Africa

A 23 year old Congolese woman told Human Rights Watch that the soldiers "raped us and dragged us to their camp which was not far away. I stayed there for one month, under constant supervision. Even when I went to fetch water, he came with me to ensure that I did not run away.... There was no conversation between us, he had sex with me at any moment, when he felt like it, and with a lot of violence. I spent my days crying. I begged God to free me from this hell." Stories of this nature are not unusual in the DRC. 

The 'Africa Development Indicators 2010' report on 'quiet corruption' is one more example of the World Bank's distractive politics. Distractive because it seeks, wittingly or unwittingly, to sidetrack issues that are fundamental to understanding the continuing poverty and underdevelopment of Africa. Distractive also because it seeks, probably consciously and purposely, to exonerate the World Bank from its own role in perpetuating Africa's mal-development.

Anyone who saw the episode of the BBC documentary Tropic of Cancer last month in which journalist Simon Reeve traveled across Western Sahara would have seen Rachid Sghair. He was the human rights campaigner who bravely appeared before the camera to denounce the 35 year Moroccan occupation of his country and the resulting human rights abuses suffered by Saharawi people.

Twenty years ago, Janey Halim was part of the ANC welcome committee gathered outside Victor Verster Prison, waiting to greet Nelson Mandela as he emerged after 27 years of confinement. “It was a beautiful morning and we all just stood there with our eyes focused on the metal gate,” she recalls. “Then the gates opened and Nelson and Winnie walked towards us. Other people were cheering but I just cried and cried.” Two decades later, Ms Halim, known to most people as Auntie Janey, decided not to attend the commemorative event at the prison marking the anniversary of Mandela’s release because she feels let down by the African National Congress (ANC). read more

'Environmental determinism' - the theory that Africa's development has been hindered as a result of 'the environmental conditions that Africans inhabit' - does not accurately explain Africa's poverty. Environmental determinism is both ahistorical and apolitical: "Poverty is not a problem of nature, it is a problem of power." To tackle the real issues behind Africa's slow development and poverty would mean to go against Western economic interests and to radically change the world system in which we exist.