SADC - Committee of Insurance, Securities and Non-Banking financial Authorities of SADC (“CISNA”)

Source: http://www.sadc.int/english/key-documents/protocols/protocol-on-finance-and-investment/#annex10 

Extracted from the SADC Protocol on Finance and Investment.

ANNEX 10

CO-OPERATION ON NON-BANKING FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND SERVICES

PREAMBLE

The High Contracting Parties:

RECALLING that the Committee of Insurance, Securities and Non-Banking financial Authorities of SADC (“CISNA”) was established in June 1998 by the Insurance, Securities and Non-Banking Financial Authorities in the SADC Region (“the Authorities”);

NOTING that a strategy was developed to give direction to the activities Of CISNA and to contribute to the sound regulation, effective supervision and rapid development of the financial services industries;

REALISING that financial institutions supervised by the Authorities are critical for mobilising savings which are important for the expansion of productive capacity and that such institutions require a supporting regulatory framework:

(a) which will attract the investments required for creating economic development within the Region;

(b) for managing the financial risks faced by the financial institutions and users of financial products and services in the Region; and

(c) which must not only be efficient but also properly enforced;

AWARE that there should be close co-operation between the Authorities for the purpose of carrying out CISNA’s objectives in the pursuit of complementary goals to achieve an integrated and credible SADC capital market;

NOTING the increasing need for internationalization, and harmonisation of financial institutions and the interdependence of the activities of financial institutions due to the use of modern technology and closer co-operation between financial institutions;

RECOGNISING the need to mobilise savings that can be used to expand SADC’s productive capacity;

FURTHER NOTING that broad objectives have been set in the CISNA Strategic Plan to achieve the successful regulation and supervision of non- banking financial institutions and the need to share information.

CONSCIOUS that the achievement of the objectives referred to in the CISNA Strategic Plan will be accomplished at different times and in different phases;

NOTING the establishment of CISNA, the adoption of the CISNA MOU and 100 the obligations imposed on the Authorities in the said MOU HEREBY AGREE as follows:

ARTICLE 1
DEFINITIONS

1. In this Annex, terms and expressions defined in Article 1 of the Treaty shall bear the same meaning unless the context otherwise requires.

2. In this Annex, unless the context otherwise requires:

“Authority” means any organ or entity responsible for the regulation and supervision of non- banking financial institutions in their respective jurisdictions within SADC or any designated representative of such authority;

“CISNA” means the Committee of Insurance, Securities and Non-banking Financial Authorities of SADC and the Authorities;

“CISNA Strategic Plan” means the CISNA Strategic Plan set out in Addendum A to this Annex;

“non- banking financial institutions” means any provider of financial advisory and intermediary services, collective investment schemes, insurance institutions and retirement funds regulated or supervised by their respective Authorities;

“financial products and services” means long-term and short-term insurance contracts or policies, benefits provided by retirement funds, financial advisory and intermediary services, shares, debentures, bonds and other forms of securitised debt, futures and derivative products including commodity derivatives, participatory interests in collective investment schemes, and other securities traded in the respective jurisdictions of the Authorities;

“financial services industry” means the supply of financial products and services by financial institutions throughout the Region;

“jurisdiction” means the country, state or any other territory, as the case may be, in which an Authority can exercise its powers;

“IAIS” means the International Association of Insurance Supervisors;

“IOPS” means the International Organisation of Pension Regulators and Supervisors;

“IOSCO” means the International Organisation of Securities Commissions;

“Requested Authority” means the Authority to whom a request is made in terms of this Annex ;

“Requesting Authority” means the Authority making a request pursuant in terms of this Annex;

“securities” means bonds, shares, stock, debentures, securitised debt instruments, equity instruments, debt instruments, futures and derivative instruments (including commodity derivatives), participatory interests in collective investment schemes, and any similar securities to, or combination of, the aforementioned.

ARTICLE 2
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COMMITTEE OF INSURANCE SECURITIES AND NON-BANKING FINANCIAL AUTHORITIES

There is hereby established a Committee of Insurance, Securities and Non- Banking Authorities of the Southern African Development Community.

ARTICLE 3
COMMUNICATION AND EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION

1. There should be high-level contact between the Authorities in order to inform each other of any significant changes in their respective regulatory environments with a view to harmonizing each Authority’s approach on the subject covered by the shared information.

2. The Authorities shall put one another on their mailing lists for the receipt of periodicals and other important communications.

3. The Authorities will encourage and enhance contact amongst the staff of the Authorities

ARTICLE 4
INFORMATION SHARING

1. The Requested Authority should use its best efforts to obtain information from its own records or from institutions within its jurisdiction in order to provide a Requesting Authority with information that will allow such authority to fulfil its regulatory and supervisory responsibilities.

2. If any Authority comes into possession of information that would be likely to assist another Authority in administering or enforcing the laws or regulations for which it is responsible, the first-mentioned Authority will endeavour to notify the other Authority of the existence of that information.

ARTICLE 5
REQUEST FOR INFORMATION AND ASSISTANCE

1. The provisions of the Annex on the Exchange of Information and Surveillance of Securities, Insurance and Retirement Activities will, with the necessary changes, apply to: (a) requests for information and assistance; (b) the execution of such requests; (c) the permissible uses of information; (d) the rights of Requested Authorities; (e) confidentiality; and (f) the costs of investigations.

ARTICLE 6
COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS (DIAGNOSTIC EXERCISE)

1. In order to assist the legislature with the drafting or amending of legislation that is compliant with international standards, the Authorities shall:

(a) undertake in their respective jurisdictions a diagnostic study, analysis or assessment that focuses primarily on assessing the regulatory framework and supervisory practices in terms of the objectives and principles of the IOSCO, the IAIS and the IOPS;

(b) before submission of the assessments verify such assessments through Authority peer or third party review; and

(c) adopt and develop the required structures in line with the objectives and principles recommended by IOSCO, IAIS and IOPS, if the assessment demonstrates that is what is required.

ARTICLE 7
RELATIONSHIP WITH INTERNATIONAL BODIES

1. The Authorities should:

(a) become members of and liaise with IOSCO, IAIS and IOPS; and

(b) disseminate to other Authorities, who are not members of IOSCO, IAIS and IOPS, information derived from those institutions.

ARTICLE 8
DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME

1. State Parties agree that, the Authorities should, in order to develop focused programmes for their respective financial services industries, assess the level of development of their non- banking financial institutions with regard to, inter alia:

(a) the supply and use of financial products and services;

(b) level of competition; and

(c) any barriers to development.

ARTICLE 9
HARMONISED FINANCIAL REGULATORY REGIME

The Authorities shall work towards the harmonisation of their respective laws and regulations and regulatory and supervisory practices with the aim of preventing or reducing regulatory arbitrage.

ARTICLE 10
TRAINING AND EDUCATION OF STAFF

The Authorities shall:

(a) ensure that both local and foreign training opportunities are developed, expanded and hosted throughout the Region, and made available to the staff of all Authorities;

(b) identify their training needs;

(c) explore the development programme(s) suitable for their needs;

(d) assist as much as possible with the presentation of such training programmes;

(e) organise and encourage attachments throughout the Region or abroad to provide on-the-job training;

(f) organise attachments and shall mutually agree on the duration thereof.

ARTICLE 11
CROSS-BORDER CO-OPERATION AMONG AUTHORITIES

1. The Authorities:

(a) shall identify cross-border activities that could form the subject of cross-border co-operation amongst Authorities, and between Authorities and foreign counterparts (i.e. the prevention of unscrupulous operations, increased access to information, dual listings, the introduction of legislation to prevent money laundering, including the financing of terrorism); and

(b) are committed to facilitate mutual exchange of information and assistance.

ARTICLE 12
CONSUMER AWARENESS CAMPAIGNS

1. The Authorities shall:

(a) assist each other with the introduction of suitable consumer awareness campaigns for their respective jurisdictions;

(b) share with one another problems identified and methodologies used to promote their respective awareness campaigns;

(c) identify the consumer awareness campaigns and initiatives already introduced in their respective jurisdictions to inform and educate consumers of financial products and services; and

(d) assess whether adequate programmes have been introduced and implement initiatives that will enhance consumer awareness.

ARTICLE 13
MEETINGS AND SUBCOMMITTEES

1. The Authorities shall meet as often as deemed necessary but at least twice each year; and shall by consensus, appoint a Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson for a period of not more than two years.

2. The Chairperson and the Vice-Chairperson so appointed will represent CISNA at meetings of the Senior Treasury Officials.

3. The Authorities shall determine the rules and procedures of all meetings.

4. The Authorities may, by consensus, set up such sub-committees as may be deemed necessary to carry out any specific assignment or duty of CISNA.

ARTICLE 14
REFERRALS

If any Authority believes that a matter falls more appropriately within the jurisdiction of another Authority, or that some joint action is required in dealing with the matter, such matter should be referred to the other Authority as soon as is reasonably practicable.

ARTICLE 15
CESSION AND ASSIGNMENT

An Authority or designated representative of such Authority may not cede, assign or transfer any right or obligation granted under this Annex without the prior written consent of all the Authorities, which consent shall not be unreasonably withheld.

ARTICLE 16
CONSULTATIONS

The Authorities shall assist one another to develop approaches for strengthening the regulation, supervision and the efficiency of the financial institutions in the Authorities’ respective jurisdictions while avoiding, where possible, conflicts that may arise from the application of differing regulatory and supervisory practices.

The Value of Happiness

The Value of a Happiness Economy 

John C. Havens - Executive Vice President - Strategy and Engagement - Yoxi.tv | 17 Aug 2012 

What if generosity were a currency? 

This was a question posed by the Danish chocolate company Anthon Berg for its recent Generous Store campaign. The company opened a pop-up store for one day in Copenhagen last winter, and distributed chocolate as payment to individuals who promised to perform a generous deed for a loved one.

Chocolate lovers posted to the company’s Facebook page, sharing promises like “serving breakfast in bed.” Then they picked up their chocolate payment at the store and essentially broadcast to their social graph to “pay it forward.”

Research suggests that paying it forward is something the average person enjoys. Søren Christensen, a partner in Anthon Berg’s ad agency, says his company’s findings showed that seven out of 10 people were happy when they did something good for other people. But only one out of 10 people ever experienced generosity on a daily basis.

Why the disparity, and why does it matter? 

Two reasons. First, there’s a growing movement to standardize the metrics around well-being that can lead to happiness. Second, the combination of big data, your social graph, and artificial intelligence means everyone will soon be able to measure individual progress toward well-being, set against the backdrop of all humanity’s pursuit to do the same. In the near future, our virtual identity will be easily visible by emerging technology like Google’s Project Glass and our actions will be just as trackable as our influence. We have two choices in this virtual arena: Work to increase the well-being of others and the world, or create a hierarchy of influence based largely on popularity.

Metrics Not Mood 

 If you’re thinking the study of happiness and well-being seems flaky, you’re missing a major trend that’s beginning to influence a number of global economies.

At the recent United Nations Summit, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated that, “Gross National Product (GDP) fails to take into account the social and environmental costs of so-called progress.” In other words, measuring well-being is not the pursuit of identifying the ephemeral emotion of happiness.

It’s about looking at a deeper level of “economic, social and environmental objectives that are most effectively pursued in a holistic manner.” And economics alone are not the primary driver of well-being. Statistics show, for instance, that after a person or family receives a salary of $75,000 per year, increasing the amount of money brought home doesn’t increase a feeling of well-being.

Jeffery Sachs, the renowned economist from Columbia University who edited the first World Happiness Report for the UN, certainly comes to the same conclusion. He said, “The U.S. has had a three-time increase of GNP per capita since 1960, but the happiness needle hasn’t budged.” The report, which provides scientific evidence that happiness can be reliably measured and is meaningful, notes that the U.S. has not as happy as other countries because of a too-prominent focus on boosting the economy — while largely ignoring long-term effects on environment or holistic education. (The Danes, however, were listed as the happiest people on the planet by Sachs’s report — apparently Anthon Berg is onto something with their Wonka-onian economics.)

H(app)athon 

The study of happiness is a burgeoning field of study around the world, with scientists and other experts providing hard data as to the benefits of a balanced approach to well-being versus too singular a focus on money or self.

 “Our goal is to get people thinking more deeply about what happiness is and what is the connection between themselves and their community and world,” says Laura Musikanski, the executive director and co-founder of The Happiness Initiative, an organization inspired by Bhutan’s ideas on Gross National Happiness, also known as GNH. They even created a survey geared to measure 10 metrics of well-being, which include material well being, physical health and time balance.

Her site also contains an excellent history of Happiness Research that provides important data-related insight. For example, although ephemeral happiness may come about due to a combination of luck, timing or fate, the emerging science of happiness proposes that “our actions determine 40% of happiness, and that well-being can be both synthetically created and habitually formed.”

 This may be the biggest reason for our desire to measure this space, and several takes on measuring it have popped up. The Quantified Self movement has exploded and Nicholas Fenton’s practice of chronicling information for his annual life’s report has inspired others to follow his lead via Daytum and other self-monitoring services.

Ariana Huffington also recently announced her GPS for the Soul, an app that launches this June that provides a “course-correcting mechanism for your mind, body and spirit.” The natural next step in this process, then, is to marry the collective metrics of individuals to form a collective virtual picture of a community or country.

Mirroring the goals of GPS for the Soul, it would be simple to map GNH/well-being metrics to existing technology like Mint.com that provides updates on how to maintain material well-being or Project Noah that encourages more access to nature. Via this methodology, our lives could become a virtual H(app)athon, with technology doling out advice on how to flourish, while proactively helping others.

The Efficacy of Fun 

But as with any behavior or state of mind, it will take a village. “A really important part of changing behavior is social reinforcement,” says C. Lincoln (Link) Hoewing, Assistant Vice President for Internet and Technology Issues for Verizon and frequent contributor to Verizon’s Policy Blog. “You start seeing and comparing yourself to others more when you know that other people can find out what you’re doing.” This form of Accountability Based Influence (ABI) is most effective when eliciting a positive response. As an example, Hoewing noted Volkswagen’s Fun Theory campaign, whose Piano Stairs YouTube Video has received almost 18 million views to date. For the campaign, a set of stairs in a Stockholm subway were outfitted with full size piano keys that played notes as people walked on them, resulting in 66% more people than normal choosing the stairs over the nearby escalator. It’s a simple leap to picture this event being geared toward a community metric of well-being, where the GNH for Stockholm would have risen the day of the campaign.

The Currency of Community 

Brands are certainly learning to leverage well-being in the form of corporate social responsibility known as shared value. While bringing happiness to consumers via a product or service is not unique, bringing happiness to a community is just coming intro widespread acceptance. “We want to set in motion an upward spiral of confidence,” stated Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz in his Letter to America last August. This included the company’s Create Jobs for USA program that has seeded $5 million to provide capital grants for under served community businesses. “The idea of the initiative is to create happiness coming from economic well being,” states Adam Brotman, Chief Digital Officer for Starbucks. The company also recently announced its Store Partnership Model where pilot community organizations in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood and Los Angeles’ Crenshaw neighborhood will share in the profits of a Starbucks store. A minimum of $100,000 for each organization will seed programs geared toward job and life skill development, positive learning environments and overall health and wellness in the community. “We’re in the happiness and people business,” says Brotman, referring to the shared value mentality that a social business can be generous and profitable at the same time. “A thriving or happy community is something that’s good for everybody.”

When Actions Create Identity 

In about three to five years it won’t matter if you’d rather not project your actions to the world — your virtual footprint will simply be too hard to conceal. Your preferences combined with the data generated by external forces will in essence make everything, including objects, inherently interactive. “What’s a social network for data?” asks Jim Karkanias, an executive at Microsoft who runs the company’s Health Solutions Group, and has been working on a range of projects that broach the physical and computing worlds. “We’re imagining biology versus silicon as the next platform in which we write software.” Karkanias uses a form of prototyping for his work based on Project Hieroglyph, a movement that encourages science fiction writers to infuse their work with optimism that can inspire a new generation to ‘get big stuff done.’ “Science fiction sets the stage for people to imagine things bigger than reality,” says Karkanias, noting that adhering to practicality in ideation tends to create a narrow experience that limits imagination and hinders happiness.

Data already has its own social networks: RFID tags, M2M (machine to machine) sensors in cars and the Internet of Things let machines trade information without the need for human intervention. The self-tracking craze with humans combined with this ubiquitous data means highly personalized and proactive information can be aggregated to inform our actions on a minute scale. The advent of things like Google Goggles means we’ll be able to virtually see other people’s data as well as eventually record our entire existence. Our lives will be tagged and ranked as semantic information fed into a massive global algorithm that could be geared toward inspiring positive behavior.

Karkanias agrees: “Artificial Intelligence in the form of a perpetual life coach will live at the information level providing guidance on every aspect of your day.” Technology of this kind will likely manifest itself in a reverse Siri interface, with a GPS-like voice guiding you on issues both personal and macro. The societal impact could shift negative personal patterns as well as a community or country’s Gross National Happiness. Karkanias provides an example of this model where you’re in your car and take a route that passes a McDonald’s. As your coach knows your health issues regarding cholesterol, it adjusts the route of your self-driving car to the nearest Whole Foods to map to your GNH/well-being metric regarding health. Likewise, cameras in a subway car utilizing facial recognition technology might scan the face of a woman who is four months pregnant and send you a text to give her your seat to map to her GNH/well-being metric of psychological well being. Emerging services like Sickweather will provide health-related predictive data that will affect whole communities regarding metrics of time, balance and well-being.

Inspiration Versus Ignorance 

Some pundits say that privacy is disappearing, but that doesn’t mean we should let our identity be dictated by outside forces. Unfortunately, people are largely unaware of the repercussions of giving away personal information as we enter a virtual era where information can be accessed by so many parties so easily. “People are not fully aware of the data they generate and how that’s coupled with Artificial Intelligence learning algorithms. It’s creating a different social and economic order and we’re in the midst of that happening now,” states John Clippinger, Founder and Executive Director of idcubed.org and a Scientist at the MIT Media Lab Human Dynamics Group where he is conducting research on trust frameworks for protecting and sharing personal information. He feels the inevitable onset of ubiquitous data meshing with synthetic biology and people’s social graphs can be a positive evolution if the whole process takes place in the open.

This transparency is the key. Fostering a culture based on GNH and mapped by existing technology provides a positive path toward the future. We should emulate chocolatier Anthon Berg and let generosity be our currency. Our lives will be sweeter for the choice.

Source: http://www.theinstitute.com.au/Membership/Member-Services-Portal/Library/Library%20Article.aspx?ArticleId=23f8dcb7-e7fb-4799-876b-705384516f90

What really drives value in corporate responsibility?

What really drives value in corporate responsibility? Few companies are clear about how investing in social initiatives will change stakeholder behavior or the harm a bad strategy can cause.

Source: https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/What_really_drives_value_in_corporate_responsibility_2895DECEMBER 2011 

• CB Bhattacharya, Daniel Korschun, and Sankar Sen

Now that stakeholders—including consumers, investors, and employees—pay increasing attention to the social and environmental footprints of business, corporate-responsibility efforts have moved into uncharted management territory. We see companies reengineering supply chains to make them “greener,” supporting social causes through volunteer programs for employees, or lobbying for human rights in far-flung corners of the globe. As this tide swells, many executives are left with the nagging sense that such investments rest on a shaky understanding of how corporate responsibility creates value, both for their companies and for society. Some investments, of course, produce immediate and quantifiable gains, such as those from recycling or from manufacturing processes that save energy. But often, social investments are expected to yield longer-term benefits as engaged consumers step up their purchases, a broader investor base develops, or new talent flocks to a company’s recruiters. In these more ambiguous cases, how is a manager to know whether stakeholders will indeed respond positively?

Our research, described in greater detail in our recent book, Leveraging Corporate Responsibility: The Stakeholder Route to Maximizing Business and Social Value, suggests that while stakeholders’ interpretations of corporate responsibility are multifaceted and far from uniform, it is vital that managers avoid creating an impression that such activities are crowding out core business priorities. In fact, some well-meaning corporate-responsibility activities can actually harm a company’s competitiveness. Consider an experiment. We had consumers rate their own purchase intentions for computer accessories after learning about a company’s product quality and corporate-responsibility activities. Descriptions of the company as having high product quality had a modest positive effect, but for a company with low product quality, the consumer’s willingness to make a purchase actually decreased when it engaged in otherwise positive corporate-responsibility activities (exhibit). In this second case, consumers were wary of these activities, thinking that the company ought to give precedence to product quality.

Related research shows a similar dynamic at work with investors: highly innovative Fortune 1000 companies derive greater financial returns from their corporate-responsibility activities than their less innovative counterparts do. By following a few basic principles, leaders can increase the likelihood that stakeholders will interpret corporate-responsibility initiatives more accurately and thus more positively. Don’t hide market motives. Stakeholders are remarkably open to the business case for corporate responsibility, as long as initiatives are appropriate given what stakeholders know about the business, and as long as companies genuinely pursue and achieve the accompanying social value. Companies should understand that they can pursue profitable core business and corporate-responsibility objectives in tandem, without trade-offs. Serve stakeholders’ true needs. Consumers are drawn to products that satisfy their needs. Likewise, stakeholders are drawn to companies whose corporate-responsibility activities produce solid benefits, which can be tangible (such as improved health in local communities) or psychological (for instance, volunteer programs that help employees better integrate their work and home lives).

Before investing in corporate responsibility, however, managers need to set clear objectives that companies can meet and then, ideally, create programs together with key stakeholder groups. Test your progress. Corporate responsibility acts as a conduit through which companies can demonstrate that they care about their stakeholders. A company should assess its initiatives regularly to ensure that they foster the desired unity between its own goals and those of stakeholders. Calibrating strategy frequently improves the odds that corporate responsibility will create value for all parties.

About the Authors:
CB Bhattacharya is the E.ON Chair in Corporate Responsibility and dean of international relations at the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT), in Berlin;

Daniel Korschun is an assistant professor at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business; and

Sankar Sen is a professor of marketing at Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business.

Notes 1
CB Bhattacharya, Daniel Korshun, and Sankar Sen, Leveraging Corporate Responsibility: The Stakeholder Route to Maximizing Business and Social Value, New York: Cambridge University Press, November 2011.

Our research examines the two most important stakeholder groups—consumers and employees—to understand how and why they react to corporate-responsibility initiatives. The insights we gained helped us show how companies can develop, implement, and evaluate social-responsibility programs that foster stronger relationships with stakeholders and thus create value for them and companies alike.

 

Africa Insurance review magazine

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/157b01e6

Page 11 tackles my views on where African Insurance is headed.

President Obama needs a refresher course on Africa

By Gerald Caplan
2009-07-16, Issue 442

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/57760

* Gerald Caplan is the author of The Betrayal of Africa.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

The American president made his first official trip to Africa last week when he visited Ghana for two days. In an interview Obama, with no false humility, stated that 'I'm probably as knowledgeable about African history as anybody who's occupied my office.' I'd say two things. First, the bar in that particular competition was not exactly set very high. Second, as the rest of the interview demonstrated, he's not nearly as knowledgeable as he thinks he is. Much of what he believes about Africa, and how it can get out of the many messes it's in, are simply wrong.

In his interview with allafrica.com, the president focused on internal African causes for the continent's woes, highlighting especially the need for good governance and ending widespread corruption. So, for example, he argues that 'you're not going to get investment without good governance.' That's simply wrong. For decades most foreign investment in Africa has gone to South Africa first, even under apartheid, and then to such oil-rich nations as Angola and Nigeria. In all cases, good governance played no role in investment decisions. Making an assured profit, regardless of the governance system, was the only criterion.

Similarly, Obama insisted that business won't invest where 'government officials are asking for 10, 15, 25 per cent off the top'. That too is wrong. Nigeria, Angola and South Africa show that, as do Kenya, Cameroon and the DR Congo, just to name obvious exceptions to his statement. In all cases, foreign businessmen have shown themselves only too eager to play the bribery card. If they didn't, those African government officials couldn't get away with demanding a cut off the top, which also means that high-level corruption in Africa couldn't – and doesn't – happen without Western complicity.

Obama says there is 'a direct correlation between governance and prosperity'. That's why he chose democratic Ghana for his first official state visit, rather than his father's country, Kenya. Heaven knows that the ruling parties in Kenya are brazenly corrupt and show little interest in anything other than enriching themselves and their supporters. Ghana, on the other hand, after years of bad governments following the CIA-instigated coup that overthrew the first president, Kwame Nkrumah, can now be said to be fairly stable and politically democratic. Obama knows lots of things. As he observed, when his father left Kenya in the early 1960s to study in the USA, the GDP (gross domestic product) of Kenya was higher than that of South Korea; today, South Korea is one of the world's great success stories, while Kenya languishes.

The UN's Human Development Index backs this up. In 2008, of 179 countries, Korea was ranked 25th, placing it among the rich developed nations of the world, while Kenya was 144th. But the president should look at these ratings more closely. Despite good governance, Ghana was ranked 142nd, virtually tied with Kenya among the bottom 20 per cent of the world's nations. Something else must be going on here that accounts for this situation, because Obama's analysis can't.

Here's the heart of his diagnosis, as his interview made explicit: While the international community 'has not always been as strategic as it should have been [regarding Africa] … ultimately I'm a big believer that Africans are responsible for Africa … for many years we've made excuses about corruption or poor governance, that this was somehow the consequence of neocolonialism, or the West has been oppressive, or racist. I'm not a believer in excuses.'

Well, this is partially true. Africans have for decades been betrayed by a veritable pageant of monstrous leaders. But another truth is that the United States actively supported the very worst of these African tyrants, and if the US didn't, France did; that's called neocolonialism. This included, by the way, the apartheid government of South Africa, which, with the quiet backing of Britain and the US, only stopped destabilising much of the continent 15 years ago. The West also supplied many of the arms that were used in the terrible internal conflicts that have roiled Africa for so long. Even today, the US, Britain and France continue to remain close allies with many African leaders whose democratic credentials leave much to be desired.

The little-grasped reality is that year after year far more of Africa's wealth and resources pour out of the continent to the rich world than the West provides through all possible sources, from aid to investment to trade.

Beyond that, even if every African country was led by a saint, they could do nothing about the severe environmental damage that global warming – for which Africa has no responsibility whatever – is inflicting across the continent.

Even the best African leaders could do nothing about the destructive impact on African development of the present worldwide economic crisis, for which Africa has no responsibility whatever.

No African leader has the slightest influence on the drastic increase in food prices that is causing such suffering – including outright starvation – to millions of Africans.

Even a continent's worth of Mandelas couldn't change the massive subsidies Western governments provide to their agribusinesses. When they're in Ghana, the Obamas should do some comparison shopping. They may be taken aback to find that it costs more to buy a locally-bred chicken than one that's been shipped all the way from Europe, thanks to subsidies to European chicken farmers.

And nothing will now change the vast damage already done to Africa by the destructive neoliberal policies that were imposed on African governments by the World Bank and IMF (International Monetary Fund) over the past 30 years. Even today, while their rhetoric has changed, these institutions, deeply American-influenced, continue to insist on discredited policies that fail to promote growth while vastly increasing inequality.

At the risk of being pushy, I recommend that President Obama reads my little book, The Betrayal of Africa, which documents the twin burdens that actually account for Africa's situation – the continent's own wretched leaders combined with exploitative Western policies and practices. Unless he grasps this truth, his administration will become yet another in an endless line that has caused Africa more grief than good. And I'm confident that's not what he intends.

* Gerald Caplan is the author of The Betrayal of Africa.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

Malawi Budget Statement 2009/2010 link.

http://www.finance.gov.mw/downloads/Bud2009.pdf

U.S. Congress Apologises for Slavery

This Day (Lagos)
Africa: U..S. Congress Apologises for Slavery
Constance Ikokwu

20 June 2009
http://allafrica.com/stories/200906200007.html

Washington, D.c. — The United States Congress has for the first time in its 230-year history issued a formal apology for slavery and segregation, describing the dark period of that country as inhuman.

The apology issued by Senators on Capitol Hill on Thursday, however, did not agree to the payment of reparations, but it condemned centuries of injustice caused by slavery.

In a strongly worded document, the Congress unanimously voted to acknowledge the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow laws."

It stated that the US Congress "apologises on behalf of the people of the United States for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow laws."

According to Wikipedia, Jim Crow laws were local and state laws enacted between 1876 and 1965 in the US, mandating segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "equal but separate" status for black Americans.

If the House of Repres-entatives pass a similar measure as expected next week, it will mark the highest effort to apologise for the wrongs of the past.

A similar effort failed to make it to the Senate in 2008 after it was passed in the lower chamber.

The resolution affirmed the "principle that all people are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and calls on all people of the United States to work towards eliminating racial prejudices, injustices and discrimination from our society."

Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, was quoted as saying that "no one pretends that a mere apology or any words can right the wrongs of the past, but it represents our recognition of the past and our commitment to fully live up to our nation's promise."

The sponsor of the resolution, Senator Tom Harkin noted that slavery "is an enduring national shame" for the country.

He added: "slavery and Jim Crow and their continuing consequences are not the historical baggage of one state, one region or one company."

Harkin said the resolution was long over due. He warned that more work lies ahead as the latest move would not wipe out all injustices automatically.

Reacting, some African-Americans said the apology was not enough but is a first step.

Former President Bill Clinton while in office had expressed regret for the act while George W. Bush described it as "one of the greatest crimes of history. But they stopped short of a proper apology.

Some states in the country have also previously adopted resolutions expressing regret for slavery, but no formal bill at the national level was officially passed.

Jim Crow laws were enshrined in the US Constitution to segregate blacks and whites.

The resolution also fell on June 19, being the celebration of the freedom of African-Americans at the end of the Civil War in 1865.

A ceremony to mark the passage of the new resolution is expected next month.

HAS COCA-COLA FINALLY MET ITS MATCH?

Self respecting marketers, marketing novices and the public at large know Coca-cola and its secret recipe as a massive marketing success for 'eons', I even dare think- what would we do without good old coke? Remote villages in nameless countries have the familiar shape Coca-cola bottles pregnant with the dark money making liquid perched invitingly on shelves in local village shops and pubs.

Recent activity in the Health sector though seemingly threaten coke's viability in the healthy eating habits persuasion. Will healthy eating habits affect Coca-colas dominance of the fizzy drinks market? Are we witnessing the slow death of a giant as we have known it ? Or will this just lead to healthier Coca-cola spin-offs? the later makes profitable sense.

In the meanwhile Venezuala has gone ahead and banned a version of Coca-cola citing possible health risks (http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20090611/twl-venezuela-bans-coke-zero-over-health-3fd0ae9.html). A couple of weeks ago I read a health article in a local london paper that stated that cola drinks deplete the body of some essential mineral if my memory serves me right, and this here now could be termed to be a consequential development ; My steadfast companion through the african heat, Coca-cola, what next?

Racial Discrimination at World Bank?

Report Details Racial Discrimination at World Bank

Published on Jun 9, 2009 - 9:35:50 AM

By: Government Accountability Project
http://yubanet.com/usa/Report-Details-Racial-Discrimination-at-World-Bank.php

WASHINGTON, D.C. June 9, 2009 - Today, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) released a report that investigates and finds evidence of racial discrimination against black professional grade employees at the World Bank. The report, which documents the treatment of these employees in recruitment, retention and internal judicial decisions, finds that a race ceiling exists at the institution, and that the Bank's legal system fails to address racial discrimination adequately. Read further....

http://whistleblower.org/doc/2009/RDWB.pdf

The Economic debate of our time? FT.com

Rising government bond rates prove policy works, The Financial Times Online
June 3, 2009 12:33am
by Martin Wolf

Is the US (and a number of other high-income countries) on the road to fiscal Armageddon? Are recent jumps in government bond rates proof that investors are worried about fiscal prospects? My answers to these questions are: No and No. This does not mean there is no reason for worry. It is rather that there are powerful arguments against fiscal retrenchment right now and strong reasons for welcoming recent moves in the bond markets.

Last week, the Financial Times carried two columns arguing that the US fiscal path was unsustainable, one by Stanford University’s John Taylor and the other by the Harvard historian Niall Ferguson. The latter, in turn, was a comment on a debate with, among others, the New York Times columnist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman at the end of April.
On one point all serious analysts agree: public debt cannot rise, relative to gross domestic product, without limit. To embark on fiscal stimulus in the short run, one must be credible in the long run.

So what is the disagreement? Prof Ferguson made three propositions: first, the recent rise in US government bond rates shows that the bond market is “quailing” before the government’s huge issuance; second, huge fiscal deficits are both unnecessary and counterproductive; and, finally, there is reason to fear an inflationary outcome. These are widely held views. Are they right?
The first point is, on the evidence, wrong. The jump in bond rates is a desirable normalisation after a panic. Investors rushed into the dollar and government bonds. Now they are rushing out again. Welcome to the giddy world of financial markets.

At the end of December 2008, US 10-year Treasury yields fell to the frighteningly low level of 2.1 per cent from close to 4 per cent in October (see chart). Partly as a result of this fall and partly because of a surprising rise in the yield on inflation-protected bonds (Tips), implied expected inflation reached a low of close to zero. The deflation scare had become all too real.
What has happened is a sudden return to normality: after some turmoil, the yield on conventional US government bonds closed at 3.5 per cent last week, while the yield on Tips fell to 1.9 per cent. So expected inflation went to a level in keeping with Federal Reserve objectives, at close to 1.6 per cent. Much the same has happened in the UK, with a rise in expected inflation from a low of 1.3 per cent in March to 2.3 per cent. Fear of deflationary meltdown has gone. Hurrah!

It is true that spreads between conventional US bonds and bonds issued by Germany and the UK have narrowed (see chart). But US yields were extraordinarily depressed during the panic.

Normality returns.
If inflation expectations are not worth worrying about, so far, what about the other concern caused by huge bond issuance: crowding out of private borrowers? This would show itself in rising real interest rates. Again, the evidence is overwhelmingly to the contrary.
The most recent yield on Tips is below 2 per cent, while that on UK index-linked securities is close to 1 per cent. Meanwhile, as confidence has grown, spreads between corporate bonds and Treasuries have fallen (see chart). One can also use estimates of expected inflation derived from government bonds to estimate real rates of interest on corporate bonds. These have also fallen sharply (see chart). While riskier bonds are yielding more than they were two years ago, they are yielding far less than in late 2008. This, too, is very good news indeed.
Now turn to the fiscal policy. The argument advanced by opponents is either that fiscal policy is always unnecessary and ineffective or, as Prof Ferguson suggests, redundant, because this is not a “Great Depression”. Monetarists argue fiscal policy is always unnecessary, since monetary expansion does the trick. Economists who believe in “Ricardian equivalence” – after the early-19th-century economist David Ricardo – argue fiscal policy is ineffective, because households will offset any government dis-saving with their own higher savings.

Economists disagree fiercely on these points. My approach is “Keynesian”: in extreme moments, the excess of desired savings over investment soars. Again, monetary policy, while important, becomes less effective when interest rates are zero. It is then wise to wear both monetary belt and fiscal braces.

A deep recession proves there is a huge rise in excess desired savings at full employment, as Prof Krugman argues. At present, therefore, fiscal deficits are not crowding the private sector out. They are crowding it in, instead, by supporting demand, which sustains jobs and profits.
Prof Ferguson argues that fiscal expansion was unnecessary because this is only a mild recession. The question, however, is why it is only a mild recession, since precursors of a depression were surely present.

The answer, in part, is the aggressive monetary policies of central banks and the rescue of the financial system. But is that all? What would have happened if governments had decided to cut spending and raise taxes? One might disagree on how much deliberate fiscal loosening was needed. But one of the most important reasons this is not the Great Depression is that we have learnt a lesson from experience then, and in Japan in the 1990s: do not tighten fiscal policy too soon. Moreover, historically well-run economies are certainly able to support higher levels of public indebtedness very comfortably.

This, then, brings us to the last concern: the fear of inflation. This is essentially the question of how to exit from current extreme policies. People need to believe that the extraordinarily aggressive monetary and fiscal policies of today will be reversed. If they do not believe this, there could well be a big upsurge in inflationary expectations long before the world economy has recovered. If that were to happen, policymakers would be caught in a painful squeeze and the world might indeed end up in 1970s-style stagflation.

The exceptional policies used to deal with extreme circumstances are working. Now, as a result, policymakers are walking a tightrope: on one side are premature withdrawal and a return to deep recession; on the other side are soaring inflationary expectations and stagflation. It is irresponsible to insist either on immediate tightening or on persistently loose policies. Both the US and the UK now risk the latter. But their critics risk making an equal and opposite mistake. The answer is both clear and tricky: choose sharp tightening, but not yet.

Write to martin.wolf@ft.comMore columns at www.ft.com/martinwolf

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

OF EU ELECTIONS AND BRITISH LIFE.

I followed the arrows. I walked through the open south transept door, glancing around like a stranger usually does into the St Peters church hall crossing converted into a polling station; I felt some huge dissapointment at the scene unfolding before me, I had expected the sophistication of 'Europe', technical gadgets etceteras but there before my eyes was a basic electoral scene not dissimilar to that of my African home country, facing me were 5 makeshift open ended wood booths, to my immediate left sat three English ladies on a lone table with three heaps of differently coloured paper, the 25 years young silent one was far younger than the other two. The wall clock said 11 am UK time, yet I was the lone voter and undeservedly got more than the attention I needed; I looked the smiling one in the eye, smiled back and handed in my poll certificate, I confirmed my name as Kapito and my address of abode, was rewarded with a long voting card folded into three, with which I pranced on my black loafers silently to the first left wood booth.

I fished out a pen from my shirt pocket, unfurled the voting card, and heard the two ladies yell to my back 'you have to open it up to see all your options', I thought 'I have already sodding done that mai!' but mouthed a respectful 'thank you' instead, my eyes caressed the 10 or so parties listed on the firm black and white thin board paper and settled for a choice with an 'X' mark before walking to the right facing the church chancel, alter and sacristy, where just before the step stood a middle aged Englishman busy with something in his hands, he glanced at me briefly as I stuffed my vote into an opening in the black 'toolbox' like container atop a metal table and muttered something friendly, I muttered back. I had voted for my choice of a UK member of EU parliament (fondly called MEP's by mainstream media).

Like me millions across the UK partook a similar ritual, millions less than elections years before, the Sky News election results of this morning mention the historic low turnout of a mere 37.5% of registered voters. The economy, parliamentarian expenses scandals have taken their toll, the population has voted with their backsides, they sat the elections out, stayed home or pretended them away. How did the UK get here? now thats a long long story.

For me though the first answer was the top deck window seat ride of route 279 towards Enfield Borough, Zone 4, London. Not a single of the loud conversations around were in English, I wondered, perhaps aloud if I was really in London, the advertising boards that slowly flashed by as the bus motored ahead confirmed I was in London, so I thought instead about how the indigineous Englanders felt about this sustained 'invasion' of economic and academic migrants, it must be uncomfortable I thought, and indeed it was, since then I have seen the Home office push forward unprecedented reforms in immigration, strikes by British workers over immigrants 'taking' their jobs, have heard countless stories of people being deported ( 'ali mmanja mwa Boma'), visas refused, scandals of asian forgers of academic certificates at £4000 pounds, British driving licences, British passports caught and brought to book, I have seen the quiet tide turning against 'foreigners'. This is not the UK my father lived in way back in 1975, it is under siege mental or otherwise; anti EU sentiment, centuries of immigration and the opening up of the EU migration are taking its toll and the ordinary British fear for their way of life.

The UK has offered qualitative education for a long while now, on a comparative scale British education ranks better than other 'developed' nations. The reality on the ground though indicates that society is grappling with the realities of opening its borders to the outside world. The biggest issue affecting the UK now is immigration asides from the state of the economy, the guilt trip the UK took for colonising, harvesting and shipping all the goodies out of the colonies and then more by taxing the colonised locals is biting back. The indigenous UK population has spoken through this 2009 election, by voting in the far right party BNP and such parties into the European Parliament for the first time, some say its a protest vote against the main parties for their abuse of the system, I say its a real vote and a sign of things to come. Some non-UK visitors have long abused the system, illegally claiming benefits, working full time on student visas, falsifying documents, perpetuating various crimes, terrorising and bombing innocent people, all culminating in higher costs (security, social welfare, health etc) for the state, a deepening mistrust and now a xenophobic culture albeit in its infancy.

The future will see less students from african countries study in the UK, as student number intakes by approved educational institutions are closely monitored by the Home Office, scholarship numbers reduce, and the 'fees upfront' immigation policy weeds out undesirables before they reach the British shores, it will only serve to make British education more attractive, good old supply and demand laws at work, scarcity breeds value. So what next for UK Educational Institutions? Franchising? Supply the students in their home countries?

So whats my rant about? Its about voting, its about rising xenophobic tendencies, its about a closing door to access of education on British soil by non-EU citizens, its about private thoughts about immigrants now being made public. Alarmists are at play, in the media, in the dailies, everywhere and even on youtube, sample this if you may as an example of whipping up of the anti-immigration frenzy or rationalising depending on which side of the railtrack you are on:

OBAMA CAIRO, EGYPT SPEECH IN FULL.

Treasury Agrees To Aid US Insurers

Treasury Agrees To Aid Insurers, Six Firms Gain Access to Funds- Washington Post.

By David S. Hilzenrath and David Cho, Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, May 15, 2009

The Treasury yesterday granted preliminary approval for some of the nation's largest insurance companies to receive capital infusions under the government's Troubled Assets Relief Program, Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams said.

Recipients are Hartford, Prudential, Allstate, Ameriprise, Lincoln National and Principal Financial Group, he said. The insurers notified yesterday are among hundreds of financial institutions in the pipeline "that are being reviewed and funded as appropriate on a rolling basis," Williams said.

The money could shore up the life insurance industry, which plays a major role in the economy and has been weakened by the financial crisis. In addition to paying death benefits, life insurers deliver retirement income in the form of annuities. They are big investors in corporate bonds and commercial real estate.

However, the erosion of their investments -- and the possibility of further declines in the value of stocks, bonds and mortgages -- raised concern in some quarters about the outlook for the industry.

"These funds would further fortify our capital resources and provide us with additional financial flexibility during one of the most volatile market climates in our nation's history," Hartford chief executive Ramani Ayer said in a statement.

Hartford said it received preliminary approval for an infusion of $3.4 billion, the full amount it estimated last year that it might obtain.

Until now, the government had used the capital purchase program to support the struggling banking industry. With the recent completion of stress tests assessing the continued needs of the banking system, the government was in a clearer position to address insurers.

Insurers applied for the federal support last year and had been in suspense for months as to whether they would get it. The Treasury had been evaluating their applications in consultation with state regulators.

Though the legislation creating TARP suggested that insurers could participate, the Treasury said that to qualify they had to be bank or thrift holding companies, which would put them under federal supervision.

The federal money has strings attached. If they take it, insurers would have to submit to restrictions on executive pay and other matters.

Spokesmen for Lincoln and Prudential declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Principal Financial, Susan Houser, said by e-mail yesterday afternoon that Principal had received no response from the Treasury to its application.

UK POLITICIANS LOSE MORAL HIGHGROUND PERHAPS IRREPARABLY

They are quick to label as negative other parts of the world especially developing nations, they blast corrupt regimes out of the water, they talk of regime change with clout of all manner etceteras, The Daily Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/ has however revealed that UK parliamenterians are not quite squeaky clean. The British public are hopping mad.

Faith is lost, people talk of never voting again, labels such as fraud by abuse of postion, sleaze, fraud by failing to disclose information, 'flippin' are tossed around. Its a right total mess and a shame really......adult movies , gardeners, non-existent mortgages charged to the taxpayer. What will the world say? the next few days will tell, meanwhile MP's issue apologies, repayment cheques and get suspended. Its a whole darn mess!

Did Martin Luther King know about Gandhi’s racism?

Did ML King know about Gandhi’s racism? Excerpt from: http://www.zimbio.com/Ghandi%2Bquotes/articles/23/ML%2BKing%2Bknow%2BGandhi%2Bracism
Written by moinansari
From: rupeenews.com

We think that Martin Luther King was one of the greatest heros of our time. He accomplished more than any of his contemporaries. Martin Luther King lived during troubled times. He was in search of turth and find a mentor in Thoreau. He was a Christian minister so he did believe in Jesus Christ.

Martin wanted to keep up the family tradition, so he decided to become a minister. He graduated from Morehouse College in 1948 and then went to Crozer Seminary to become a minister. It was at Crozer that Martin learned about the Disneyland version of Gandhi. He must have learned that Gandhi was an important leader in India. It is very doubtful if Dr. King did any depth study of Gandhi’s action in South Africa.

It is doubtful if The Reverend Martin Luther ever heard about Gandhi’s support for all the British wars, and that Gandhi was the self-proclaimed “Recruiter in Chief” for the Empire sending thousands to be used as connon fodder.

GANDHI ON BLACKS AND RACE RELATIONS (Zulus and Kaffirs were African tribes in South Africa)

• “A general belief seems to prevail in the colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than the savages or natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir.” (Reference: The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Government of India (CWMG), Vol I, p. 150)
• Regarding forcible registration with the state of blacks: “One can understand the necessity for registration of Kaffirs who will not work.” (Reference: CWMG, Vol I, p. 105)
• “Why, of all places in Johannesburg, the Indian Location should be chosen for dumping down all the Kaffirs of the town passes my comprehension…the Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location.” (Reference: CWMG, Vol I, pp. 244-245)
• His description of black inmates: “Only a degree removed from the animal.” Also, “Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized - the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals.” - Mar. 7, 1908 (Reference: CWMG, Vol VIII, pp. 135-136)
• The Durban Post Office: One of Gandhi’s major “achievements” in South Africa was to promote racial segregation by refusing to share a post office door with the black natives.
• Sergeant Major Gandhi: Learn how Gandhi became a Sgt. Major in the British Army and eagerly participated in the 1906 British war against the black Zulus.
• Gandhi and South African Blacks: Gandhi wrote extensively about his experiences with the blacks of South Africa. He always termed them “Kaffirs” and his writings reveal a deep-seated disdain for these African natives.

If Dr. King had known about about the Zulus (African tribe) and the Kaffirs (African tribe), he surely would have voiced his concern.Gandhi condones Zulu massacres and defends the British. Aug 4 1906

Dr. King may not have read Time Magazine and the explosive stories about Mr. Gandhi’s personal life. The sex life of Mr. Gandhi, and his failures as a politician

Dr. King probably knew only about the propoganda clips of Mr. Gandhi and never really knew the man. The myth of Mohandas K. Gandhi debunked. He gets an “F” on South Africa, Salt Match, Non-Violence, and independence

Dr. King on moral high ground condemned wars. He would have been shocked to find out that Gandhi supported the British wars extending the British empire. Which war did Mohandas Gandhi support. All of them. There wasn’t a war that the prophet of Non-Violence did not support. He was Sergeant Major in the British Army and won a medal for his war duties

Dr. King was probably unaware about Gandhi’s open racism.Gandhi’s racism. The truth behind the mask. Behold Sergeant Major Gandhi who supported the British during the Boer war, Zulu rebellion. Behold the prophet of peace who worked to stratify the South African society.

Dr. King did not know that Gandhi did not bring the British Empire down.

Dr. King would have been appalled if he knew that Gandhi insisted on calling Hitler his “friend” and that his advice to the Jews was horribe piece of Anti-Semitism Gandhi’s letter to his friend Hitler.

!! Shocking!! Astonishing!! The more I read, the more this world turns out to be a different place altogether.......

Elections- The price for peace.

Elections must never be taken for granted, elections are an ingenious invention, they are the price for peace, they enable a population to buy into a feeling of being important from time to time by virtue of their vote, they allow for a renewal of direction, a check on overruns and excess, a measure of suitability of elected office bearers and much more.

Malawi runs its elections in a week, which I won't participate in but whatever the result, the main players both fit the technical profile of what I would want in a leader of a nation that seeks economic empowerment, both can read economics, so I leave the task to my countrymen and will respect their choice. Which horse will win? the odds say horse Bingu, but as Kenny Rogers sang "You never count your money when youre sittin' at the table, there'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done". I on the other hand will try the MEP elections for EU Parliament come June 4th.

Let peace and prosperity prevail. A better future must be the motto.

Africa's next Big Man- Jacob Zuma

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13494552

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13491950

Africa's next Big Man

Apr 16th 2009
From The Economist print edition

If Jacob Zuma avoids becoming a caricature of African leadership, he could change the whole continent for the better

National News and Pictures

WITHIN weeks, Jacob Zuma is set to become the most powerful man in Africa, a continent of a billion souls that is still the poorest and, despite recent improvements, the worst governed on the planet. South Africa provides more than a third of the 48 sub-Saharan economies’ total GDP. It is Africa’s sole member of the G20 group of influential countries and packs a punch in global diplomacy. Its emergence from the gruesome era of apartheid is a miracle of reconciliation. Africans across the continent and oppressed peoples elsewhere still look to South Africa’s leader as a beacon of hope.

The country’s president is to be elected by Parliament after a general election on April 22nd which the dominant African National Congress (ANC) is sure to win again. As the party’s candidate, Mr Zuma is unquestionably Africa’s next “Big Man”. But it is a phrase that goes to the heart of the continent’s troubles. Too many African countries have been ruined by political chiefs for whom government is the accumulation of personal power and the dispensation of favours. That the revered Nelson Mandela’s rainbow nation is now turning to a man of Mr Zuma’s stamp may sharpen prejudices about Africa. It is for Mr Zuma to prove these doubters wrong.

He is undoubtedly a man of remarkable qualities (see article). In contrast to his dour predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, Mr Zuma can charm the birds out of the trees. Unlike the racially twitchy Mr Mbeki, he feels good in his skin, happy to acknowledge, even celebrate, his modest background. He properly educated himself only during his ten years as a prisoner on Robben Island, alongside Mr Mandela. Mr Zuma is charismatic and canny, as you would expect of a guerrilla who rose to be head of intelligence for the now-ruling ANC. He has been a wily negotiator, who magisterially ended the strife between his fellow Zulus in the early post-apartheid era. He connects easily with black slum-dwellers and white tycoons alike.

Big man, big problems

But his flaws are just as patent. He has been entangled for years in a thicket of embarrassing legal cases from which he has only recently been extricated—on a technicality. His financial adviser was sentenced to 15 years in prison for soliciting bribes for Mr Zuma. He has also been tried, and acquitted, on a rape charge. At the least, he has sailed perilously close to the wind. To put the kindest interpretation on his financial dealings, he has been naive and sloppy, not the best qualities for looking after Africa’s biggest economy. During his trial for the rape of an HIV-infected family friend, at the height of the AIDS plague in a country which has the world’s highest recorded rate of rapes, he showed gross chauvinism and staggering ignorance, notoriously explaining that after having sex he had showered to stave off the disease. He is an illiberal populist, sneering at gays and hinting at bringing back the death penalty.

When it comes to policy, Mr Zuma travels light. In the wake of Mr Mbeki’s shameful and lethal denial of the link between HIV and AIDS, he has overseen the appointment of a sensible new health minister. He seems to want the awful Robert Mugabe ousted in Zimbabwe, though his pronouncements have varied. Once a member of the South African Communist Party, which used to fawn on the Kremlin, he shamelessly switched to capitalism after his predecessors, Mr Mandela and Mr Mbeki, had persuaded the ANC to somersault away from socialism. These days he tells the hungry black majority that he has their interests at heart, while reassuring businessmen that he will not switch to high-tax redistribution. No one is sure in which direction he will push the economy, now wobbling after years of steady, commodity-fuelled growth.

As with all the other Big Men, the principal worries revolve around a fatal conflation of party and state. Given South Africa’s racial and tribal mix, robustly independent bodies are vital, from Parliament and the judiciary to human-rights monitors, medical institutions and free media, but the ANC has stuffed all of them with party loyalists to entrench its hegemony. Candidate Zuma has seemed to rate loyalty to the ANC above all else, even the admirable constitution that the party itself was largely responsible for writing. It is not certain he believes in the need to separate powers, letting his fans hurl abuse at judges when they ruled against him.

Confound us all

President Zuma must grab his early chances to reassure the worriers. He should state unequivocally that he will not propose a law to render the head of state immune from criminal prosecution. He needs to resist the temptation to elevate some of his dodgier friends to high judicial posts. Parliament needs more bite to nip the heels of the executive; the present system of election by party lists shrivels the independence of members and needs reform. To curb cronyism, all MPs, ministers and board members of state-funded institutions should register their and their families’ assets. He should also keep the sound Trevor Manuel as finance minister. Finally, Mr Zuma should ask his government to revise, perhaps even phase out, the policy of “black economic empowerment”. This may have been necessary 15 years ago to put a chunk of the economy into black hands. But its main beneficiaries now are a coterie of ANC-linked people, not the poor masses.

Hardest of all for Mr Zuma to accept is that, in the longer run, South African democracy needs a sturdier opposition. The liberal Democratic Alliance, led by a brave white woman, Helen Zille, has good ideas but has failed to expand its appeal beyond a white core. The new Congress of the People, a black-led breakaway from the ANC, has able leaders, yet several are tainted by association with Mr Mbeki. With luck the opposition parties may stop the ANC from getting the two-thirds of parliamentary seats that would let it override the constitution.

Mr Zuma could yet prove to be the right sort of Big Man: big enough to hold his party back from creating something akin to a one-party state, big enough to accept that no one, himself included, is above the law. If that is how he chooses to spend his five years in power, South Africa would indeed serve as a model for the whole continent. But will he?

A Sobering and controversial take on Somalia's piracy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html

Johann Hari
Columnist, London Independent
Posted February 4, 2009 | 05:12 AM (EST)

You Are Being Lied to About Pirates

Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menace of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell -- and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains of All nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through
the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century." They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy." This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.

The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa -collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is
being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."

This is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a 'tax' on them. They call themselves the Volunteer
Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas." William Scott would understand those words.

No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But the "pirates" have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news-site
WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence of the country's territorial waters." During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington
and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn't act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the
transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, we begin to shriek about "evil." If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gun-boats to root out Somalia's criminals.

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?


Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent newspaper.