So wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to compete for scarce stocks of grain at inflated prices on the international grain market when prices soar?
Wouldn't it be great if you could rely instead on your own food supply, even if it isn't located in your own country?
That's why it's mostly countries that depend heavily on food imports that are involved in the current land-rush in Africa, but they are forgetting two things.
The first is that sovereignty trumps contractual obligations every time. If the African countries that are leasing their land fall into difficulties in feeding their own populations, as they are likely to do if world grain prices rise sharply, the first resource they will turn to is the foreign plantations on their territory.
Governments that cannot feed their populations face overthrow, and will break contracts without the slightest hesitation.
The second is that when things really get tough—when climate change starts to bite, grain yields are falling in most places, and what remains of the international grain market cannot meet demand at any price—Africa is not the place to be sourcing your emergency supply of grain. Almost the entire continent lies in the tropics or the sub-tropics, which is where food production will be hit worst.
The neocolonialists will make some money in the short term, and they may even enjoy a false sense of security for a while, but they will not get much for their investment in the long run. Trouble is, Africans will not get much out of it either, although some of their leaders certainly will.
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But all the sound good talk about African "food security" is simply a code word for RE colonization and RE enslavement of Africans, in the name of food security. The goal being to make Africans into sharecropper tenants on massive FOREIGN OWNED plantations, where they get their food, utilities (if any), seeds and everything else PROVIDED by the FOREIGN land owner.... As long as they meet their monthly quota or rent payment. Miss a payment and you're OUT and they simply take the land back.
This and outright land grabbing involving foreign EXPATRIATE communities are the hidden meanings that are hidden by the word "investment" in African agriculture. They mean FOREIGN control of African agriculture and land, with SECURITY controls to KEEP the Africans from taking it back.
AN example is the Dominion Group of Companies who are operating in Kenya, from the article in the first post of this thread:
From their website:
quote: Dominion Farms
The mission of this Kenyan company is the production and sale of rice, other cereal grains and tilapia fish to the markets of Kenya and surrounding countries. Only three African countries have fewer acres of active cropland per capita than does Kenya. At less than one tenth of one acre of cropland per person, Kenya cannot hope to feed its citizens without greater allocation of productive land for commercial irrigated farming. At full production, the farm will help enable this country to reduce dependence on imported food, will serve as a demonstration of productive farming practices and will return a profit to Dominion. The company is committed to the enrichment of the local population through decent employment, out-grower contracting and the support of schools, clinics and emerging community initiatives.(The MISSION of this company is to MAKE MONEY off the land, labor and resources of Africa while giving TOKEN support to the "locals" by giving them a little extra straw or mud for the local mud hut they call a school.... )
In 2003 Dominion leased 17,050 contiguous acres of lowlands in the Nyanza Province of western Kenya for a term of 45 years. Situated near the eastern shore of Lake Victoria precisely at the equator, the farm is part of a land mass fed by the Yala River. The leasehold is being developed into an irrigated commercial farming operation – a process involving 80 miles of canals, a complex system of flood control dikes and the necessary infrastructure for the growing, drying, milling and storage of rice and other commodity grains.
Dominion has permanently relocated key construction, maintenance, agricultural, engineering and management personnel to Kenya and has shipped more than 600 tons of state-of-the-art construction and farming equipment from the U.S. and Brazil. While the leveling and construction of rice paddies will continue for years, the farm has operated commercially since 2006 as a producer and miller of long grain rice. At the rate of two crops per year, the farm is expected to produce 115,000 tons of rough rice per annum when it is completed – a major contributor to food security and to the economy of Kenya.
Scheduled for completion in 2010 is Phase I of an aquaculture operation that will ultimately produce 20,000 tons of tilapia fish per annum. Using rice bran and algae from the farm, Dominion’s feed mill can produce most of the feed required for this large-scale operation. A processing plant to be built will prepare fresh fillets for shipment throughout East Africa, the EU and elsewhere.
An important element of the farm is the demonstration of successful technologies to the agricultural community of Kenya – particularly with respect to irrigation practices. While agriculture accounts for 25% of the Gross National Product of Kenya and while over 70% of the population is actively engaged in farming, 95% of all cropland is dependent on rain-fed production. Farmers are under-invested in agricultural technologies and equipment. The Government of Kenya therefore encourages foreign investment in large-scale irrigation projects and in the attendant agro-based processing operations. (WHICH IS A CODE WORD FOR FOREIGN SLAVE OWNER RECEIVERSHIP OF THE LAND. WHY cant these companies pursue the SAME level of development WITHOUT foreign ownership? - Doug M)
A unique feature of the farm is the unusual degree of integration among produce lines and their by-products. In order to reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers, water that is high in nitrates from the aquaculture operation flows into and fertilizes rice paddies. Settling ponds rich in fecal matter are dredged and the natural fertilizers are spread on crops as organic manure. Irrigation water leaving the farm slowly filters through thousands of acres of papyrus wetlands before making its way into Lake Victoria. Rice hulls will be burned to produce boiler heat for the feed mill and to dry grain following harvest. Electrical power will emanate from small hydroelectric generators built into the company’s dam on the Yala River at the south edge of the leasehold.
The social and economic progress of the local community is an important consideration in Dominion’s business and many improvements and activities have been implemented. The company has provided construction materials to a number of schools and clinics. Public water distribution lines have been extended and improvements for bathing and for the watering of cattle have been constructed along the new reservoir. Dominion contributes financially to special educational events and sports equipment has been furnished to schools throughout the area. Each year the company donates tons of rice to community governments for distribution to local citizens. Among the most promising activities for economic stimulation is Dominion’s out-grower program whereby the company will provide seed, fertilizer and technical assistance to groups of local farmers and will contract with them to purchase their crops at prices greater than would otherwise be available to these smallholders. Other improvements benefiting local communities are the construction and maintenance of roads, the recharging of nearby lakes with fresh water from the Yala River, improved fishing in the new reservoir and recharged lakes, and – perhaps most important – the creation of a market economy that relies on hard currency from dependable wages. Direct farm employment ranges from 300 to 800 people, dependent on construction and harvesting activitites.
Nothing but glorified slavery, where the Africans are STILL at the bottom of the economic food chain with NOTHING to call their own, even the land that they have been on for THOUSANDS of years. These foreigners won't GIVE ANYTHING to Africans from altruism. THERE are ALWAYS strings attached. So they will give them tractors, seed (genetically modified with stipulations you cannot REPRODUCE them as they are OWNED by Monsanto), water, irrigation and so on, but you have to PAY for it and you DON'T OWN IT. The foreign landowner becomes a new SLAVE MASTER with absolute control of your livelihood from jobs, to infrastructure to health care to food to education to everything else. ALL secured by good sounding African flunkies saying Africans need help.
Sharecropping:
quote: Africa
In settler colonies of colonial Africa, sharecropping was a feature of the agricultural life. Black sharecroppers would occasionally go to the legendary swann to wish luck for the day of picking cotton. White farmers, who owned most of the land, were frequently unable to work the whole of their farm for lack of capital. They therefore allowed black farmers to work the excess on a sharecropping basis. In South Africa the 1913 Natives' Land Act [8]outlawed the ownership of land by blacks in areas designated for white ownership and effectively reduced the status of most sharecroppers to tenant farmers and then to farm laborers. In the 1960s, generous subsidies to white farmers meant that most farmers could afford to work their entire farms, and sharecropping faded out.
The arrangement has reappeared in other African countries in modern times, including Ghana[7] and Zimbabwe.[8]
quote: Most of the Arable land left on the planet is in Africa....More and more the world will look to Africa as its bread basket....
So why are Africans starving? And why is it that the arable land situation in Africa only becomes a concern when FOREIGNERS are starving? Why wasn't this a concern all along with so many starving Africans?
But Hillary Clinton in Africa wasn't the only big news, there was also the AGOA forum for African trade and development. Look at this hilarious article:
quote: — SA's fishing industry may face increased competition from Namibian fish exports, which could have a devastating effect on the industry.
Namibia has not signed an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU), which is expected to result in it losing its trade preferences later this year.
Industry role players yesterday said that Namibia was therefore likely to divert most of its exports, currently destined for the European market, to SA.
Namibia's exports face steep import duties in the absence of a preferential trade deal.
Namibia exports mainly beef, fish and grapes to Europe. While South African representatives of the beef industry were noncommittal about the possible effect of Namibia's export diversion , the South African Deep Sea Trawling Industry Association's secretary, Roy Bross, said increased fish exports to SA could have grave implications for the local industry, which employs about 10000 people.
Namibian fish entered the EU duty- free under a previous trade pact dubbed the Cotonou agreement, but will now likely attract duties of up to 20%.
The Cotonou agreement was incompatible with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules and has been replaced by the EPA.
"Potentially, Namibia's volumes are as large as our own. Namibia would have to bear the increased duty, but substantial volumes of Namibian product could head this way, and this will have a real and very negative impact on our industry," Bross said.
It is hilarious because all this food is being produced by European expatriates for EUROPEAN consumption all across Southern Africa, but again, the Africans are starving. Now they want to sell it to whites in SA....
What about lets feed the Africans with this food?
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quote: Ethiopia is on the defensive over a plan to offer 2.7 million hectares of land to foreign, mainly Asian, companies despite millions crying out for food aid from the international community.
According to Ethiopian Agriculture Ministry officials, Ethiopia has set aside 2.7 million hectors of land for foreign companies from the Middle East and East Asia countries.
The government is committed to handing over 1.7 million hectares of the arable land to the investors before the next harvest season.
World top oil producing countries including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and giant economic nations like India, China and South Korea are queuing in Addis Ababa to be allowed to start big commercial farming ventures meant to feed their own people.
Indian investment
The competition among "land grabber" states has become fierce and the overall number of companies applying for land in the country has reached 8,000. However, only 2,000 companies have secured farmland.
India is leading the land buying race and so far its investment in agriculture in Ethiopia has reached more than $2.5 billion. The country's total investment in Ethiopia was $300 million three years ago and now stands at $4.3 billion. It is double compared with Western aid.
Outgoing Indian ambassador to Ethiopia Gurjit Singh believes that Indian investment will reach between $8 billion and $10 billion in a few years.
"I don't think this is the end of the story, but just the beginning," he said. Currently, more than 5.2 million people in the rural south and east of the country need emergency food aid from the international community. Another eight million rural poor are supported by an aid scheme.
Mr Esayas Kebede, the director of Agricultural Investment Support Office, said that large scale foreign commercial farming was a way to end poverty and hunger.
"We have abundant land and labour, but we don't have a finance and technology to feed our people," Mr Esayas said.
"It's not land grabbing, we are looking to generate foreign currency to support our development effort," he added. "It's better than begging," he said.
Agriculture delegation Mr Esayas downplayed the size of land allocated to the investors, saying it is only 2.7 million hectares compared to the country's total arable land estimated at 74 million hectares of which Ethiopian farmers plough only 17 million hectares. Relevant Links
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is also supportive of the land grabs. After welcoming a Saudi agriculture delegation recently, he said: "We told them (the Saudis) that we would be very eager to provide hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land for investment."
Some critics, including Mr Jacques Diouf, the head of FAO, warn against this form of "neo-colonialism" but others say the investment can boost economic growth in Africa.
Ethiopian People Democratic Front (EPRDF), the ruling party, is considering its land use policy and allowing private investors to cultivate it alongside more than 14 million Ethiopian peasant farmers.
The ruling party will meet to revisit a proposed land use policy shift in September.
The idea that this will help Ethiopians is pure nonsense. For the past 1000 years or more foreigners have been stealing Africa's wealth, now some idiotic leaders in Africa believe that foreigners exporting food to feed their own people will ease African starvation. If Ethiopian farmers need financing and technology, then WHY aren't they getting it? THAT should be the first priority not bringing in foreigners who have governments THAT SUPPORT them with financing and technology FOR THEMSELVES. Why is it so EASY for foreigners to DO FOR THEMSELVES and Africans are always BEGGING even though they have PLENTY? If these projects are not PUTTING MONEY and TECHNOLOGY into the hands of Ethiopian farmers then how on earth is that helping Ethiopians? It isn't and it won't because only retarded corrupt politicians would deny the obvious: that foreigners don't give a F*CK about Africans. The only people who give a F*CK about Africans and can do anything to help Africans make progress IS AFRICANS. All this NON SENSE about foreign AID and INVESTMENT is BULLSH*T as NONE of it is REALLY helping Africans at all. And you know these corrupt politicians are IN THE POCKET of the foreigners when they claim that it is the lack of FOREIGN intervention that keeps them starving, when any FOOL knows it is foreign intervention that is CAUSING THEM to starve in the first place. How on earth that after 200,000 years of humans being in Africa they now need FOREIGNERS to put food in their face? You mean to tell me they never figured out how to do that on their own? Please.
And why is it that there are always millions of acres of land in Africa that somehow Africans don't own? What the hell? Why are African governments so quick to RECOGNIZE and ASSIST FOREIGNERS to own, control and benefit off African land and wealth before Africans?
It is as if After 200 years of being colonized, some Africans are operating as the colonial master, hoarding African land for foreign use and making sure that Africans never rise above the level of a peasant, slaving for foreign land owners and companies, dependent on them for EVERYTHING in life: food, clothing, housing and water. That is what this land grab is all about and nothing else, which is neo colonial puppets doing the bidding of their foreign masters on African soil. It is as if these phony leaders want to pretend that Africans cant do anything for themselves without colonial masters standing over them and exploiting them.
quote: Paris — The reform of Niger's constitution to allow president Mamadou Tandja to remain in power beyond his original mandate and even become president for life, was motivated by the hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into the West African country as a consequence of opaque foreign, especially French, investments in the local uranium mines.
This is the opinion of environmental activists and pundits who consider the referendum a serious violation of elementary democratic rules.
Tandja, who has ruled Niger since 1999 and whose second mandate as president was scheduled to expire next December, defended the constitutional reform and the continuance of his term as an alleged "people's call" for his personal supervision of "all the important work that I started." This "work" is the foreign investment in uranium and other minerals.
According to official figures, more than 92 percent of Niger's population voted in the referendum on Aug 4 to extend Tandja's mandate for another three years and also approved the constitutional amendment which will allow him to extend his mandate for life.
But, critics say, the real reason for these steps is corruption. The financial windfall that Niamey receives from foreign investments in the uranium, gold and oil fields, is enormous and tempting, according to several sources.
The French environmental group Sortire du nucléaire ("Phase out nuclear power") called the referendum "a coup d'état" and accused the French government of complicity with Tandja as Paris's "silence condones the violation of human rights and corrupt practices" in Niger.
France, which has been exploiting uranium mines in Niger for 45 years, is the main foreign investor in Niger. Eight months ago, in Jan 2009, the French state-owned company Areva obtained a new concession to exploit the giant uranium mine of Imourarene, some 900 km north-east from the country's capital Niamey,
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If it's a question of lack of finances to purchase the appropriate technology then it is puzzling why African central banks just don't "print" money as is done in the West. For example, when the U.S. government need some cash to pump into its parasite banks all it does is ask the Fed(the U.S. Central Bank) to "print" it--trillions and trillions.
In the case of Africa the African Development Bank can become its central bank and behave exactly as the central banks do when they need cash.
Again, the question is why don't African governments have to rely on the usurious and criminal IMF and World Bank for loans?
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More foreign backed violence, now this time in Senegal. "Rebels" against who? seem to always pop up with some lame story of being in "rebellion" against something, but the only people they seem to be killing and systematically running off the land are poor black Africans. I thought rebellions were about taking BACK the land and resources from tyrants and oppressors? Such anti-African violence, which has no rhyme or reason(it isn't really putting blacks in control of anything), are telltale signs of foreign inspired violence. This time the rebels strike in the heart of the fertile farming regions of Senegal, seemingly to run off the people from their farms. Who on earth would benefit from that? Certainly not the Africans. Certainly only foreigners who want to grab that farm land for themselves.... Such so-called rebellions only result in African land free for foreigners to take over without paying the locals or having to deal with their "rights", which makes such rebellions a contradiction in terms. A true REBELLION is supposed to be fighting AGAINST such exploitation not FOR it. It is supposed to be fighting FOR the Africans and AGAINST the foreigners and their cronies. Obviously the rebels have to be backed by someone because if these countries are so poor, where are the weapons coming from?
quote: Ziguinchor — Residents of Senegal's Casamance region are shaken by some of the heaviest fighting in years between the army and alleged separatist troops, staying away from their plantations and closing shops before nightfall, residents and aid workers say.
On 25 August automatic weapon and rocket-propelled grenade fire was heard in the main city Ziguinchor from 9pm for about three hours, residents told IRIN. "It sounded as if it was just behind the walls of our home," said a local NGO worker who requested anonymity "because the situation is delicate".
"We have not seen fighting like this here since 2002," he said.
The clashes, between Senegalese soldiers and fighters thought to be with the Movement for the Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC), came four days after similar fighting took place some 10km south of Ziguinchor. Residents and local authorities told IRIN the earlier fighting forced scores of people to flee their homes; as of 26 August aid workers and authorities said it was not yet clear how many people had been displaced.
Casamance is the site of one of Africa's longest-running conflicts, sparked when MFDC separatists launched a rebellion in 1982. The region - where agriculture is the main source of local income - has been gripped by sporadic violence as a definitive settlement has yet to be achieved. In recent months a spike in armed attacks on civilians prompted a government dusk-to-dawn curfew on major roads. Landmines have killed and injured hundreds of people since 1990.
Despite the dangers families have been gradually returning to their home villages where fighting drove them out some 20 years ago, desperate to return to their land.
"We are quite preoccupied about the current situation," said Christina de Bruin, UN area security coordinator and head of the UN Children's Fund sub-office in Ziguinchor. "Last night's [25 August] incidents...in the area of Diabir are quite alarming. This is an area just behind the Ziguinchor airport and only about 2km to 3km from the centre of town."
She said the UN has temporarily reduced some of its movements in the south of Ziguinchor "until we have a better reading of the situation".
Residents told IRIN fighters calling themselves MFDC warned people not to go to their fields around Ziguinchor. "The fighters were in groups of five," resident Ibrahima Goudiaby told IRIN. "They came and blocked all the exits from the neighbourhood, stealing [bicycles, mobile phones and identity papers] of residents and of people returning late from the fields."
He added: "They told us not to go to our plantations because they will suspect us of being army informants. This jeopardizes our crops because we were just in the middle of turning the land and transplanting."
And then at the other end of the spectrum of outright violence, there is the political violence against blacks in South Africa:
quote: In 2000, the United Nations member states committed themselves to an eight-point development programme to improve the lives of those most in need by 2015, and these became known as the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs).
Five of the eight goals are health-related, and include the eradication of hunger and extreme poverty; gender equality; reduced maternal and child mortality and combat HIV/AIDS and malaria.
Sadly, South Africa's child mortality, hunger and poverty rates have worsened since our government pledged itself to the MDGs. It has made no progress in reducing maternal mortality and insufficient progress in combating HIV/AIDS.
"A concerted effort is especially needed to reduce the number of new HIV infections. The HIV/AIDS emergency, however, should not overshadow the urgency of taking bold steps to tackle alcohol consumption, or behaviours associated with the growing prevalence of non-communicable diseases," state all the South Africa Series authors in the concluding paper.
Although South Africa's poor health status paints a depressing picture, authors identify five main priority areas - all premised on the idea that achieving health for all can only be achieved via primary healthcare.
Firstly, it points out that capacity to implement health policies needs to be built at local level. While the district health authorities are responsible for implementing health policies, they have not been given the authority to take operational decisions.
Secondly, health expenditure needs to be oriented towards primary health care. Instead, it continues to be dominated by tertiary hospitals with 30% of the health budget being spent on the "super-tertiary hospitals" in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban although the health needs of the nation "will not be met by high-level centralised services".
Of course, NGOs and the UN will not fix Africa because they will not address the CORE ISSUE, which is the unequal and unfair distribution of goods and resources coupled with the neo colonial systems of government that ONLY exist to benefit whites and other foreigners. Instead of Africans owning farms, industry and resources generating wealth and producing products, food and water for Africans, they want Africans to depend on AID(s). Instead of African owned economies they want WHITE and FOREIGN expatriate based economies (or investment as they call it) which is nothing more than modern slavery. It slavery because the Africans DON'T OWN or CONTROL anything and DEPEND on the little chump change they get from back breaking labor for NON AFRICANS, who give them little to nothing to live on, let alone move ahead. And this is on AFRICAN land, using AFRICAN labor and extracting AFRICAN resources, NONE of which goes to benefit Africans. Africans should be using THEIR OWN land and their OWN labor and their OWN resources to feed, clothe, house and benefit THEMSELVES. That is the ONLY solution. It works for EVERYONE ELSE and of course it would work for Africans. But this is where the propaganda of lies about African history come into play. If Africans were so stupid, then how did they live for over 200,000 years if they didn't know how to hunt, skin, make habitats, weapons and grow food for themselves? Why is it that European miners always seem to be starting their mines ON TOP OF African mines that are thousands of years old if Africans WERE TOO STUPID to know the value of mining and the "shiny rocks" that came out of it? That is BULL SH*T.
Of course the ONLY reason South African health care is so bad for blacks is because BLACKS don't HAVE THE MONEY to BUILD a proper health care system. And the REASON they don't have money is because those RETARDED ANC CLOWNS allowed the whites to KEEP all the money they stole from Africans, with no reparations of land, no reparations of money or wealth and NOTHING ELSE. So the dirt poor blacks stayed dirt poor and the rich whites stayed rich. Duh. But that is what happens when you reward your enemy for being your enemy. That is self hate. Bash your enemy and live like a man or woman and be free in all respects: economic, social, political and industrial. So now instead of being slaves with no political freedom, they are slaves with political freedom. But they are still slaves in the same apartheid created shanty towns and slums created after they were run off their land 150 years ago. If they were REALLY free, there would be no more slums, Africans would be dispersed BACK onto their own land, in new towns and cities FINANCED with the money they TOOK BACK from the whites.... But that isn't fair huh? I guess it is only fair for whites to slap around blacks and take their money (or pay someone else to do it)? Do whites feel ashamed for all the genocide and murder they have used around the world to get where they are today? NO. So why should Africans be ashamed of doing FOR THEMSELVES? If it wasn't obvious for the last 500 years, it should be obvious now that the capitalist system of the West was NEVER INTENDED to benefit Africans. It should be a shock to NOBODY. Only someone with their head under a rock would be surprised. THAT is why Africans must build THEIR OWN system and RID themselves of exploitation by the capitalist system. Ownership, trade and industry are what is needed and CONTROL of ones fate by direct control over the means of production and the WEALTH that goes with it.
quote: Despite the health of women and children being a priority for the democratically elected government, South Africa is one of only 12 countries in the world where the mortality rate for our children has got worse since 1990.
"Each year, an estimated 2 500 mothers die, 20,000 babies are stillborn, another 21,900 die before the age of one and an additional 52,600 die before their fifth birthday, most from preventable and treatable causes," according to authors Mickey Chopra and colleagues.
HIV/AIDS is the biggest killer of both mothers and children. Pregnant HIV positive women are 10 times more likely to die in, or shortly after, childbirth than HIV negative women. Infections, mostly HIV/AIDS, cause 44 percent of maternal deaths.
Aside from addressing HIV/AIDS, poor healthcare also contributes to maternal and child deaths.
The latest "Saving Mothers" report (2007 figures) claims that 38 percent of maternal deaths in the healthcare system were "clearly avoidable". Most were failures in care such as managing port-labour bleeding, hypertension and sepsis.
Of course some of the "insiders" who are part of the system like to give lip service to it in order to make it seem like they are progressive, when they aren't.
quote: Cape Town — Moeletsi Mbeki, brother of former South African president Thabo Mbeki, believes that the government's centrepiece policy of black economic empowerment was in fact the creation of the country's white economic oligarchs to co-opt black leaders.
In his book "Architects of Poverty - Why Africa's Capitalism Needs Changing", Mbeki criticises the ruling elite by saying that black economic empowerment (BEE) "strikes a fatal blow against the emergence of black entrepreneurship by creating a small class of unproductive but wealthy black crony capitalists made up of ANC politicians, some retired and others not".
He argues that BEE policy, which is aimed at building black ownership of companies, was not the invention of the ANC but was created by the country's white economic oligarchs to co-opt leaders of the black resistance movement by buying them off with what looked like a transfer of massive assets at no cost.
This would ensure the oligarchs seats at the high table of the ANC government's economic policy formulation and give the oligarchs and their companies the first bite at government contracts.
The impression was created that all previously disadvantaged individuals would benefit from BEE. However, this is far from the truth as the political elite and their cronies have reaped the most benefits.
Stephanie Nieuwoudt spoke to Mbeki, who is also deputy chairperson of the South African Institute of International Affairs, an independent think tank at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Do you think BEE was a well conceptualised system that could have realised the goal of empowering the masses?
It was never a good system. It was never intended to advance the masses. It was intended to buy off or co-opt the leaders of the resistance movement. BEE cannot work for the majority. It is only intended to advance the interests of a few.
The masses are not happy with what is happening and we are beginning to see this in the service revolts (widespread community-level protests currently happening). People are beginning to react against the inequality and are turning on the municipal officials, who are regarded as part of the elite because they are elected by the ANC which is not delivering.
But in reality what he should be saying is that they SOLD OUT to whites by not TAKING BACK the land, mines, farms and other resources along with THE MONEY and vast stockpiles of gems and metals that whites STOLE from Africans. The ANC was founded by whites to begin with, including people like Joe Slovo. It isn't a black organization.
quote: Initially committed to nonviolent resistance, Mandela and 150 others were arrested on 5 December 1956 and charged with treason. The marathon Treason Trial of 1956–1961 followed, with all defendants receiving acquittals. From 1952–1959, a new class of black activists known as the Africanists disrupted ANC activities in the townships, demanding more drastic steps against the National Party regime. The ANC leadership under Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu felt, not only that the Africanists were moving too fast, but also that they challenged their leadership. The ANC leadership consequently bolstered their position through alliances with small White, Coloured, and Indian political parties in an attempt to give the appearance of wider appeal than the Africanists. The Africanists ridiculed the 1955 Freedom Charter Kliptown Conference for the concession of the 100,000-strong ANC to just a single vote in a Congressional alliance. Four secretaries-general of the five participating parties secretly belonged to the secretly reconstituted South African Communist Party (SACP), strongly adhering to the Moscow line.
In 1959, the ANC lost its most militant support when most of the Africanists, with financial support from Ghana and significant political support from the Transvaal-based Basotho, broke away to form the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) under the direction of Robert Sobukwe and Potlako Leballo.
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Why black Africans don't have any steel (or aluminum, tin, copper or any other materials for infrastructure)
quote: South Africa: The Case of Steel
Johannesburg — ONE of the bizarre consequences of the Competition Commission's investigation of the steel industry is that SA is now one of the few countries in the world that no longer has statistics on its steel output.
Check the website of the industry association, the South African Iron and Steel Institute (Saisi), and you will find that the most recent industry numbers date back to the beginning of this year -- and even those numbers were no more than an estimate, because certain of the steel companies were so scared of collusion allegations that they stopped giving figures to Saisi.
And well they might be. The institute is one of the parties against whom the commission has now, in effect, brought charges of collusion. Indeed, it's Saisi that's alleged to have hosted the meetings of the cartel that the producers of long steel products -- ArcelorMittal SA , Scaw, Cape Gate and Cape Town Iron Steel Works -- are accused of running.
The commission and its boss, the Department of Trade and Industry, have long worried about steel industry pricing and this investigation began last year with the commission raiding Saisi and certain of the steel companies. One of those, Anglo American- owned Scaw Metals, then turned state's witness. It took advantage of the commission's corporate leniency policy to turn itself in, and provide evidence on the cartel in return for immunity from prosecution.
Now, more than a year later, the commission has referred the case to the tribunal, asking for heavy fines to be levied against ArcelorMittal and Cape Gate for their participation in the alleged cartel . It should be an interesting case, not least because though Scaw told the commission of a "long standing culture of co- operation among the steel mills regarding the prices to be charged", it seems to have been more a case of the smaller mills following the lead of the dominant ArcelorMittal. So it is likely to raise critical questions about what, precisely, constitutes a cartel.
It may also raise the question of whether anticompetitive behaviour still prevails . The accusations mainly cover the period 2002- 06. Much has since changed , at ArcelorMittal and in the industry as a whole.
The competition authorities are doing much to open up markets and root out the cosy culture that used to rule South African business, and steel may be a natural target for their efforts. But how much difference will these make? Will domestic steel prices be lower in five years' time than they are now? Will new and more competitive steel producers enter the market?
We would love to think so. But in the real world things aren't that simple. Steel prices trend with the cycle: they are about 60% lower now than they were a year ago, and are unlikely to go much lower. And the steel industry is a highly capital intensive one that isn't likely to attract new investors any time soon, particularly in SA. So while the competition authorities' efforts to instill a more competitive culture are to be lauded, they may not have much practical effect in this industry at this stage.
Note that similar Euro American cartels exist all over Africa for every type of raw resource. Africans need not even pretend to act as if they have any control. The point being when the question of African infrastructure comes up, nobody even thinks to ask why the abundant African resources and industries that extract them aren't USING those resources for Africans....
The answer is obvious.
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quote: Accra — Dozens of farmers in northern Ghana claim they have been forced off their land with no alternative source of income after a multinational firm bought their farms to cultivate jetropha, a non-food crop whose seeds contain oil used to produce biofuel.
Biofuel Africa Ltd has acquired over 23,700 hectares of Ghanaian land forcing out the inhabitants of seven villages - all of them farming communities -- in Tamale district.
Farmer Mumud Alhassan Adam, 50-year-old father of five, lost his eight-hectare plot on which he cultivated maize and rice.
"I went to the farm one day but I realized somebody else was on the farm and then I was told the land had been sold off. Since then I have not been allowed to farm."
Local chiefs own most of the land in northern Ghana and rent it out to farmers or sell it to anybody who wishes to buy.
"There was no consultation with us (farmers) before the land was sold and I have not been paid any compensation since I was displaced," Adam told IRIN.
He added: "A few of the farmers were offered employment on the jatropha plantation but many others were left with hunger and no sourceof income, while others like myself had to raise money to rent another plot of land several kilometers away. It has been a very difficult time for my family."
But BioFuel Africa's chief executive officer Steinar Kolnes said the company offered the farmers options: "We don't pay compensation...We gave the farmers two options: To stay and farm their crops alongside the jetropha or leave to other more fertile lands we had provided for them." He said those who chose to leave were given plots up to 10 times the size of their previous plots.
Adam said he knew of no farmers living in the area who have been given alternative land to farm.
Many farmers are trying to make the best of the change, rather than fighting for their land back. "If I get a job with any of these firms I will abandon crop cultivation and join them. And many of my colleagues would do the same," John Akerebo, a farmer in the region, told IRIN.
Over 20 companies from around the world, including from Brazil, China, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and Norway, are acquiring land in Ghana to produce biofuels, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.
Between 15 million and 20 million hectares of farmland around the world have been subject to biofuels negotiations since 2006, according to the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
Kwadwo Poku, a local consultant for several of the multinationals with business in Ghana, told IRIN: "With so much land uncultivated [in Ghana], these firms are doing this country a favour by...employing many more farmers."
In a communiqué on its website, BioFuel Africa says only 10 percent of the land in question was being cultivated for food crops and that its project is providing farmers with much-needed employment during the lean season.
The Agriculture Ministry estimates that just 16 percent of Ghana's arable land is cultivated, despite agriculture employing 60 percent of the country's workforce.
Multinationals are attracted to Ghana by the land availability, soil types and a lack of regulation on acquisitions, according to the Food Security Policy Advocacy Network (FoodSPAN), based in the capital Accra.
But David Eli, FoodSPAN chairman, said the growing practice of carving up cultivable land for biofuel production could worsen Ghana's food insecurity. "As a country we don't produce enough food to feed everybody so if the argument is that we have enough land then why don't we invest to cultivate that land for food crops?"
UP to 1.2 million Ghanaians are food insecure, according to the World Food Programme's latest estimates, 453,000 of them in Northern Region. The government is drafting a US$10-million national food security plan, according to Agriculture Ministry director Nurah Gyiele.
The government has recognized the need for more clarity on the rights of farmers and companies in land deals concerning biofuels, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, and has called on the government's Energy Commission to draft legislation on land acquisitions.
Head of the Agriculture Workers Union, Kingsley Ofei Nkansah, said the legislation, which is currently being developed, must ensure that biofuels cultivation be limited to marginal lands; that all acquisitions include compensation for farmers and that chiefs prioritize land for food crop cultivation over biofuels.
If the question is why the Africans don't use the land to grow food, the answer is the same as why they don't use the tin, copper, rubber, aluminum, steel and other resources for their own benefit. The economic system of the west and other foreign countries in collaboration with local traitors, is intent on making sure that the land and resources of Africa is NEVER used to benefit Africans because Africans aren't supposed to have JACK SH*T and be dirt poor and begging for ever and ever, looking to a WHITE or FOREIGN hand to help them.
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Another of those hidden gems of the British Empire that controls so much industrial activity in Africa that isn't known by many in the public:
The Stallion group:
quote: Operating in the Sub Saharan Africa for more than two decades, Stallion has expanded rapidly into one of West Africa's largest business conglomerates with well consolidated business lines, robust infrastructure and valuable human resources. Today Stallion is the controlling entity of a number of leading businesses in trading, industrial, automotive and services sectors of the regional economy.
Stallion's proven track record is based on the ability to identify business opportunities that correlate with the organization's core competence areas and execute business plans in the most optimal manner. Stallion's business decisions are made on the basis of well researched long term prospects and sustainability of shareholder value.
Stallion typically invests in businesses that have a high growth potential and are within its physical market/origin access.
Stallion over the years has consistently met the growing needs of the local population with regard to its product lines in an efficient manner through its well streamlined procurement and distribution system. Further the group has invested extensively in local industries generating products that are manufactured indigenously.
Stallion has strongly established itself in Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Angola & Cameroun and is rapidly strengthening its presence in other countries.
The group understands the nuances of operating under difficult and complex markets and has a competent personnel placed in these markets, managing heavy investments into infrastructure. Stallion is replicating its own business models in successful regional markets in new territories, effectively increasing economies of scale and productivity. The group has proved to be an ideal business partner for multinationals wishing to launch their products in the markets.
In accordance with its aim to be a stable and quality oriented provider of products to its customers, Stallion has established associations with leading principals and suppliers worldwide.
In a phased and planned manner, the group is poised for healthy growth in the coming years and is well positioned to consolidate itself as a pre eminent business house.
Sunil Vaswani Group Chairman/Chief Executive Officer
A B.Sc. (Hons.) graduate from the UK, Sunil Vaswani has a highly successful business background, operating at an international level for more than 20 years. Over the years, he has developed and maintained mutually rewarding relationships with many international companies and institutions in Europe, Asia and Africa, resulting in the exponential growth of Stallion Group.
As a leading businessman with a long and distinguished career in West Africa, he is very conversant with the problems and prospects in various business sectors including financial services, energy, manufacturing, small scale industry and rural industry. In his current initiative, he is spearheading Stallion into large import substitution projects, aimed at aligning Stallion's objectives with the economic goals of Nigeria and other regional countries.
His current business activities also include management and expansion of business lines in the Middle East market.
Haresh Vaswani Group Vice Chairman
Haresh Vaswani is an MBA and BA (Hons) from the UK. Further to a decade of marketing experience in the West African market, he formulates marketing strategies to help successfully implement Stallion's challenging business plans in the target markets.
His expertise in strategizing the sales and marketing of automobiles has lead to the overall success of the group's wide array of prime automobile franchises.
Mahesh Vaswani Group Managing Director
Mr. Mahesh Vaswani is the Managing Director of the Stallion Group. Since completing his B.Sc. (Economics) from the UK, he has developed a broad range of experience within the diversified business lines of Stallion Group that includes commodities, automobiles, manufacturing and services.
Through his thorough knowledge of the business processes, he provides pro active management expertise at the global level across various management functions.
Point blank. The stallion group isn't doing SH*T to further the economics of West Africa and/or West African people. Just like NONE of the other gems of the British Crown banking network of companies is doing SH*T for black Africans anywhere in Africa.
A whole laundry list of associated businesses and NONE of them are benefitting Africans AT ALL:
Its hilarious how stupid things are in this day and age....
All these major industries in Africa, specializing in all sorts of manufacturing and trading services, yet many Africans are barely living in a dirt hut with a thatch roof and a hole in the ground for a latrine. So much for all these high tech companies helping Africans. The ONLY people they help are the multinational businesses and agents of the British Crown and Euro American corporate elite. Want a jet to fly over some land that you are going to take from Africa? You got the right people. Want to bring in some construction or mining equipment the size of Texas to suck up tons of African reources worth millions of dollars an hour? Yep. You got the ticket. Want to produce all sorts of specialty metals, pipes, tubing and wire? Yep. Got that too. Want to build infrastructure for Africans? .........
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Some stories about "grape country" in South Africa. Primarily the domain of French settlers in the Northern Cape of South Africa. Here, just like all over South Africa, the natives still live like slaves on white plantations, even though they are SUPPOSEDLY free. And all of this is supported by the SO-CALLED black Government of South Africa, because the wine being traded to newly opened foreign markets is MORE IMPORTANT that economic freedom for blacks....
quote: Reporting from Stellenbosch, South Africa — Like many black professionals during the dark days of apartheid, Diale and Malmsey Rangaka dreamed of leaving the crowded township of Soweto. But, unlike their neighbors, they didn't want to move to the gated white suburbs.
They wanted to be farmers.
For years Diale, an English literature professor, would chatter away about cattle ranching, quoting the latest issue of Farmer's Weekly. His wife was skeptical. "But you haven't produced so much as a rabbit your whole life," she would gently chide him.
But Malmsey, a clinical psychologist, harbored her own ambition: She wanted to be an organic farmer. To which her husband would invariably point out that she hadn't grown so much as a carrot.
A few years ago, with their children grown and land ownership suddenly open to blacks, they began scanning advertisements for farmland. Twenty-two farms later, their quest ended. It was neither a ranch nor a vegetable farm but a moldering 100-acre tract of grapes and guava.
They quit their jobs, borrowed the entire purchase price from the government land bank and moved nearly 800 miles southwest, leaving the coal-fire haze of their black township to take up a life that had once defined the white Afrikaner settlers in South Africa.
They were a pair of dreamers, cultured urbanites with romantic visions of green acres and the cleansing power of an honest day's work. They were in for a few surprises.
This corner of the Western Cape province is a bucolic region of rolling hills, Cape Dutch architecture, dramatic mountain backdrops and quaint villages. The area's two-lane roads are speckled with signs bearing drawings of grape clusters and the names of passing vineyards. Stellenbosch, the center of South Africa's wine industry, is just a few miles away from the farm.
When the Rangakas arrived in late 2003, their farm was in sad shape. Repairs had been neglected and the vines were old. But at least they were inheriting a staff of farmworkers who lived on the property.
The Rangakas knew that relations between some white farmers and their laborers were poor. They thought being black -- and the shared experience of being victims of white-minority rule -- might help them.
But the couple soon discovered that skin color wasn't quite as important as history, tradition and language.
The farm's four permanent laborers were mixed-race Colored and spoke Afrikaans, as do most white farmers here. In the racial hierarchy under apartheid, the lighter-skinned Coloreds, who are a majority in the province, were a notch above blacks. And 15 years of black majority rule hasn't fully erased that feeling of superiority.
The dayworkers were ethnic Xhosas, blacks from impoverished rural areas of the Eastern Cape province, and they spoke Xhosa and Afrikaans.
Diale, 55, and Malmsey, 53, are both Tswana, from northern South Africa. They spoke Setswana and English -- and very little Afrikaans or Xhosa.
"It was an interesting situation," Malmsey said, her sigh suggesting an understatement. "They spoke Afrikaans and Xhosa and were used to working under a white farmer. They saw we were black and they weren't used to it."
After a few months, three of the four laborers asked to speak privately to Diale. They tendered their resignations.
"They said they liked working for us but they couldn't get used to having a black boss," Diale recalled. "It was amazing to me." Later, the foreman resigned too, citing the difficulty of working for a woman, especially one he couldn't communicate with.
Later, the Rangakas learned that their laborers were being mocked by other Colored farmworkers as "slaves" for working for blacks.
Now in that whole article, which MUST have been written by a European, the ONLY time slavery is mentioned is relative to these NEW farmers. But didn't the article say that most of the laborers were STILL living as virtual slaves on white owned farms? What has changed since apartheid? Why don't they at least own their own communal farm? And trust me these people are DIRT POOR. But that isn't important huh? I guess we are supposed to be MORE happy that there is one black family in an all white community of white farmers on stolen black land with a generations of black slaves? Yeah right. The whole tone of the article glosses over the OBVIOUS disparities that SHOULD be the real issue 30 years after the so-called END of aparthied that it begs the question what has changed? Economically blacks are as much slaves now as they ever were in South Africa, working as maids, drivers, domestics, industrial laborers and on and on, STILL earning LOW wages, STILL living in shanty towns built SPECIFICALLY for blacks, still separate and unequal IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY. How on earth does that make sense? After 200 years of OVERT policies of economic and political support by Britain and the Apartheid regime to bring in white settlers, give them land, give them money and GIVE them slaves in order to build farms and industry, blacks have to go it ON THEIR OWN? Blacks have to pay whites for land that they were GIVEN by Apartheid and the British which was STOLEN WHOLESALE from blacks? But blacks get NO SUPPORT in trying to get back what is RIGHTFULLY THEIRS to begin with? Wow. That is like having to PAY the thief that stole your wallet for your wallet back.
Some people love fantasy land.
Here is another article that tries to paint a rosy picture on something that is anything but:
quote: Experts say it's the most common preventable cause of mental retardation in the world. A leading international authority on it has called it a "field of human disaster." It's Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). When mothers drink alcohol while they're pregnant, their babies often suffer enduring physical and mental harm – including heart defects, stunting, diminished intelligence and behavioral problems. South Africa has the highest rate of FAS in the world. In some areas of the country, it affects up to 120 children out of every thousand.
Sanna Winston remembers the first time alcohol passed her lips.
"It tasted terrible. It burned. It hurt," she remembers.
Winston was "five or six" years old.
"My stepmother forced me to drink wine, so that I would be too scared to tell my father what she was doing behind his back. She used to say, 'If you tell your father, I will tell him that you drank as well, and then we will both get a hiding from him.' So I kept quiet."
Today, the 38-year-old mother of five is enduring the consequences of her childhood trauma.
"I am a drinker. If someone makes me angry, or I get sad, then I drink a hell of a lot. Then I drink until the people see that I am totally drunk," Winston acknowledges.
She lives in a small house, its windows broken and its walls peeling plaster, on a farm at Wellington in South Africa's Western Cape province. The town's in the heart of the country's famed wine lands. The area is a kaleidoscope of beauty, with craggy gunmetal and russet mountains rising out of verdant vineyards and multicolored fruit plantations.
"The tourists who come here only see the pretty things. They don't see us. We are kept hidden. We are disgraceful," Winston mumbles, leading her eight-year-old daughter, Francisca, through a field of grapes.
As the girl gambols off down a gravel road to join her friends, Winston sighs, "Francisca is not like my other children. She's not good at school."
But behind that rosy picture is the painful truth. This is a DIRECT result of the fact that black workers (mixed descendants of black women raped by whites) were NOT PAID for their labor and given ALCOHOL instead. But of course, that injustice and the fact that they are suffering BECAUSE of whites, is swept under the rug and the whites treated as heroes......
quote: The Western Cape province of South Africa has the world's highest incidence of fetal alcohol syndrome, BBC Online reports.
Western Cape is South Africa's grape farming area, and farmers would traditionally pay the mostly "colored" laborers -- those of mixed racial heritage -- with poor quality wine. Consequently, the syndrome has chiefly been concentrated among colored workers in Western Cape's wine farms, after the lifestyle produced a culture of alcoholism among the rural communities.
Developmental pediatrician Dr. Colleen Adnams believes that fetal alcohol syndrome is so prevalent, possibly affecting more than 5% of children, that it is contributing to the crime rate of South Africa. "One characteristic of older adolescents is poor social control, they are easily manipulated and can end up in crime," she said. "Huge numbers of people in jails have had their mothers consuming enough alcohol for it to affect their development."
Fetal alcohol syndrome is caused when a female consumes alcohol during pregnancy, disrupting the fetus's development. The amount of damage inflicted on the fetus depends on the amount of alcohol consumed by the mother, and during which stage of pregnancy it occurs. The syndrome can affect all the major organs of a fetus, and the problems associated with the disorder do not diminish as the child grows older (Jo Frater, BBC Online, 27 May).
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More on how African leaders are selling out their own people for whites. And to think many people love Mandela and the ANC:
South Africa: Expropriation Bill Revived As Land Reform Drive Stalls
quote: Johannesburg — THE government planned to revive a bill to make it easier to seize land from white farmers who refused to sell their properties for redistribution to blacks, a senior land reform official said at an agricultural congress in Johannesburg yesterday.
The controversial expropriation bill was shelved a year ago after critics warned it was unconstitutional as it would give officials rather than the courts the power to decide on compensation.
While the move is an attempt by the government to speed up land reform, for which it ran out of money this year, it might not achieve this as cases could drag on in court for years.
But officials could be banking on the threat of expropriation to put farmers off holding out for more than market-related prices.
Land reform director-general Thozi Gwanya told Business Day his minister, Gugile Nkwinti, and Public Works Minister Geoff Doidge were considering input from a government task team set up to amend the bill and resubmit it to Parliament.
"The two ministers are in the process of reviving discussion of the bill," he said on the sidelines of AgriSA's annual congress yesterday. This would include public hearings in Parliament, he said.
The bill was to enable the state to expropriate farms in the public interest, including for land reform. It was to replace legislation that catered only for expropriation for public purposes, such as building roads. It would also make it easier to pay farmers less than market value, and was expected to help the state buy land more cheaply amid huge budget shortfalls.
Gwanya declined to be drawn on whether officials would still have the power to determine compensation. "All these issues are still under discussion."
His department admitted this year it would not meet the target of transferring 30% of white farmland to blacks by 2014 because it had run out of money and was concerned about declining production on redistributed farms.
Only 5% had been transferred to date.
Gwanya said at the congress the state's decision to revive the bill was in response to mounting calls "to review the willing buyer, willing seller model and investigate less costly alternatives".
The Land Claims Commission, which processes claims by victims of forced removals, ran out of money this year while facing a R3bn shortfall for claims already approved. It needs another R16bn over the next three years at today's market prices, but has been allocated only R5,2bn.
"We have been paying very high prices for land precisely because we are paying for the emotional value, not market value. Clearly the state cannot afford this," said Gwanya.
Property law expert Gerrit Grobler said at the congress the government was naive to think it could acquire 30% of white-owned farms from willing sellers at market value.
"If their farms aren't on the market and government wants to buy, farmers will inflate prices. We know of cases where farms were sold at three or four times their market value. I say expropriate, or pay through your nose," he said.
But he cautioned that the courts -- and not officials -- had to decide on just and equitable compensation, including for emotional distress and loss of future earnings. "No democracy in the world allows officials to decide compensation."
AgriSA spokesman Theo de Jager conceded that the government had "paid too much for some farms", but said many had been paid as much as 50% below market value. "We expect to take this issue to the Sadc tribunal."
Now, it appears 25 years after 'freedom' in South Africa, the ANC government is sure taking a long time to put land in the hands of blacks from whom it was taken. And they sure seem to be more concerned about the welfare, profit and interests of the thieves than the victims, which are the blacks, which contradicts any idea of them trying to HELP the blacks in the first place. They are more interested in supporting the rights of whites as SQUATTERS and THIEVES on African land than the rights of Africans on THEIR OWN land.
Case in point:
quote: Johannesburg — AGRICULTURE, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Tina Joemat- Pettersson is spearheading a new drive to establish white farmers from SA throughout the African continent -- partly because SA's redistribution programme will create land shortages at home.
Joemat-Pettersson said at the annual congress of farmers' union AgriSA on Friday that the government remained committed to transferring 30% of white-owned farmland to blacks in five years, but this would leave little room for white farmers to expand in SA.
"If we can't find opportunities for white South African farmers in this country, we must do it elsewhere in the continent."
She announced the government was negotiating agreements with five countries, and was offered large swathes of high-quality agricultural land in two. Secure tenure would be a central pillar of the relationships. "We cannot have a repeat of what happened to our farmers in Zimbabwe."
She assured delegates this was not a thinly veiled threat to drive white farmers out of SA. "We absolutely need our commercial farmers. SA is your country. Your forebears are buried here, and you are South Africans."
Another driver was the government's concern that Asian and South American competitors, especially China, India and Brazil, were stealing a march on SA in establishing agricultural enterprises and gaining preferential access to markets elsewhere in Africa, she said in an interview .
She envisaged white farmers retaining some agricultural property at home but expanding their farming operations in other African countries that had more land available.
Countries targeted initially are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Angola, Zambia and Uganda. Angola has offered two farms totalling 140000ha in a prime production area, and Uganda 170000ha near Kampala. Reviving southern Sudan's farm production forms part of SA's peace and reconstruction plan for the war-torn region.
This is in addition to agreements in place with Mozambique, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, and plans to establish agricultural ties with Burundi. Other countries have approached AgriSA directly with invitations to establish commercial farm enterprises . They include the Republic of Congo, which has 10-million hectares of arable land lying fallow yet needs food aid and imports, and, most recently Libya, which wants private-sector support to revive production along a state-owned canal.
Joemat-Pettersson stressed the relationship between South African farmers and their host country would be symbiotic rather than paternalistic. "It's an equal relationship between people of the African continent," she said.
"One of the concerns the Zambians raised is the perception that white farmers want to create apartheid enclaves. We are assuring the governments of these countries we do not want to export our problems." The thrust would be rebuilding commercial agriculture in the countries targeted, including through a transfer of expertise, technology, equipment and scientific advances.
Commercial farmers would form agriprocessing hubs for neighbouring smallholders, who would benefit from infrastructure, shared knowledge, access to markets and bulk buying of inputs.
The agriculture ministry was thrashing out a policy framework for the initiative in consultation with AgriSA. This would include safeguards for property rights independent of present political leadership. "We will sign state-to-state agreements confirmed in international courts so you are guaranteed your land will not be taken away from you," the minister told congress delegates.
Theo de Jager, the AgriSA representative instrumental in expanding the reach of South African farmers throughout Africa, said he was heartened by Joemat-Pettersson's announcement. About 600 to 800 South African commercial farmers were already operating in other African countries, mostly in Mozambique, he said. Large fruit exporters in Limpopo and Mpumalanga, where most commercial farmland is under land claim, were establishing orchards in Mozambique until uncertainties surrounding SA's land reforms were resolved.
"But this is not about driving white farmers out," he said.
"Farmers go where there are opportunities to make money. It's a bonus that the government is supporting us now."
Joemat-Pettersson had initially been hostile to De Jager's overtures to other African countries. In June, when AgriSA announced plans to explore opportunities in the Republic of Congo, she warned the government could not guarantee farmers protection.
"We explained we are doing it not because we are negative about SA but positive about Africa. And if anyone is equipped to farm in Africa, it's us -- we've been doing it for more than 300 years."
Zimbabwe remains out of bounds for now as its government refuses to include land tenure security as part of a bilateral investment protection agreement being negotiated with SA.
Libya is the next frontier. A delegation headed by De Jager is expected to go on a fact-finding mission there this month following an invitation from Muammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi apparently rejected World Bank advice to involve Indian or Chinese experts because he insisted on African involvement. "If we can do it in Libya, we can do it anywhere in Africa," said De Jager.
Obviously these sell outs in Sudan, South Africa, Uganda and Angola have no interest in helping blacks become prosperous on their OWN land and are more interested in supporting white settlers chase their dreams of CONTROLLING the wealth and land of Africa. Supporting white farmers export fruit, soybeans and food to foreigners while making big profits is not the same as FEEDING AFRICANS.
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More examples of how the current crop of African leaders is more interested in helping racist whites and foreigners achieve their goal of controlling the land and wealth of Africa, to the detriment of black Africans:
Blue suited "smurfs" the peasant labor force that makes South African white farms work. Wonder why they can't eat that food and distribute it without whites standing over them enslaving them and keeping them in artificial poverty?
quote: Fearing land reforms may soon stifle their businesses, white South African farmers are preparing to trek deeper into Africa.
In one of the biggest land deals in African history, the government of the Republic of Congo agreed this week to lease up to 200,000 hectares of abandoned farmland to South African farmers over the next 30 years.
The white farmers, who could lose up to 30% of their land in South Africa over the next five years from land reform, are being invited to start growing corn, cotton and soybeans, and to raise poultry and cattle on the state-run collective farms abandoned more than a decade ago.
A delegation of a dozen farmers is expected to travel to Congo next month to do soil tests and assess the grazing potential of the 200,000 hectares, an area about half the size of Prince Edward Island.
Ultimately, the farmers could gain access to more than 10 million hectares of underused Congo farmland.
South Africa's beleaguered white farmers are jumping at the opportunity to expand deep into the continent. Nearly 1,700 of them have filed queries about the deal with their union, Agri SA.
"The motivation for South African farmers is simple," said Theo de Jager, Agri SA's deputy president, who helped negotiate the deal with Congo.
"Because of the economies of scale, it is virtually impossible to reach a level of profitability here. We do not have enough land or water and land reform is putting a lot of pressure on these natural resources.
"One in four farms must be redistributed in the next four or five years. So for new entrants into the sector and for those farmers who want to expand there is nowhere to go."
Land reform is an emotional issue in South Africa. Millions of blacks were made landless under British colonial and apartheid rule. By the time apartheid ended in 1994, whites, who formed just 10% of the population, owned more than 90% of the land.
Nelson Mandela and later African National Congress governments vowed to change that and set a target of redistributing 30% of the country's agricultural land by 2014.
So far, only about 5% has changed hands.
Now, as the government of Jacob Zuma prepares to pick up the pace of land reform, the white farmers are growing worried.
"Government has stopped paying market value for redistribution, so farmers are reluctant to invest in their own farms," said Mr. de Jager. "They don't know if they'll be able to keep it a few years from now."
The disastrous example of land reform in neighbouring Zimbabwe has done little to ease their concerns.
President Robert Mugabe plunged his country into unprecedented crisis by forcibly and sometimes violently expropriating white-owned farms. Thousands of white farmers fled, farm output plunged and Zimbabwe's agriculturally dependent economy collapsed.
But rather than flee, South Africa's farmers have begun to look to expand their opportunities elsewhere, while retaining as much of their farm operations as possible at home.
In recent months Agri SA has fielded offers of land leases for agriculture from 17 African countries and opened negotiations with Angola, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia and Sudan.
Angola has offered two farms totalling 140,000 hectares in a prime production area and Uganda 170,000 hectares near the capital Kampala.
At first the South African government responded angrily to a possible exodus of white farmers. But it has shifted ground and is now actively working with Agri SA to negotiate investment protection agreements for the farmers.
"We explained to them this was not being negative about South Africa, but being positive about Africa and they turned 180 degrees," said Mr. de Jager. "They realized we are getting involved in the reconstruction of Africa."
South Africa probably didn't want to lose out on the latest land rush on the continent, which has seen countries like China, India, South Korea and Brazil lease or buy up vast tracts of land for massive new farm operations and biofuel production.
Faced with rising food prices worldwide and searching for food security, cash-rich but resource-poor countries are investing in African agriculture in a huge way.
According to a recent study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), more than 33 million hectares of prime agricultural land in dozens of developing countries have been snapped up in the past 18 months. That's an area roughly the size of Germany.
Branded by some as a new form of colonialism, the politically explosive issue of foreign agricultural investment and land ownership could reshape the geopolitics of Africa.
Last spring, the government of Madagascar was overthrown in a coup after it was revealed it had handed more than 1.3 million hectares - about half the island's total arable land - to Daewoo Logistics of South Korea to grow corn.
Daewoo hoped to source half of South Korea's corn requirements from Madagascar. It also promised to spend US$6-billion on the island over 25 years, building roads, railways, ports and schools.
Days after the coup, the deal was torn up.
Similarly, China had to abandon plans to invest $800-million in rice production in Mozambique last year because of growing domestic opposition to the deal.
As pressure grows on Africa's limited natural resources and the price of food remains high, there will be growing distrust over international investment in agriculture, says the IFPRI study.
"These land acquisitions have the potential to inject much-needed investment into agriculture and rural areas in poor developing countries, but they also raise concerns about the impacts on poor local people, who risk losing access to and control over land on which they depend," the report says.
Of course we are supposed to believe that these farms will benefit Africans. How have white farms in South Africa benefited Africans? Unless you view being raped and forced to labor on the land of your forefathers by racists who kill and torture to keep you on the very bottom as a benefit, there was no benefit for black Africans. So now you want to export Apartheid 2.0 to the rest of Africa, with the implicit idea that whites will be the masters on top and blacks will be the peasants on the bottom? (Apartheid 2.0 is simply the current system of white control of the wealth in South Africa with black sell outs as front men.) Common sense will tell you that white farms are part of the reason for Apartheid to begin with and ARE NOT for the benefit of black Africans, as can be observed from the fact that so many black South Africans are still starving and undernourished while tons of food gets exported to feed white folks, using the labor of blacks who are also in poverty.
Also note the John Deere tractor in the background. John Deere and other white American and European industrial interests have ALWAYS been there to form of network of support for whites in ALL ASPECTS of the economy of South Africa, EVEN DURING APARTHEID. That is the WHOLE POINT of the economic system set up by British in the first place, which was to create a NETWORK of MUTUALLY SUPPORTIVE plantations and industries OFF THE LAND, LABOR and RESOURCES of black Africans. So the SYSTEM ITSELF is designed and built to GUARANTEE the success of whites in their colonial ventures. It is NOT DESIGNED to benefit blacks AS ANYTHING OTHER THAN PEASANT LABORERS. So black farmers even when they DO get their land back, get NO SUPPORT from the industry of South Africa or the financial system, because IT IS STILL run by whites FOR whites (and other foreigners).
quote: John Deere (Pty) Ltd
John Deere (Pty) Ltd. was originally a private company called "South African Cultivators (Pty.) Ltd", based in Nigel. In 1962 Deere & Company purchased the majority interest and the name was changed to "John Deere - Bobaas (Pty.) Ltd". ("Bobaas" originating from the trade name of the cultivators manufactured) and later to John Deere (Pty) Ltd.
South Africa sources equipment and parts from other John Deere factories around the world. It had retained a manufacturing capability of its own (planters, cultivators and rotary hoes) until June 2005.
The branch is responsible for the sale of agricultural, commercial and consumer equipment together with spare parts throughout South Africa as well as to Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia & Malawi.
John Deere (Pty) Ltd works closely together with its dealer network located throughout South & Southern Africa to deliver John Deere products supported by a strong after sales support to its customers.
The team is made up of highly motivated people working in a close knit group to develop the John Deere business in Southern Africa.
After being based at the premises in Nigel for 44 years, the South African branch moved to the new facility in Boksburg on the 17th July 2006.
Growing our Commitment in Southern Africa Some concrete examples of our ongoing commitment to distinctively support the productivity and sustainability of those who invest in John Deere equipment and services include:
* An investment of 37 million Rand in 2006 in the new training centre and auditorium facility in Boksburg. * 7 million Rand annual investment in our South African Parts Distribution centre in Rosslyn, near Pretoria. * Multi-million Rand annual investment in John Deere Credit, created with our Alliance Bank ABSA in November 2005. * 10 million Rand investment in a world-class information system in October 2005. * Planned introduction of 19 new products in 2007/2008.
So of course when the whites get to the Congo and other parts of Africa they will have the FULL SUPPORT of the global industrial and financial community, yet BLACK AFRICANS in Congo who are starving and suffering due to WARS FINANCED by the SAME international and financial community GET NO SUPPORT. And of course NONE of that food will be intended for the MOUTHS of black Africans. IT will MOSTLY go to foreigners. While blacks CONTINUE to be killed and raped and maimed by the hundreds every day to make way for MORE unused and abandoned land. And that is a key point that needs to be understood. Abandoned land is a nice way of saying that the blacks have been killed and run off the land by the hired thugs and crooks paid for by the likes of Executive Outcomes and other instruments of the global white industrial cartels. And to add insult to injury, instead of REPATRIATING the blacks onto their land, what do they do? Give it to the whites. This is NOTHING MORE than the continuation of the death and murder done by the likes of Leopold where they also hired (forced) locals to kill and maim THEIR OWN people in order to pick rubber (and anything else the whites wanted). So now instead of the Belgians it is the South Africans..... but it is still the same thing.
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And of course while the banks and industrialists make off with African land, wealth and food, the U.N. and other "AID" organizations step in with scams pretending to want to help:
quote: Cape Town — People's rights to work the land – an indispensable pre-condition for food security in Africa – are the subject of two key initiatives by international agencies working to improve agricultural production on the continent.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations announced this week that it has begun technical consultations on international guidelines aimed at ensuring that tenure to land and other natural resources such as water, fish stocks and forests is properly governed.
At the same time, the FAO has launched a separate initiative to address the problem of what many Africans see as "land grabbing" – the new trend of foreign companies and governments leasing or buying land in African countries on which to grow crops.
The consultations on good governance concerning issues of tenure will include governments, the private sector, poor farmers, indigenous groups, local authorities and others, the FAO said in a news release.
The release quoted Paul Munro-Faure, chief of the FAO's Land Tenure and Management Unit, saying that that the FAO was taking the lead on the issue because "secure land access is the best safety-net for the poor, and because good governance of land is a necessary condition for secure land access and land tenure rights".
The FAO said although most member nations had rules to protect farmers and forest dwellers, as well as local and foreign investors, from being turned off their land or having it seized arbitrarily, "laws are often ignored or badly enforced."
The consultation would produce guidelines to give practical help to governments, the private sector and civil society on "responsible governance" of tenure.
Paul Mathieu, senior officer of the FAO Land Tenure and Management Unit, told AllAfrica in an interview that one of the contributory factors driving the consultation had been this year's Transparency International index on corruption, which had underlined the need for better governance in many countries to ensure the security of land rights and the effectiveness of land administrations.
He said the FAO's response to the acquisition of land by foreign entities will be a separate process, but will also address issues of governance and the need for effective and fair institutions.
"From about 18 months ago," he said, "there were beginning to be concerns about land grabbing, or what we have called large-scale land acquisitions… So the FAO, with other UN organizations will work towards developing principles, and maybe a code of conduct, for international agricultural investment.
"These two initiatives are different processes, but they will certainly address the linkages between international investment and land governance, and thus reinforce each other."
A recent report compiled by the FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), said the acquisitions were being driven by food security concerns in investor countries.
"Food supply problems and uncertainties [in investor countries] are created by constraints in agricultural production due to limited availability of water and arable land; by bottlenecks in storage and distribution; and by the expansion of biofuel production, an important competing land and crop use," the report said.
For people in countries where land was bought or leased – in Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia - the phenomenon created both risks and opportunities, the report said.
"Increased investment may bring macro-level benefits (such as GDP growth and improved government revenues), and may create opportunities for economic development and livelihood improvement in rural areas. But as governments or markets make land available to prospecting investors, large-scale land acquisitions may result in local people losing access to the resources on which they depend for their food security…
It added: Ultimately, the extent to which international land deals seize opportunities and mitigate risks depends on their terms and conditions: how are risks assessed and mitigated – for instance through considerations in project location?
What business models are favoured in project implementation (from plantations to contract farming, purchase agreements, policy incentives, or joint ventures)? How are costs and benefits shared – for example, in terms of safeguards against arbitrary land takings, or revenue-sharing arrangements? And who decides on these issues and how?
This is rightly a hot issue because land is so central to identity, livelihoods and food security, the report said.
A bunch of rhetoric and catch words that mean absolutely nothing and will not help Africans become independent in terms of agriculture and industry. By now everyone and their grand mom should be able to see that the idea of food security has NOTHING to do with feeding Africans. Another catch word which only belies the reality of a con game being run against Africans and other people around the world. The only thing that this talk of food security has produced is more land STOLEN from Africans to feed NON AFRICANS, while Africans face HIGHER food prices due to ARTIFICIAL shortages as a result of policies designed NOT to increase the amount of food available for Africans to eat. ALL of which is solely designed to benefit the global elites as they try and control ALL the food producing regions of the world so they can control prices, control agriculture and CONTROL Africa and starve Africans.
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Of course white Europeans like to call buying up land (stealing land) in Africa an INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY, just like the creation of the colonies in the U.S., Congo, Australia and everywhere else the British crown went. Investment that killed off millions, enslaved the rest and took the resources to enrich white industrialists and their networks of banks.
quote: BBC | 5 August 2009
By Katie Hunt Business reporter, BBC News
Long of little interest to outsiders, African land has been rarely associated with financial reward.
But for investors like Susan Payne, the chief executive of Emergent Asset Management, farmland in sub-Saharan Africa is a hot bet.
Population increase, changes in eating habits and demand for bio-fuels are putting farmland at a premium worldwide.
And African farmland prices are the lowest in the world, she says.
Her fund is in the process of buying or leasing a total 50,000 hectares, equal to roughly 80,000 football pitches, in several African countries including Mozambique, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Angola, Swaziland and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ms Payne says the investment leads to better harvests and creates jobs.
But some land deals have sparked accusations that foreign investors, corporations and countries are engaged in a damaging land grab in Africa and a new form of colonialism.
Food security
Last year’s food price crisis, which triggered riots in a dozen countries, has made governments more focused on the security of their food supplies. Susan Payne, chief executive Emergent Asset Management
Susan Payne, chief executive Emergent Asset Management
Countries short of arable land, such as China, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Kuwait, have been seeking agricultural investments in Africa.
This has woken people up to political issues surrounding food and agricultural land ownership, says Ms Payne.
As an investor you can take advantage of that, she says.
Ms Payne says that the investments made by her company are welcomed and is confident that charges of land grabbing won’t stick.
Frankly we are seeing amenable terms because local groups, including governments, want us there, she says.
We are not bringing in our own farm workers and then taking the food and exporting it.
She says local communities benefit from access to new farming techniques, new seeds and technologies, as well as the above-average wages paid by Emergent’s local partner.
For now the vast majority of the food produced stays in the country in which it is produced, although it can be exported.
There is a lot of enthusiasm for this and there should be, she says.
Without private pools of capital like we are providing, there will not be the jump-start to get Africa growing rapidly in agriculture – and frankly – any other sector.
Politicised
Nonetheless, it is a highly politicised arena to invest in.
South Korean firm Daewoo Logistics was forced to abandon a project to lease one million acres of land in Madagascar to produce corn earlier this year.
The country’s new president scrapped the deal following criticism that local people had not been consulted, and Daewoo was unsettled by unrest in the island state
But Ms Payne says the risks to investors are overplayed and such views are based on an outdated view of African governments.
She says that 70% of African governments are democratically led and their economies are much better regulated than in the past.
We only operate in counties where we can have clear land title. If we can’t get this, or we don’t have a 99-year lease from the government then we won’t operate in that country, she says.
Land rights hazy
However, the UN and other agencies warn that smallholders, who often don’t have formal rights to the land they farm, can end up being short-changed.
quote: More than half a million acres of neglected state farms in the south will be signed over in the first tranche with more to follow if the scheme is a success.
It is estimated that 25 million acres, almost one third of all Congo’s land, is underused.
In the first stage of the programme, South African farmers will be given rent-free, renewable 30-year leases on an area the size of West Yorkshire in the hope they will be able to improve the country's farming industry.
The deal is the latest twist on the recent scramble for land in Africa which has seen foreign countries buying up huge areas of land in the hope of securing food supplies.
China, South Korea, and India have all made major investments in African land and raw material reserves in recent years.
But the contract between the South African commercial farmers' union, Agri-SA, and the central African country is the first time such an agreement has been struck within the continent.
The country is in the throes of an oil boom but has no commercial agricultural sector of its own.
Most food sold in shops has to be imported, mostly from France, the former colonial power, and is extremely expensive. Tomatoes retail for around £8 a kilo and meat more than £30 a kilo.
Theo de Jager, deputy president of Agri-SA said hundreds of farmers were likely to take up the opportunity and the first assessment visits were expected by the end of next month.
Such agreements have proved immensely controversial elsewhere – an agreement for the South Korean conglomerate Daewoo to take over much of Madagascar was a factor in the overthrow of president Marc Ravalomanana earlier this year.
But Mr de Jager said: "We don't want to go in there and be part of a conflict or create a conflict, we don't want to be in competition with people who are already using that land.
"We are Africans ourselves, we have been here for generations and I think we understand them better than other commercial farmers from elsewhere in the world.
"We are used to integrating with the local communities, it's not like when the Chinese in DR Congo bring in their own labour force and inputs."
Paul Nkounkou, a retired agricultural engineer in Congo, added: "We have at our disposal a lot of uncultivated land because we lack the material and financial means. These South African investors are welcome."
There has been criticism of the deal in France, pointing out that Denis Sassou-Nguesso, the Congolese president, is widely considered to be severely corrupt.
But Mr de Jager believes such attacks are motivated by a desire to protect French interests against competition.
"We are not into politics, he invited us and it seems to us like a good deal," he said.
It could be the first of many such agreements, as South African farmers feel under pressure because of a commitment by the ANC government to redistribute 30 per cent of the country's agricultural land to black owners by 2014.
Pretoria has so far operated a 'willing buyer, willing seller' approach and is adamant there will be no repetition of the chaos in Zimbabwe, but Mr de Jager said negotiations are under way with 16 other African countries to secure similar deals.
"There's no way to expand here, we have a drastic shortage of arable land and water, so it's the logical thing to look at opportunities beyond our borders."
Again, the idea that the only way Africans can develop agriculture is by working for WHITES for next to nothing doing back breaking work on big plantations should make ANY African in the diaspora cringe. They are basically claiming that ENSLAVEMENT is the only solution for Africans moving forward. Sound familiar?
And of course why is the land underused with NOBODY in the population of Congo having right to ownership of any of that land? Probably because they are too busy running from getting blown up, shot, killed and raped by foreign supplied thugs and crooks who clear the land for foreign mining companies and now farming companies and at one time rubber companies. But of course, that part isn't important.
And not only that but the land is given to these white racists FREE OF CHARGE........ While Congolese STILL don't own anything after years of Leopold, years of Belgian colonization and years of foreign backed crackpots, now they the FIRST priority is to give it to the whites? What is the point of having independence if you are going to run BACK to the slave master GIVE THEM your land and beg to be enslaved again?
Africans STILL SLAVING on white farms in South Africa:
White farm owners.... good Christians who "really care" about their (black) workers (slaves): http://www.flickr.com/photos/erini/239409385/in/set-72057594082085929/ (Of course whites didn't put the sun in the sky, land on the ground or water in the ocean so black Africans shouldn't be praising them for sh*t. It is the sun, earth and water that is the basis of life and that concept didn't come from whites and their "sun god" in the first place. Give thanks to the CREATOR who made the sun, earth and the waters and everything that grows in it for the benefit of the people, not WHITES. THAT is the SUN who is always reborn in the morning after the period of death and represents the eternal nature of the universe. AND it is also a reflection of the fact that in order for something to live something HAS to die. So unless BLACKS CHOOSE to die in order for someone ELSE to live, they should be looking at the LIGHT WITHIN to guide them to a new life ON EARTH and in the ever after. )
And many of these are the result of blacks evicted off the white farms where they were live in workers living in huts and shacks and barns. Now they are on their own.
Really something all Africans should aspire to huh?
Posts: 8897 | Registered: May 2005
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Argyle104, this affects the Maghreb and the "Middle East" as well. You need to go to Morocco again and carefully look at the rampant child prostitution.
The situation in Afghanistan and Iraq has led to a similar phenomena as well. Girls are being bartered for food. Resources are being usurped as well.
European techniques used in Africa is being used in that region. Remember, this is the first time, the West has exclusive access in the former Ottoman regions.
Russia, during the cold war, was in their way. On the other hand, Africa, was under the control of the dominant European powers of today. Czar Russia were not in Africa and thus the Europeans had unrestricted access to the region. When USSR arose, expansionism within former Ottoman regions slowed down.
That is when the proxy state, Israel was used by France and UK. Israel received significant technology transfers. US maintained a "neutral" stance (backing their European allies), while in 1967 decided to recognize Israel as the godfather of the region.
I don't see how this is terribly different from the situation in Africa. Egypt, at the moment, is a joke. The nation has been transforming into a source of children and women. We're seeing rampant prostitution, with the millions of street children appearing due to regressive economic policies becoming a primary source. The nation is hollowing out like Iran which also has a terrible prostitution crisis, albeit, more common amongst educated women.
Posts: 1080 | Registered: Aug 2008
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More of the day to day soap opera of the flunky politicians in South Africa selling out to white interests:
quote: Johannesburg — THE African National Congress (ANC) yesterday emphatically said it had no intention of nationalising SA mines , saying no party leader would "make policy pronouncements" based on "sentiment" .
No fewer than three leaders of the ruling party, including secretary- general Gwede Mantashe, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe and Deputy Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom , have spoken out publicly against nationalising mines.
Both Motlanthe and Hanekom used public addresses to clarify the party's position. Motlanthe addressed the Chamber of Mines annual general meeting on Monday night, while Hanekom was the keynote speaker at the MINE-Tech International 2009 conference and exhibition in Johannesburg .
But it was ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe - who addressed a media briefing yesterday in Johannesburg after a meeting of the party's national working committee - who was unequivocal.
"There is no such decision in the ANC to nationalise the mines in SA," Mantashe said.
His comments come amid a debate fuelled primarily by the ANC Youth League, which has been agitating in favour of nationalisation. The league has champion ed the issue in recent months, calling on its supporters not to back leaders who were "against" the Freedom Charter, which the league uses as its cornerstone document in the nationalisation fracas.
But Mantashe laid down the law yesterday, effectively silencing the youth league. "No leader of the ANC, including comrade (ANC treasurer- general) Mathews Phosa, will make policy pronouncements based on sentiments. We will base our public pronouncements on policy positions and resolutions taken by the ANC constitutional structures."
Mantashe said those in the tripartite alliance who invoked the Freedom Charter to support their claims did so out of ignorance.
"The Freedom Charter, which is an ANC document, does not say anything about the nationalisation of the mines. It speaks to the mineral wealth beneath the soil. Our existing law speaks to mineral deposits reverting to the state," he said.
The ANC has been at pains to reassure investors that it has no plans to take ownership of privately owned mines.
Last week Phosa told European business people that the ANC was committed to "conservative" economic policies that did not include nationalisation.
Phosa told his foreign audience that while the ANC noted the " noise" the international community had heard over nationalisation, the party would stay the course and proceed with its prudent macroeconomic policy trajectory under President Jacob Zuma 's leadership.
Soon after that, Phosa came in for a scathing attack from the Gauteng provincial chapter of the Young Communist League, which called him a "golden boy of imperial and white monopoly capital dominance". Yesterday Mantashe chastised the Young Communist League, saying that "personalised" attacks were a sure way to kill debate.
The matter was going to be debated between the ANC and its leftist allies ahead of the upcoming alliance summit, Mantashe said.
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Kiss arse negroes are always selling out to white interests, even if it doesn't benefit them.
They like being shafted up the rear like that.
Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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You stupid ass idiot pulled that facebook trick on me. Do you guys have any idea I was really going to kick that boy's ass if I ever saw him?? And what would that have led to???
Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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Yeah...and you create the stereotype. More grease to your elbow.
Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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You're an old ass white man pretending to be a young stupid white man.
I hope you had a great time winding me up, it wasn't all bad for me. I looked forward to kicking your ass (the young version of you that is, that turns out not to be the culprit).
Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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Back to that sh11t again! grow up brotha!!! I have no problem with age. 36 is great!! I still feel good. And still play sports.
Notice I did not respond to being white. Why? one reason -
What is wrong with being white. It is below me to defend being not-white.
And as I said many time. . .I love my blackness. I love being ” the first man”.
They don’t come blacker than me. . . .and I am not talking skin color.
Someday you will reach that point of enlightenment.. . . if you don’t kill yourself first.
BTW how is that woman of yours? Back in the day men like you use to eat AFTER me. stupid prick.
Posts: 12143 | From: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable | Registered: Jun 2007
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^ The jig is up with you guys and your information collection & manipulation. I told you that 33 yr old cracker's age 3 years ago Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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^ Offensive material? It even applies to the so-called Middle East. Argyle just likes to receive his petty welfare check in Europe, while his people are getting trampled on by the West's military machine.
Posts: 1080 | Registered: Aug 2008
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Another example of the way European colonists across Africa still control most of the land and wealth of Africa, while their brethren claim that the starvation there is due to natural causes and the lack of "AID(s)":
Article on the 100 year land agreement between the British and the Maasai:
quote: On one side of the fence line, the farmed grass grows thick and trembles in the wind. On the other side, the ground is nearly bare, chewed down in places to the rocky topsoil. In between are splintered fence poles and scattered strands of electric wire that, until last month, closed off a 20,000-hectare central Kenyan commercial ranch from the communal grazing lands of Masai herdsmen.
To the Masai, most of whom make their living raising cows, sheep and goats, the landscape's stark divide is testimony to their need for grazing lands. With a population of about half a million, the Masai are one of the smallest tribes in this country of 32 million, but at the time of European arrival in the mid-19th century they dominated most of what is now western Kenya. Starting with a 1904 treaty with the British, they ceded much of the region's best grazing land to European farmers and consigned themselves to isolated reservations. That treaty, the Masai claim, has lapsed with its 100th anniversary. The Kenyan government rejects that claim, but the Masai are undeterred. "The land is ours," says Sailudari Masekonte, 32, a Masai herdsman. "We can destroy every single fence on this land."
And destroy they do. Though the Masai make claims to vast tracts of southern and central Kenya, the most active dispute has arisen on the western slopes of Mount Kenya, 200 km north of Nairobi. In just over a month, the Masai have ripped up dozens of miles of fencing and driven tens of thousands of cattle onto ranchers' fields. Riot police have chased invaders off the land, and used tear gas and bullets to break up demonstrations.
The 38 mainly white landowners, most of whom are Kenyan citizens, have their own claim to the land: 999-year leases issued before independence by the British colonial government and later recognized by Kenya. The ranchers complain that the Masai have stolen their livestock, robbed their staff and set fire to their fields. The landowners also claim to be superior environmental stewards. Drivers passing through their ranches can see more wildlife — elephants, zebras, giraffes, buffaloes and gazelles — than in some of Kenya's national parks. "The farmers really care about the land," says Lance Tomlinson, 35, who manages the Lolldaiga Hills Ranch, one of the properties at the center of the conflict. "The pastoralists don't look at the land. They look at the livestock numbers."
The land conflict is but the latest chapter in the troubled history of the Masai. The 1904 treaty was theoretically meant to protect them. By the late 1800s, the tribe had been devastated by civil war and smallpox. With a new railroad making it easier to access remote lands, the British government created reservations that would be off-limits to white settlement. The treaty set aside as Masai lands 23,000 sq km in two regions: the Laikipia plateau and an area south of Nairobi. This left the fertile Rift Valley and what would become Nairobi open for the settlers. It was to be "enduring as long as the Masai as a race shall exist." But it lasted just seven years. In a 1911 treaty, the colonial governor grabbed the fertile lands of Laikipia and exchanged them for an expansion of the Masai's southern holdings. This treaty was challenged in court, but the suit was thrown out on a technicality.
Since Kenya's independence in 1963, the Masai have watched as other tribes — notably those of sitting Presidents — have been granted land. Says John Oletingoi, of the Masai advocacy group Osiligi, "Do they want to tell us, 'Wait until a Masai is President, and then you'll get the land?'" Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki of the Kikuyu tribe is unsympathetic, but anxious to contain the dispute. The government has been brokering meetings between ranchers and Masai elders. "The invasion of this land is illegal and the government is committed to protecting private properties," says Lands Minister Amos Kimunya.
That position has led to several violent protests and the arrest of more than 100 since the invasions in August. In one incident, paramilitary police fired on a group of Masai just outside Lolldaiga Hills Ranch, killing an elderly man, Ntinai ole Moiyare, and wounding four others.
The Masai feel they have no choice but to demonstrate. While they plan to take their case before an international court, their efforts are now focused on public opinion. "This is the problem with this government", says Gilbert Ombachi, a lawyer defending the Masai. "To be heard you must agitate. You will be beaten, jailed and then you get what you want."
The invasions continue to make the farms unworkable. The invaders scatter at the arrival of the police, who along with the farmhands spend most of their time pushing Masai livestock off the ranches. Ranchers have asked the police to guard their houses, but their real fear is that the Masai will get their way. "This problem, if it is not finished, it will become the same problem that Zimbabwe had," says Tomlinson. "All the other tribes will say, 'The Masai were given their land, why can't we be given our land?'"
Then after years of tension one of these colonial white elite land owners gets away with murder: TWICE.
quote: Kenya’s small community of white landowners is braced for a backlash at the end of a trial that highlighted the lifestyle of the colonial elite.
Tom Cholmondeley’s arrest three years ago sparked a series of protests and calls for white-owned land to be redistributed among black farmers.
“The conviction may be enough to please some people but it could always be used as a stick to beat the rest of us with,” said a friend of Cholmondeley outside the courthouse where he was convicted yesterday. “We’ll be keeping our heads down for a bit.”
In a sign of the heat generated by the case, Cholmondeley was brought into court surrounded by riot police carrying shields.
However, demonstrations planned by Masai leaders around the market town of Naivasha, close to his family’s estate, were postponed to give activists a chance to digest the outcome. Residents crowded around bars and restaurants to watch the hearing on television. Some expressed anger that the charge had been reduced while others said that the guilty verdict should act as an example to white landowners.
Benjamin Mungania said he welcomed the verdict. “My hope is that this ruling will act to warn errant white farmers that there is the rule of law in this country,” he told Reuters.
Violence directed against white farmers has become common around Naivasha. Some say that the old image of Happy Valley has given way to a valley of death. Farm workers live crowded in ramshackle huts beside sprawling colonial mansions. Poverty and wealth exist side by side.
Land remains a desperately difficult issue more than 40 years after independence. It was one of the key factors in tribal violence that rocked the country last year after disputed elections.
Now keep in mind that the best land in Kenya is still controlled by Whites and other foreigners as part of massive plantations growing coffee, flowers and other items. All on land that was ORIGINALLY used for grazing and agriculture by the Africans. Yet after colonization they are forced to live on the most barren parts of the land and OF COURSE they suffer more from droughts and potential starvation. The people who took the land and use it to grow flowers don't give a F*CK about starving Kenyans. Yet and still white phonies get on T.V. and cry about starvation world wide when MOST of that starvation is due to HUMAN ACTS not natural causes and the UNFAIR distribution of land and resources. So the next time you see Kenyans as poster children for world hunger, keep the massive foreign owned plantations and lands being GIVEN AWAY by the Kenyan government to whites and foreigners in mind. Also keep in mind that these organizations are PRIMARILY run by the SAME foreigners and SAME people who support such foreign owned plantations in Africa.... Which means giving these people money is only FUNDING the system that has CAUSED the problem in the first place. The problem isn't lack of aid it is FOREIGN control of land and resources and the USE of those resources EXPLICITLY for the benefit of everyone ELSE EXCEPT Africans. That has nothing to do with AID.
quote: The United Nations launched an online appeal for individual donations to fight hunger as donor nations tackle an economic crisis and, for the first time in history, more than 1 billion face starvation worldwide.
The World Food Programme's "Billion for a Billion" campaign aims to reach 1 billion individuals.
"If a billion Internet users donate a dollar or a euro a week, we can literally transform the lives of a billion hungry people across the world," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of WFP.
Feeding 1 billion people might seem like a challenge, but small donations can make a big difference, Sheeran said.
"Year in, year out, governments have supported WFP in its mission to feed the world's hungriest people, but they cannot be expected to do it alone," Sheeran said. "It's time for members of the public to act."
The campaign comes on the eve of a summit planned for Monday by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. The agency called for a daylong global hunger strike to highlight the issue.
Some top U.N. officials are heeding the call.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to fast for 24 hours to show "solidarity with the planet's 1 billion people who do not have enough to eat," said Marie Okabe, his spokeswoman.
The 1 billion number is about 100 million more than last year, the World Food Programme said. To meet the needs, the agency said it has to raise U.S. $6.7 billion. Donations to date stand at U.S. $2.9 billion.
"Citizen action has abolished slavery, given women the right to vote, and helped to ban the use of land mines across much of our planet," Sheeran said. " ... Why shouldn't we draw on that inspiration and try to harness the power of individual action to feed the world's hungriest people?"
* Bill Gates culturing grassroots Green Revolution
* ‘Land grab,’ environmental, GM concerns abound
BAKO, Ethiopia/JOHANNESBURG, Nov 12 (Reuters) - For centuries, farmers like Berhanu Gudina have eked out a living in Ethiopia’s central lowlands, tending tiny plots of maize, wheat or barley amid the vastness of the lush green plains.
Now, they find themselves working cheek by jowl with high-tech commercial farms stretching over thousands of hectares tilled by state-of-the-art tractors — and owned and operated by foreigners.
With memories of Ethiopia’s devastating 1984 famine still fresh in the minds of its leaders, the government has been enticing well-heeled foreigners to invest in the nation’s underperforming agriculture sector. It is part of an economic development push they say will help the Horn of Africa nation ensure it has enough food for its 80 million people.
Many small Ethopian farmers do not share their leaders’ enthusiasm for the policy, eyeing the outsiders with a suspicion that has crept across Africa as millions of hectares have been placed, with varying degrees of transparency, in foreign hands.
Now we see Indians coming, Chinese coming. Before, we were just Ethiopian, 54-year-old Gudina said in Bako, a small farming town 280 km (170 miles) west of Addis Ababa. What do they want here? The same as the British in Kenya? To steal everything? Our government is selling our country to the Asians so they can make money for themselves.
Xenophobia aside, a number of organizations — including the foundation started by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates — argue that Africa should support its own farmers.
Instead of African countries giving away their best lands, they should invest in their own farmers, said Akin Adesina, vice president of the Nairobi-based Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). What’s needed is a small-holder, farmer-based revolution. African land should not be up for garage sale.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Both sides of the debate agree on this much: a stark reality — underlined by last year’s food price crisis — looms large over Ethiopia and beyond. The world is in danger of running out of food.
By 2050, when its population is likely to be more than 9 billion, up from 6 billion now, the world’s food production needs to increase by 70 percent, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.
In Africa, which for a variety of reasons was bypassed by the Green Revolution that transformed India and China in the 1960s and 1970s, the numbers are even more bleak. The continent’s population is set to double from 1 billion now.
In all, the FAO says, feeding those extra mouths is going to take $83 billion in investment every year for the next four decades, increasing both the amount of cultivated land and how much it produces. The estimated investment for Africa alone is $11 billion a year.
For deeply impoverished Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa’s second-most populous nation after Nigeria, even a fraction of those sums is unthinkable.
Yet with 111 million hectares — nearly twice the area of Texas — within its borders, the answer, in the government’s eyes, is simple: Lease ’spare’ land to wealthy outsiders to get them to grow the food. One unfortunate consequence of that thinking is Gudina and his little plot of maize are painted as part of the problem, rather than a potential solution.
The small-scale farmers are not producing the quality they should, because they don’t have the technology, said Esayas Kebede, head of the Agricultural Investment Agency, a body founded only in February but already talking about offering foreign farmers 3 million hectares in the next two years.
There are 12 million households in Ethiopia. We can’t afford to give new technology to all of them, he said, sitting in an office adorned with maps showing possible sites for commercial farms.
Indian agro-conglomerate Karuturi Global (KART.BO), whose involvement in Ethiopia so far has been exporting cut-flowers to Europe, has taken the hint, branching out into food production with a sprawling maize farm in Bako. Unlike with similar land deals elsewhere in Africa, the company insists crops will be exported only after demand is met in Ethiopia — where 6.2 million people are said to be in need of emergency food aid because of poor seasonal rains.
Our main aim is to feed the Ethiopian people, Karuturi’s Ethiopia general manager, Hanumatha Rao, told Reuters, sitting under an awning at the Bako farm as hundreds of labourers harvested maize in the fields stretching up nearby hillsides. Whatever we produce will go to the stomachs of the Ethiopian people before it goes to the international market.
ANOTHER AFRICAN REVOLUTION
While many governments have been busy courting foreigners, in most cases from Asia or the Middle East, to increase Africa’s food output, small farmers like Gudina are not totally without friends.
An initiative backed by the Melinda and Bill Gates and Rockefeller foundations is aiming to kick-start an African Green Revolution, carefully avoiding the pitfalls that had engulfed previous such attempts.
In particular, Africa boasts a dazzling array of soil types, climates and crops that have defied the one-size-fits-all solution of better seed, fertilizer and irrigation that worked in Asia half a century ago.
Its perennial tendency to corruption and official incompetence has also played its part in keeping average grain yields on the continent at just 1.2 tonnes per hectare, compared with 3.5 tonnes in Europe and 5.5 tonnes in the United States.
AGRA’s Adesina says sub-Saharan governments are slowly realising the importance of small farmers, who account for 70 percent of the region’s population and 60 percent of its agricultural output. But he urges governments to make good on a pledge six years ago to raise farm spending to 10 percent of their national budgets.
For its part, AGRA is pouring money into research institutes from Burkina Faso in the west to Tanzania in the east to breed higher yielding and more drought- and pest-resistant strains of everything from maize and cassava to sorghum and sweet potato.
Of course the idea that the Rockerfeller foundation or Bill and Melinda Gates are going to do ANYTHING to help African farmers is nonsense. The point is that African "smallholder" farmers need to become medium to large COMMERCIAL farmers. To do that, they need financing, technology and government support. THAT is the key behind the land being given to the foreigners: they are ABLE to become LARGE commercial farmers EXPLICITLY because of plans and policies of the governments involved. Africans give them land FOR FREE or pennies or the dollar, which represents a form of financial and political support, while their host countries give them financing to buy technology. There is no mystery about this at all. It is the same system that allowed white settlers with no money to go to Africa and become LARGE commercial farmers. The goal isn't to KEEP Africans as small holder farmers. That is NONSENSE. A small holder farmer is a guy growing cabbages in the back yard. THAT IS NOT the way forward for Africans feeding themselves. The way forward is for LARGE commercial farms, owned and operated by Africans, with the appropriate technology and financing for equipment and infrastructure. It isn't about helping Africans try and grow crops on the WORST land in their countries because FOREIGNERS control the best land. But the world doesn't WANT THAT. They WANT Africans to starve because the name of the game is put your money where your mouth is. The MONEY is going to foreigners and whites, so right THERE that tells you who the globalists care about. It isn't the black African farmers. And those white AID groups asking for BILLIONS of dollars to feed the world fall into the same category. They are simply ANOTHER PART of the same con game which KEEPS Africans as SMALL TINY impoverished farmers, wearing rags and in poverty as landless peasants while foreigners own and control all the wealth.
quote: 2. Kenya: Local resistance to land grab captures government, investor attention(The National, UN Integrated Regional Information Services)
Date Posted: June 15th, 2009
Posted in: African Farm News in Review, Issue #70, Past Issues
Many people see Kenya’s Tana River Delta as underdeveloped. They look at the vast stretch of fertile land and see potential. In recent years, there have been several proposals to develop the land – from sugarcane to shrimp farming, from rice fields to biofuels.
But locals say the land is already in use. Farmers grow crops and pastoralists graze livestock. In the dry season, herders come from neighbouring provinces in search of pasture and water. These people say the land is not for sale. Governments and potential investors are starting to listen.Last December, the Kenyan government struck a deal with the government of Qatar. In exchange for a loan to build a new port, Qatar would receive 40,000 hectares of land in the Tana River Delta. Now, government officials maintain that the deal is not set in stone.
Most of the Tana River Delta belongs to the government. But communities have been using the land since before Kenya was a state. They say customary law makes it theirs.
International analysts are noticing a global increase in this kind of resistance. Marie Bos is a researcher at the Gulf Research Center in the United Arab Emirates. She says local protests have proved that land deals are not simple.
O.B. Sisay is an analyst with Exclusive Analysis in the United Kingdom. His company assesses commercial risks and opportunities. He says resistance to land grabs suggests that wealthy nations would be better off focusing on their own farmland.
The Kenyan government, meanwhile, says it is still negotiating with Qatar. A government spokesperson said that Kenya is asking Qatar to develop land in the delta to grow crops for domestic consumption. This would be in addition to the land that Qatar wants to use to grow food for export.
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Conflict Minerals: A Cover For US Allies and Western Mining Interests?
by Kambale Musavuli and Bodia Macharia / November 28th, 2009
As global awareness grows around the Congo and the silence is finally being broken on the current and historic exploitation of Black people in the heart of Africa, a myriad of Western based “prescriptions” are being proffered. Most of these prescriptions are devoid of social, political, economic and historical context and are marked by remarkable omissions. The conflict mineral approach or efforts emanating from the United States and Europe are no exception to this symptomatic approach which serves more to perpetuate the root causes of Congo’s challenges than to resolve them.
The conflict mineral approach has an obsessive focus on the FDLR and other rebel groups while scant attention is paid to Uganda (which has an International Court of Justice ruling against it for looting and crimes against humanity in the Congo) and Rwanda (whose role in the perpetuation of the conflict and looting of Congo is well documented by UN reports and international arrest warrants for its top officials). Rwanda is the main transit point for illicit minerals coming from the Congo irrespective of the rebel group (FDLR, CNDP or others) transporting the minerals. According to Dow Jones, Rwanda’s mining sector output grew 20% in 2008 from the year earlier due to increased export volumes of tungsten, cassiterite and coltan, the country’s three leading minerals with which Rwanda is not well endowed. In fact, should Rwanda continue to pilfer Congo’s minerals, its annual mineral export revenues are expected to reach $200 million by 2010. Former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Herman Cohen says it best when he notes “having controlled the Kivu provinces for 12 years, Rwanda will not relinquish access to resources that constitute a significant percentage of its gross national product.” As long as the West continues to give the Kagame regime carte blanche, the conflict and instability will endure.
According to Global Witness’s 2009 report, Faced With A Gun What Can you Do, Congolese government statistics and reports by the Group of Experts and NGOs, Rwanda is one of the main conduits for illicit minerals leaving the Congo. It is amazing that the conflict mineral approach shout loudly about making sure that the trade in minerals does not benefit armed groups but the biggest armed beneficiary of Congo’s minerals is the Rwandan regime headed by Paul Kagame. Nonetheless, the conflict mineral approach is remarkably silent about Rwanda’s complicity in the fueling of the conflict in the Congo and the fleecing of Congo’s riches.
Advocates of the conflict mineral approach would be far more credible if they had ever called for any kind of pressure whatsoever on mining companies that are directly involved in either fueling the conflict or exploiting the Congolese people. The United Nations, The Congolese Parliament, Carter Center, Southern Africa Resource Watch and several other NGOs have documented corporations that have pilfered Congo’s wealth and contributed to the perpetuation of the conflict. Some of these companies include but are not limited to: Traxys, OM Group, Blattner Elwyn Group, Freeport McMoran, Eagle Wings/Trinitech, Lundin, Kemet, Banro, AngloGold Ashanti, Anvil Mining, and First Quantum.
The conflict mineral approach, like the Blood Diamond campaign from which it draws its inspiration, is silent on the question of resource sovereignty which has been a central question in the geo-strategic battle for Congo’s mineral wealth. It was over this question of resource sovereignty that the West assassinated Congo’s first democratically elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba and stifled the democratic aspirations of the Congolese people for over three decades by installing and backing the dictator Joseph Mobutu. In addition, the United States also backed the 1996 and 1998 invasions of Congo by Rwanda and Uganda instead of supporting the non-violent, pro-democracy forces inside the Congo. Unfortunately and to the chagrin of the Congolese people, some of the strongest advocates of the conflict mineral approach are former Clinton administration officials who supported the invasions of Congo by Rwanda and Uganda. This may in part explains the militaristic underbelly of the conflict mineral approach, which has as its so-called second step a comprehensive counterinsurgency.
The focus on the east of Congo falls in line with the long-held obsession by some advocates in Washington who incessantly push for the balkanization of the Congo. Their focus on “Eastern Congo” is inadequate and does not fully take into account the nature and scope of the dynamics in the entire country. Political decisions in Kinshasa, the capital in the West, have a direct impact on the events that unfold in the East of Congo and are central to any durable solutions.
The central claim of the conflict mineral approach is to bring an end to the conflict; however, the conflict can plausibly be brought to an end much quicker through diplomatic and political means. The so-called blood mineral route is not the quickest way to end the conflict. We have already seen how quickly world pressure can work with the sidelining of rebel leader Laurent Nkunda and the demobilization and/or rearranging of his CNDP rebel group in January 2009, as a result of global pressure placed on the CNDP’s sponsor Paul Kagame of Rwanda. More pressure needs to be placed on leaders such as Kagame and Museveni who have been at the root of the conflict since 1996. The FDLR can readily be pressured as well, especially with most of their political leadership residing in the West, however this should be done within a political framework, which brings all the players to the table as opposed to the current militaristic, dichotomous, good-guy bad-guy approach where the West sees Kagame and Museveni as the “good-guys” and everyone else as bad. The picture is far grayer than Black and White.
A robust political approach by the global community would entail the following prescriptions:
1. Join Sweden and Netherlands in pressuring Rwanda to be a partner for peace and a stabilizing presence in the region. The United States and Great Britain in particular should apply more pressure on their allies Rwanda and Uganda to the point of withholding aid if necessary.
2. Hold to account companies and individuals through sanctions trafficking in minerals whether with rebel groups or neighboring countries, particularly Rwanda and Uganda. Canada has chimed in as well but has been deadly silent on the exploitative practices of its mining companies in the Congo. Canada must do more to hold its mining companies accountable as is called for in Bill C-300.
3. Encourage world leaders to be more engaged diplomatically and place a higher priority on what is the deadliest conflict in the World since World War Two.
4. Reject the militarization of the Great Lakes region represented by AFRICOM, which has already resulted in the suffering of civilian population; the strengthening of authoritarian figures such as Uganda’s Museveni (in power since 1986) and Rwanda’s Kagame (won the 2003 “elections” with 95 percent of the vote); and the restriction of political space in their countries.
5. Demand of the Obama administration to be engaged differently from its current military-laden approach and to take the lead in pursuing an aggressive diplomatic path with an emphasis on pursuing a regional political framework that can lead to lasting peace and stability.
posted
Africa was heaven before White people invaded. I blame all of Africa's problems on Europeans, Arabs, and Chinese.
Posts: 248 | Registered: Aug 2009
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by JMT2: Conflict Minerals: A Cover For US Allies and Western Mining Interests?
by Kambale Musavuli and Bodia Macharia / November 28th, 2009
As global awareness grows around the Congo and the silence is finally being broken on the current and historic exploitation of Black people in the heart of Africa, a myriad of Western based “prescriptions” are being proffered. Most of these prescriptions are devoid of social, political, economic and historical context and are marked by remarkable omissions. The conflict mineral approach or efforts emanating from the United States and Europe are no exception to this symptomatic approach which serves more to perpetuate the root causes of Congo’s challenges than to resolve them.
The conflict mineral approach has an obsessive focus on the FDLR and other rebel groups while scant attention is paid to Uganda (which has an International Court of Justice ruling against it for looting and crimes against humanity in the Congo) and Rwanda (whose role in the perpetuation of the conflict and looting of Congo is well documented by UN reports and international arrest warrants for its top officials). Rwanda is the main transit point for illicit minerals coming from the Congo irrespective of the rebel group (FDLR, CNDP or others) transporting the minerals. According to Dow Jones, Rwanda’s mining sector output grew 20% in 2008 from the year earlier due to increased export volumes of tungsten, cassiterite and coltan, the country’s three leading minerals with which Rwanda is not well endowed. In fact, should Rwanda continue to pilfer Congo’s minerals, its annual mineral export revenues are expected to reach $200 million by 2010. Former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Herman Cohen says it best when he notes “having controlled the Kivu provinces for 12 years, Rwanda will not relinquish access to resources that constitute a significant percentage of its gross national product.” As long as the West continues to give the Kagame regime carte blanche, the conflict and instability will endure.
According to Global Witness’s 2009 report, Faced With A Gun What Can you Do, Congolese government statistics and reports by the Group of Experts and NGOs, Rwanda is one of the main conduits for illicit minerals leaving the Congo. It is amazing that the conflict mineral approach shout loudly about making sure that the trade in minerals does not benefit armed groups but the biggest armed beneficiary of Congo’s minerals is the Rwandan regime headed by Paul Kagame. Nonetheless, the conflict mineral approach is remarkably silent about Rwanda’s complicity in the fueling of the conflict in the Congo and the fleecing of Congo’s riches.
Advocates of the conflict mineral approach would be far more credible if they had ever called for any kind of pressure whatsoever on mining companies that are directly involved in either fueling the conflict or exploiting the Congolese people. The United Nations, The Congolese Parliament, Carter Center, Southern Africa Resource Watch and several other NGOs have documented corporations that have pilfered Congo’s wealth and contributed to the perpetuation of the conflict. Some of these companies include but are not limited to: Traxys, OM Group, Blattner Elwyn Group, Freeport McMoran, Eagle Wings/Trinitech, Lundin, Kemet, Banro, AngloGold Ashanti, Anvil Mining, and First Quantum.
The conflict mineral approach, like the Blood Diamond campaign from which it draws its inspiration, is silent on the question of resource sovereignty which has been a central question in the geo-strategic battle for Congo’s mineral wealth. It was over this question of resource sovereignty that the West assassinated Congo’s first democratically elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba and stifled the democratic aspirations of the Congolese people for over three decades by installing and backing the dictator Joseph Mobutu. In addition, the United States also backed the 1996 and 1998 invasions of Congo by Rwanda and Uganda instead of supporting the non-violent, pro-democracy forces inside the Congo. Unfortunately and to the chagrin of the Congolese people, some of the strongest advocates of the conflict mineral approach are former Clinton administration officials who supported the invasions of Congo by Rwanda and Uganda. This may in part explains the militaristic underbelly of the conflict mineral approach, which has as its so-called second step a comprehensive counterinsurgency.
The focus on the east of Congo falls in line with the long-held obsession by some advocates in Washington who incessantly push for the balkanization of the Congo. Their focus on “Eastern Congo” is inadequate and does not fully take into account the nature and scope of the dynamics in the entire country. Political decisions in Kinshasa, the capital in the West, have a direct impact on the events that unfold in the East of Congo and are central to any durable solutions.
The central claim of the conflict mineral approach is to bring an end to the conflict; however, the conflict can plausibly be brought to an end much quicker through diplomatic and political means. The so-called blood mineral route is not the quickest way to end the conflict. We have already seen how quickly world pressure can work with the sidelining of rebel leader Laurent Nkunda and the demobilization and/or rearranging of his CNDP rebel group in January 2009, as a result of global pressure placed on the CNDP’s sponsor Paul Kagame of Rwanda. More pressure needs to be placed on leaders such as Kagame and Museveni who have been at the root of the conflict since 1996. The FDLR can readily be pressured as well, especially with most of their political leadership residing in the West, however this should be done within a political framework, which brings all the players to the table as opposed to the current militaristic, dichotomous, good-guy bad-guy approach where the West sees Kagame and Museveni as the “good-guys” and everyone else as bad. The picture is far grayer than Black and White.
A robust political approach by the global community would entail the following prescriptions:
1. Join Sweden and Netherlands in pressuring Rwanda to be a partner for peace and a stabilizing presence in the region. The United States and Great Britain in particular should apply more pressure on their allies Rwanda and Uganda to the point of withholding aid if necessary.
2. Hold to account companies and individuals through sanctions trafficking in minerals whether with rebel groups or neighboring countries, particularly Rwanda and Uganda. Canada has chimed in as well but has been deadly silent on the exploitative practices of its mining companies in the Congo. Canada must do more to hold its mining companies accountable as is called for in Bill C-300.
3. Encourage world leaders to be more engaged diplomatically and place a higher priority on what is the deadliest conflict in the World since World War Two.
4. Reject the militarization of the Great Lakes region represented by AFRICOM, which has already resulted in the suffering of civilian population; the strengthening of authoritarian figures such as Uganda’s Museveni (in power since 1986) and Rwanda’s Kagame (won the 2003 “elections” with 95 percent of the vote); and the restriction of political space in their countries.
5. Demand of the Obama administration to be engaged differently from its current military-laden approach and to take the lead in pursuing an aggressive diplomatic path with an emphasis on pursuing a regional political framework that can lead to lasting peace and stability.
Obviously the concept of "blood diamonds" and "conflict diamonds" is simply another example of white PR designed to make everyone sympathetic for white supremacy and demonize blacks. But who has been killing, raping and oppressing blacks for over 200 years in order to extract minerals and diamonds in Africa? The SAME people who are behind the Kimberly process and "blood diamond" campaign. THE SAME PEOPLE who have been killing and murdering Africans for hundreds of years for their diamonds and resources are now claiming that BLACKS are the reason for the blood being spilled. Last I checked, there are no coltan processing facilities or electronics manufacturing companies in Congo and Rwanda. ANY TRADE in such minerals HAS to be aided, supported and DIRECTED by the needs of NON AFRICANS as Africans DO NOT have any participation in terms of marketing and manufacturing. Therefore, the conflicts are a DIRECT RESULT of foreigners USING AFRICANS as proxies while whites and other foreigners hide out of site and pretend not to be involved. This pattern of whites using blacks as constables, soldiers and police to kill, maim and rob their own people goes back to the earliest days of colonialism. Leopold of Belgium killed MILLIONS of Congolese using the exact same tactics. Black police and constables were ALL OVER Kenya, Somalia, Congo and Southern Africa, doing the bidding of whites and spilling the blood of Africans in the name of white profits. So HOW ON EARTH can these SAME PEOPLE claim to be so concerned about "blood diamonds" or "conflict minerals" when ALL diamonds and minerals from Africa HAVE BLOOD ON THEM and ALL OF IT is due to the actions and direction of whites?
In reality this is simply a way to GUARANTEE that the ONLY COMPANY in Africa that has the rights to sell diamonds is the WHITE RACIST DeBeers company which has DIRECTLY been responsible for killing MILLIONS of African in the quest of gaining CONTROL of Africa's diamond trade. THEY are the ones who created the concept of "blood diamonds" as it is THEY who have ruthlessly and methodically oppressed, maimed and murdered blacks in order to control the diamond producing areas of Southern Africa. In other words, they want you to think that when BLACKS control diamond production it is EVIL, but when WHITES do it, it is GOOD.
People need to realize that the actions of whites in Africa have ALWAYS been backed by a PR CAMPAIGN which masks their actions with good sounding talking points and news clips for people "back at home". Leopold claimed to be bringing civilization and building roads for Africans while he systematically killed millions. Today they are doing the SAME THING. The current strategy is to REPACKAGE South African white industry and elites as "good guys" in the struggle for "bringing democracy and fair trade" to Africa. Really? Since when have WHITES in Africa EVER DONE anything to help blacks in ANY WAY gain freedom, peace or democracy in any way? So that is why you have the movie called Blood Diamond featuring a so-called WHITE SOUTH AFRICAN MERCENARY as the GOOD GUY. How is that? It is the WHITE South African mercenaries that arm and support the groups throughout Africa who are KILLING AND MAIMING the people. It is the white mercenaries in South Africa who have been staging coups and other such acts against Africans to maintain white control of African resources. But the media is CONTINUING to cloak their actions with PR. Look up Executive Outcomes if you question this. On top of that, any time there is a news report on "conflict minerals" or "blood diamonds" who is the "expert" that is often put on to discuss the situation: a WHITE South African, as if they are TRULY FAIR AND IMPARTIAL observers of industry and commerce..... sure. Of course this PR will portray white mercenaries as GOOD GUYS trying to PROTECT the mines and farms of whites as if WHITES AREN'T THIEVES and MURDERERS to begin with.
But this will only ramp up as the World Cup approaches and white South Africans along with their brethren from Europe and America use the World Cup as a MASSIVE PR campaign to legitimatize white supremacy in South Africa. Even as blacks are being beat and pushed out of the shacks they live in to make way for the stadiums of the World Cup. Even as blacks STILL do not own most of the land in South Africa. That is the reason for the NEW movie with Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela called Invictus, which centers around the guess what...... WORLD CUP. This is why white South African supermodels (no black women are pretty in South Africa?) are plastered on NFL sport shows in prime time. ALL of it a PR campaign to legitimatize WHITE ECONOMIC RULE in South Africa.
After all, the South Africans want to be the USA of Africa or Union of South Africa, which is to be modeled after AMERICA as some bastion of peace, prosperity and FREEDOM in Africa.......
Look at how the activities of South African mercenaries, who were shown to be riding through Iraq shooting at civilians, is now LEGITIMATIZED. Of course shooting at the natives while the whites rape and loot the country is ALWAYS a strategic interest of white folks:
quote: Executive Outcomes founder starts a blog
These days even ex-mercenaries are writing blogs.
In 1989, Eeben Barlow, a former South African special forces officer, founded Executive Outcomes, a mercenary company. Executive Outcomes operated mainly in Africa in the 1990s, fighting in Angola and Sierra Leone. Disbanded in 1998, the company gained a reputation as a highly effective private military force.
Now Barlow is working as a consultant and blogging* about military and security matters. Check out his blog, especially this post which suggests ways that companies can fight criminal gangs that are preying on their activities. (I assume that Barlow is talking about places like South Africa, where crime is rampant and the police are often ineffective and corrupt.)
He has good advice about how companies should handle contracts with security firms:
"Do they usually know anything about the company providing their security? Have they made the security company liable for any burglary, theft or other losses they may suffer while under their watch? Are security companies given a time-line in which to perform adequately and resolve the crime issues within a company?"
Barlow suggests that to combat organized crime, large companies should develop their own in-house intelligence collection and assessment capabilities, and the means to counter criminal activities.
posted
Africa was and is too weak to defend itself. The goofball above who said it was all the fault of the Europeans failed to comprehend that when you have no power or money you get dominated by others, as you should.
Posts: 2036 | From: Texas | Registered: Sep 2009
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by JMT2: Conflict Minerals: A Cover For US Allies and Western Mining Interests?
by Kambale Musavuli and Bodia Macharia / November 28th, 2009
As global awareness grows around the Congo and the silence is finally being broken on the current and historic exploitation of Black people in the heart of Africa, a myriad of Western based “prescriptions” are being proffered. Most of these prescriptions are devoid of social, political, economic and historical context and are marked by remarkable omissions. The conflict mineral approach or efforts emanating from the United States and Europe are no exception to this symptomatic approach which serves more to perpetuate the root causes of Congo’s challenges than to resolve them.
The conflict mineral approach has an obsessive focus on the FDLR and other rebel groups while scant attention is paid to Uganda (which has an International Court of Justice ruling against it for looting and crimes against humanity in the Congo) and Rwanda (whose role in the perpetuation of the conflict and looting of Congo is well documented by UN reports and international arrest warrants for its top officials). Rwanda is the main transit point for illicit minerals coming from the Congo irrespective of the rebel group (FDLR, CNDP or others) transporting the minerals. According to Dow Jones, Rwanda’s mining sector output grew 20% in 2008 from the year earlier due to increased export volumes of tungsten, cassiterite and coltan, the country’s three leading minerals with which Rwanda is not well endowed. In fact, should Rwanda continue to pilfer Congo’s minerals, its annual mineral export revenues are expected to reach $200 million by 2010. Former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Herman Cohen says it best when he notes “having controlled the Kivu provinces for 12 years, Rwanda will not relinquish access to resources that constitute a significant percentage of its gross national product.” As long as the West continues to give the Kagame regime carte blanche, the conflict and instability will endure.
According to Global Witness’s 2009 report, Faced With A Gun What Can you Do, Congolese government statistics and reports by the Group of Experts and NGOs, Rwanda is one of the main conduits for illicit minerals leaving the Congo. It is amazing that the conflict mineral approach shout loudly about making sure that the trade in minerals does not benefit armed groups but the biggest armed beneficiary of Congo’s minerals is the Rwandan regime headed by Paul Kagame. Nonetheless, the conflict mineral approach is remarkably silent about Rwanda’s complicity in the fueling of the conflict in the Congo and the fleecing of Congo’s riches.
Advocates of the conflict mineral approach would be far more credible if they had ever called for any kind of pressure whatsoever on mining companies that are directly involved in either fueling the conflict or exploiting the Congolese people. The United Nations, The Congolese Parliament, Carter Center, Southern Africa Resource Watch and several other NGOs have documented corporations that have pilfered Congo’s wealth and contributed to the perpetuation of the conflict. Some of these companies include but are not limited to: Traxys, OM Group, Blattner Elwyn Group, Freeport McMoran, Eagle Wings/Trinitech, Lundin, Kemet, Banro, AngloGold Ashanti, Anvil Mining, and First Quantum.
The conflict mineral approach, like the Blood Diamond campaign from which it draws its inspiration, is silent on the question of resource sovereignty which has been a central question in the geo-strategic battle for Congo’s mineral wealth. It was over this question of resource sovereignty that the West assassinated Congo’s first democratically elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba and stifled the democratic aspirations of the Congolese people for over three decades by installing and backing the dictator Joseph Mobutu. In addition, the United States also backed the 1996 and 1998 invasions of Congo by Rwanda and Uganda instead of supporting the non-violent, pro-democracy forces inside the Congo. Unfortunately and to the chagrin of the Congolese people, some of the strongest advocates of the conflict mineral approach are former Clinton administration officials who supported the invasions of Congo by Rwanda and Uganda. This may in part explains the militaristic underbelly of the conflict mineral approach, which has as its so-called second step a comprehensive counterinsurgency.
The focus on the east of Congo falls in line with the long-held obsession by some advocates in Washington who incessantly push for the balkanization of the Congo. Their focus on “Eastern Congo” is inadequate and does not fully take into account the nature and scope of the dynamics in the entire country. Political decisions in Kinshasa, the capital in the West, have a direct impact on the events that unfold in the East of Congo and are central to any durable solutions.
The central claim of the conflict mineral approach is to bring an end to the conflict; however, the conflict can plausibly be brought to an end much quicker through diplomatic and political means. The so-called blood mineral route is not the quickest way to end the conflict. We have already seen how quickly world pressure can work with the sidelining of rebel leader Laurent Nkunda and the demobilization and/or rearranging of his CNDP rebel group in January 2009, as a result of global pressure placed on the CNDP’s sponsor Paul Kagame of Rwanda. More pressure needs to be placed on leaders such as Kagame and Museveni who have been at the root of the conflict since 1996. The FDLR can readily be pressured as well, especially with most of their political leadership residing in the West, however this should be done within a political framework, which brings all the players to the table as opposed to the current militaristic, dichotomous, good-guy bad-guy approach where the West sees Kagame and Museveni as the “good-guys” and everyone else as bad. The picture is far grayer than Black and White.
A robust political approach by the global community would entail the following prescriptions:
1. Join Sweden and Netherlands in pressuring Rwanda to be a partner for peace and a stabilizing presence in the region. The United States and Great Britain in particular should apply more pressure on their allies Rwanda and Uganda to the point of withholding aid if necessary.
2. Hold to account companies and individuals through sanctions trafficking in minerals whether with rebel groups or neighboring countries, particularly Rwanda and Uganda. Canada has chimed in as well but has been deadly silent on the exploitative practices of its mining companies in the Congo. Canada must do more to hold its mining companies accountable as is called for in Bill C-300.
3. Encourage world leaders to be more engaged diplomatically and place a higher priority on what is the deadliest conflict in the World since World War Two.
4. Reject the militarization of the Great Lakes region represented by AFRICOM, which has already resulted in the suffering of civilian population; the strengthening of authoritarian figures such as Uganda’s Museveni (in power since 1986) and Rwanda’s Kagame (won the 2003 “elections” with 95 percent of the vote); and the restriction of political space in their countries.
5. Demand of the Obama administration to be engaged differently from its current military-laden approach and to take the lead in pursuing an aggressive diplomatic path with an emphasis on pursuing a regional political framework that can lead to lasting peace and stability.
Obviously the concept of "blood diamonds" and "conflict diamonds" is simply another example of white PR designed to make everyone sympathetic for white supremacy and demonize blacks. But who has been killing, raping and oppressing blacks for over 200 years in order to extract minerals and diamonds in Africa? The SAME people who are behind the Kimberly process and "blood diamond" campaign. THE SAME PEOPLE who have been killing and murdering Africans for hundreds of years for their diamonds and resources are now claiming that BLACKS are the reason for the blood being spilled. Last I checked, there are no coltan processing facilities or electronics manufacturing companies in Congo and Rwanda. ANY TRADE in such minerals HAS to be aided, supported and DIRECTED by the needs of NON AFRICANS as Africans DO NOT have any participation in terms of marketing and manufacturing. Therefore, the conflicts are a DIRECT RESULT of foreigners USING AFRICANS as proxies while whites and other foreigners hide out of site and pretend not to be involved. This pattern of whites using blacks as constables, soldiers and police to kill, maim and rob their own people goes back to the earliest days of colonialism. Leopold of Belgium killed MILLIONS of Congolese using the exact same tactics. Black police and constables were ALL OVER Kenya, Somalia, Congo and Southern Africa, doing the bidding of whites and spilling the blood of Africans in the name of white profits. So HOW ON EARTH can these SAME PEOPLE claim to be so concerned about "blood diamonds" or "conflict minerals" when ALL diamonds and minerals from Africa HAVE BLOOD ON THEM and ALL OF IT is due to the actions and direction of whites?
In reality this is simply a way to GUARANTEE that the ONLY COMPANY in Africa that has the rights to sell diamonds is the WHITE RACIST DeBeers company which has DIRECTLY been responsible for killing MILLIONS of African in the quest of gaining CONTROL of Africa's diamond trade. THEY are the ones who created the concept of "blood diamonds" as it is THEY who have ruthlessly and methodically oppressed, maimed and murdered blacks in order to control the diamond producing areas of Southern Africa. In other words, they want you to think that when BLACKS control diamond production it is EVIL, but when WHITES do it, it is GOOD.
People need to realize that the actions of whites in Africa have ALWAYS been backed by a PR CAMPAIGN which masks their actions with good sounding talking points and news clips for people "back at home". Leopold claimed to be bringing civilization and building roads for Africans while he systematically killed millions. Today they are doing the SAME THING. The current strategy is to REPACKAGE South African white industry and elites as "good guys" in the struggle for "bringing democracy and fair trade" to Africa. Really? Since when have WHITES in Africa EVER DONE anything to help blacks in ANY WAY gain freedom, peace or democracy in any way? So that is why you have the movie called Blood Diamond featuring a so-called WHITE SOUTH AFRICAN MERCENARY as the GOOD GUY. How is that? It is the WHITE South African mercenaries that arm and support the groups throughout Africa who are KILLING AND MAIMING the people. It is the white mercenaries in South Africa who have been staging coups and other such acts against Africans to maintain white control of African resources. But the media is CONTINUING to cloak their actions with PR. Look up Executive Outcomes if you question this. On top of that, any time there is a news report on "conflict minerals" or "blood diamonds" who is the "expert" that is often put on to discuss the situation: a WHITE South African, as if they are TRULY FAIR AND IMPARTIAL observers of industry and commerce..... sure. Of course this PR will portray white mercenaries as GOOD GUYS trying to PROTECT the mines and farms of whites as if WHITES AREN'T THIEVES and MURDERERS to begin with.
But this will only ramp up as the World Cup approaches and white South Africans along with their brethren from Europe and America use the World Cup as a MASSIVE PR campaign to legitimatize white supremacy in South Africa. Even as blacks are being beat and pushed out of the shacks they live in to make way for the stadiums of the World Cup. Even as blacks STILL do not own most of the land in South Africa. That is the reason for the NEW movie with Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela called Invictus, which centers around the guess what...... WORLD CUP. This is why white South African supermodels (no black women are pretty in South Africa?) are plastered on NFL sport shows in prime time. ALL of it a PR campaign to legitimatize WHITE ECONOMIC RULE in South Africa.
After all, the South Africans want to be the USA of Africa or Union of South Africa, which is to be modeled after AMERICA as some bastion of peace, prosperity and FREEDOM in Africa.......
Look at how the activities of South African mercenaries, who were shown to be riding through Iraq shooting at civilians, is now LEGITIMATIZED. Of course shooting at the natives while the whites rape and loot the country is ALWAYS a strategic interest of white folks:
quote: Executive Outcomes founder starts a blog
These days even ex-mercenaries are writing blogs.
In 1989, Eeben Barlow, a former South African special forces officer, founded Executive Outcomes, a mercenary company. Executive Outcomes operated mainly in Africa in the 1990s, fighting in Angola and Sierra Leone. Disbanded in 1998, the company gained a reputation as a highly effective private military force.
Now Barlow is working as a consultant and blogging* about military and security matters. Check out his blog, especially this post which suggests ways that companies can fight criminal gangs that are preying on their activities. (I assume that Barlow is talking about places like South Africa, where crime is rampant and the police are often ineffective and corrupt.)
He has good advice about how companies should handle contracts with security firms:
"Do they usually know anything about the company providing their security? Have they made the security company liable for any burglary, theft or other losses they may suffer while under their watch? Are security companies given a time-line in which to perform adequately and resolve the crime issues within a company?"
Barlow suggests that to combat organized crime, large companies should develop their own in-house intelligence collection and assessment capabilities, and the means to counter criminal activities.
quote:Originally posted by Hammer: Africa was and is too weak to defend itself. The goofball above who said it was all the fault of the Europeans failed to comprehend that when you have no power or money you get dominated by others, as you should.
Do yourself a favor and place the barrel of a chambered .45 ACP pistol in your mouth and pull the trigger!Posts: 191 | Registered: Sep 2009
| IP: Logged |
Remember when we had good journalism when journalist actually sought out what was really going on in the world and not just taking powerful peoples and the government's talking points and run with it? This is a blast from the past..it will disturb you because it will show you just how far the standard had dropped in a very short time and besides having techologies far greater than that time we are more than ever lost in the dark..please watch all 8 segments of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ-j6TtGKUs Bill Mayors CIA The Secret Government.
A little OT but not much is this^^
Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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posted
JMT, Your post was a gushy emotional response wit no substance. The world is not a welfare program for africa. The africans will either do the job or be taken over by India, China and the west. You can scream and yell all you wish but that is the way it is.
By the way George Bush did more for Africa than any non african in history. Perhaps you should do a little research instead of making a fool out of yourself.
Posts: 2036 | From: Texas | Registered: Sep 2009
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-------------------- Are we going somewhere or are you going to keep annoying me with your boring lectures professor-warrior?? Posts: 368 | Registered: Sep 2009
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More on the flunky sell out leaders caring more about "white rights" to land in Southern Africa than the rights of the blacks they STOLE the land from:
quote: THE South African government has accepted that the ongoing land invasions are unlawful, and that rulings of the Sadc Tribunal were binding.
This followed a High Court application by farmers' rights organisation Agriforum, which filed an urgent application seeking to stop the signing of the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (Bippa) on Friday.
Agriforum represents more than 200 South African farmers in Zimbabwe and some of them have been forced to leave the country.
South African lawyer Willie Spies, who instituted the urgent court proceedings on behalf of the organisation confirmed the SA position on Zimbabwe's controversial land reform programme.
"The North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria made an order in terms of which the Government of South Africa undertakes to respect and honour the judgments by the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) Tribunal in favour of commercial farmers in Zimbabwe, and to uphold the rights and remedies of victims of Zimbabwe's unlawful land expropriation exercise," he said.
Speaking at a Bippa signing ceremony in Harare Friday, South Africa's trade and industry minister Rob Davies said they had reached an out of court settlement giving that country's government the greenlight to conclude the pact.
"A group of people in South Africa wrote to us saying they were seeking an interdict to stop us from signing," he said. "But we obtained an out of court settlement in which a judge advised that there were no legal impediments."
Davies said the SA government was convinced that the Bippa would create legal security to both present and future investment in Zimbabwe thereby creating confidence for more investment to flow into the country.
But while the signing was going on and the assurances being made, a group of about 15 drum-beating people invaded Umvovo Farm, which is owned by Thomas and Sue Beattie. The invaders, led by Sylivester Hanyani and Nicholas Hanyani first invaded the farm in August, but were restrained by the courts.
On Friday, they camped at the farm and sang all night, setting some parts of the farm on fire.
"They are not being humane enough about the whole thing," Sue said yesterday. "The police officers who are attending to the scene are also not helping matters either, they are not stopping them. They are only listening to Mr Hanyani, and not us."
This position, and progress on the case, could not be clarified with police spokesperson Andrew Phiri, who referred the enquiry to the provincial team. Mashonaland West provincial spokesperson Assistant Inspector Peter Zhanero said he was not yet aware of the chaos at the farm.
Justice for Agriculture spokesperson John Worswick said "there should be a moratorium on the invasions".
"This is retribution for us," Worswick said. "Other countries respect the Sadc Tribunal, but our government has taken a position different from other Sadc countries."
The Beatties used to be among Zimbabwe's leading commercial farmers, with interests in crop production and animal husbandry.
In a legal opinion last week, South African legal consultants Jeremy Gauntlett and FB Pelser said the South African government would be violating that country's law if it signed the deal thereby immunising Zimbabwe from its international law liabilities. They also said the South African government would have acted contrary to the principles of the Sadc Treaty and other international instruments.
"Of significance is the fact that the Bippa - which is aimed at providing security of tenure to South African investments in Zimbabwe - expressly excludes past claims arising from Zimbabwe's post-2000 land seizure measures, despite the fact that such claims have been upheld by the relevant international court," the consultants said.
Davies said the pact will help in unlocking Zimbabwe's growth potential which will benefit SA by reducing social pressures caused by the influx of immigrants into that country.
Elton Mangoma, the Minister of Economic Planning and Development said Zimbabwe was working on compensating those farmers whose land had been expropriated.
"The inclusive government has a life of its own which is different from that of the previous government and we are committed to the rule of law," he said. "Regarding farms that we expropriated, our constitution says compensation is due to the farmers.
"We know that we are in debt and government's inability to pay should not be taken as a repudiation of debt. That is the reason why none of our ministers has ever disputed that we have to pay. We are talking to the farmers regarding this issue of compensation."
Mangoma said Zimbabwe was fully behind the idea of a Sadc Tribunal but stood by its stance that the region has to make the court legally exist for it to give judgement on legal matters.
Zimbabwe continues to disregard a recent ruling by the tribunal compelling it to stop evicting some farmers from their land.
But Mangoma admitted that the country still needs to resolve issues around security of tenure, saying he was certain that would have been done by the end of next year.
He said by signing the deal, Zimbabwe was telling the world that it was ready for investment and to be a world player.
He said the country was ready to extend the terms of the Bippa to all investors from other countries.
He advised that contrary to widespread fears, Zimbabwe was not going to nationalise anybody's businesses that is why it was signing the Bippa.
"We have created an environment conducive for investment and among other things, we have a stronger government at the moment," he said.
Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara urged local businesses to grow their businesses regionally to broaden and strengthen their balance sheets so as to survive a tight competition likely to be brought by the Bippa once it is implemented.
Davies was accompanied by a group of more than 50 business people from South Africa's various sectors, including energy, telecommunications, mining and infrastructure development.
Of course all of this is hilarious considering that the whites HAVE NO LAND in Southern Africa other than that they STOLE to begin with. But flunky black sell outs care MORE ABOUT whites KEEPING their stolen land than they do about BLACKS getting TRUE JUSTICE. After all for South African black politicians to sympathize with whites in Zimbabwe while 95% of the land in South Africa is absolutely retarded. If anyone should be standing up for ANYBODY they should be standing up for the blacks who have been FORCED off their lands THROUGHOUT southern Africa over the last 200 years. But of course these front men for white domination wont do that.
quote: A South African court has ordered the government to protect the land rights of its citizens in Zimbabwe, as well as to respect the rulings of the human rights court of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
The decision in the High Court in Pretoria comes after an urgent application was filed on behalf of South African farmers, whose right to their government's protection had been excluded in a proposed bilateral investment protection agreement (BIPPA) between South Africa and Zimbabwe.
The agreement, which is still to be made public, was set to only offer protection to South African investors in all areas, from the date of signing. Controversially, the South African Trade and Industry Minister admitted that the agreement would not include a 'retrospective' clause on land, therefore excluding protection on all South African owned land expropriated by the Zimbabwe government during the so-called land 'reform' programme.
The court application was brought forward by civil rights group AfriForum and more than 200 farmers, led by Louis Fick, a South African farmer in the middle of a land wrangle with Zimbabwe's deputy Reserve Bank Governor Edward Mashiringwani.
Fick is one of more than 70 farmers who were awarded legal protection of their land through SADC Tribunal last year. The Tribunal ruled that the farmers had been unlawfully deprived of their property and that the Zimbabwean government should restore their rights or compensate them. But the ruling has been completely ignored, and the Tribunal itself snubbed by the government, which has been charged with contempt.
The proposed BIPPA essentially meant that South Africa would be party to allowing the SADC ruling to be flouted by Zimbabwe, despite both countries being signatories to the SADC treaty. As a result, South Africa's reputation as a law-respecting country was on the line, as the agreement would effectively immunise Zimbabwe from facing penalty for sanctioning the illegal takeover of land.
The South Africa government on Thursday quickly reached a settlement with the farmers, giving assurances that it plans to respect and honour the SADC Tribunal's rulings and to protect victims of the unlawful land grab campaign still continuing in Zimbabwe. In court papers, the government's legal representatives wrote that the text of the BIPPA, which is still being kept secret, did not "purport to grant immunity to Zimbabwe for any human rights violations."
AfriForum's legal representative on Thursday called the ruling a 'victory', explaining the court order "opens the way for registering the SADC Tribunal's judgments in South Africa and to pursue other remedies."
There are remaining concerns however, as the actual terms of the BIPPA, which is still to be signed on Friday in Harare, have not yet been made public. South Africa's Trade and Industry minister has already revealed that the agreement with Zimbabwe would not have been possible with a 'retrospective' clause, and it is unlikely the agreement will have changed in any way. The South African government at the same time has made no move in the past to protect its citizens in Zimbabwe.
Last year, a Pretoria judge took the South African government to task for not protecting the rights of a citizen whose farm was taken over in the so-called land 'reform' programme.
Free State farmer Crawford von Abo won his court battle against the then President Thabo Mbeki, the Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and the Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa, to get compensation from the South African government for not acting on his behalf to protect his rights to his land in Zimbabwe.
Judge Bill Prinsloo noted that the government's excuses for lack of action over the previous six years had been 'feeble' and pointed out that Germany, France and Denmark had intervened successfully on behalf of their citizens who owned agricultural land in Zimbabwe.
These same politicians could care less about the human rights violations and land expropriation done by whites and are WILLING TO FORGIVE AND FORGET what whites have done to blacks, yet get SO CONCERNED about blacks TAKING WHAT IS THEIRS to begin with.....
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