The African Savanna Hare found all over Sub-Saharan Africa. The original Br’er Rabbit.

Br’er Rabbit /ˈbrɛər/ (Brother Rabbit), also spelled Bre’r Rabbit or Brer Rabbit, is a central figure in an oral tradition passed down by African-Americans of the Southern United States. He is a trickster who succeeds by his wits rather than by brawn, provoking authority figures and bending social mores as he sees fit. Popularly known adaptions are by Joel Chandler Harris in the 19th century, and later The Walt Disney Company adapted it for its 1946 animated motion picture Song of the South. 

Some scholars have suggested that in his American incarnation, Br’er Rabbit represented the enslaved Africans who used their wits to overcome adversity and to exact revenge on their adversaries, the white slave owners.Though not always successful, the efforts of Br’er Rabbit made him a folk hero. However, the trickster is a multidimensional character. While he can be a hero, his amoral nature and his lack of any positive restraint can make him into a villain as well.

For both Africans and African-Americans, the animal trickster represents an extreme form of behavior that people may be forced to adopt in extreme circumstances in order to survive. The trickster is not to be admired in every situation. He is an example of what to do, but also an example of what not to do. The trickster’s behavior can be summed up in the common African proverb: “It’s trouble that makes the monkey chew on hot peppers.” In other words, sometimes people must use extreme measures in extreme circumstances. Several elements in the Brer Rabbit Tar Baby story (e.g., rabbit needing to be taught a lesson, punching and head butting the rabbit, the stuck rabbit being swung around and around) are reminiscent of those found in a Zimbabwe-Botswana folktale.

The stories of Br’er Rabbit were written down by Robert Roosevelt, an uncle of US President Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his autobiography about his aunt from the State of Georgia, that “She knew all the ‘Br’er Rabbit’ stories, and I was brought up on them. One of my uncles, Robert Roosevelt, was much struck with them, and took them down from her dictation, publishing them in Harper’s, where they fell flat. This was a good many years before a genius arose who, in ‘Uncle Remus’, made the stories immortal.”

These stories were popularized for the mainstream audience in the late 19th century by Joel Chandler Harris (1845–1908), who wrote down and published many such stories that had been passed down by oral tradition. Harris also attributed the birth name Riley to Br’er Rabbit. Harris heard these tales in Georgia. Very similar versions of the same stories were recorded independently at the same time by the folklorist Alcée Fortier in southern Louisiana, where the Rabbit character was known as Compair Lapin in Creole. Enid Blyton, the English writer of children’s fiction, retold the stories for children.

A history of racism and colonisation that has been airbrushed out of modern consciousness

A very important few minutes of video.

Ory Okolloh explains why Africa can’t entrepreneur itself out of its basic problems

“You can’t entrepreneur around bad leadership, we can’t entrepreneur around bad policy,”

One of Kenya’s best known tech investors Ory Okolloh has thrown cold water on the push for entrepreneurship and innovation on the continent. “You can’t entrepreneur around bad leadership, we can’t entrepreneur around bad policy,” Okolloh said, criticizing what she called the “fetishization” of entrepreneurship and neglect of fundamental problems hampering African countries. “There is growth in Africa but Africans are not growing,” she said echoing earlier comments she has made.

Speaking at the Quartz Africa Innovator’s summit, (Sept 14), Okolloh said:
“I’m concerned about what I see is the fetishization around entrepreneurship in Africa. It’s almost like it’s the next new liberal thing. Like, don’t worry that there’s no power because hey, you’re going to do solar and innovate around that. Your schools suck, but hey there’s this new model of schooling. Your roads are terrible, but hey, Uber works in Nairobi and that’s innovation.
During the Greek bail out, no one was telling young Greek people to go and be entrepreneurs. Europe has been stuck at 2% or 1% growth. I don’t see any any entrepreneurship summit in Europe telling them you know, go out there and be entrepreneurs. I feel that there’s a sense that oh, resilience and you know, innovate around things—it’s distracting us from dealing with fundamental problems that we cannot develop.

Those of us who have managed to entrepreneur ourselves out of it are living in a very false security in Africa. There is growth in Africa, but Africans are not growing.

We can’t entrepreneur our way around bad leadership. We can’t entrepreneur our way around bad policies. Those of us who have managed to entrepreneur ourselves out of it are living in a very false security in Africa. There is growth in Africa, but Africans are not growing. And we have to questions why is there this big push for us to innovate ourselves around problems that our leaders, our taxes, our policymakers, ourselves, to be quite frankly, should be grappling with.

Our systems need to work and we need to figure our shit out.”

… I think sometimes we are running away from dealing with the really hard things. And the same people who are pushing this entrepreneurship and innovation thing are coming from places where your roads work, your electricity works, your teachers are well paid. I didn’t see anyone entrepreneur-ing around public schooling in the US. You all went to public schools, you know, and then made it to Harvard or whatever. You turned on your light and it came on. No one is trying to innovate around your electricity power company. So why are we being made to do that? Our systems need to work and we need to figure our shit out.”

Originally published here

How Barclays is Misbehaving in Africa

The biggest UK bank in Africa is encouraging its clients to use tax havens.

When companies don’t pay their fair share of tax, this can deny some of the world’s poorest people access to vital funds for schools and hospitals.

Join ActionAid and tell Barclays to clean up its act on tax havens.After recent scandals, Barclays Bank boss Antony Jenkins has got himself in a bit of a lather trying to polish the bank’s image.

Barclays wants to be seen as a responsible business as it expands its operations in Africa. But responsible businesses don’t promote tax havens.

Whether you bank with Barclays or not, we can all be a part of the Big Clean and help convince Barclays to smarten up on tax havens. Email Antony Jenkins and let him know you want him to clean up Barclays.

Developing countries lose three times more to tax havens than they receive in aid each year – vital funds that could be spent on essentials like healthcare and education.

Please take some time, as I’ve done, to email Barclays’ boss and tell him to clean up the bank’s act on tax havens. After all the recent banking scandals, Barclays want to be seen to be doing the right thing – now it’s time for real action.

Find out more and email Barclays boss Antony Jenkins at http://po.st/BarclaysBehave

Thanks

I Must Have Justice Or I’ll Destroy Myself

Fyodor Dostoevsky (as Ivan) on Justice and Forgiveness
Except from THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV,
CONSTANCE BLACK GARNETT, TRANSLATION.
(MODERN LIBRARY: 1977), P. 254.

“To be shot,” murmured Alyosha, lifting his eyes to Ivan with a pale, twisted smile. … Ivan for a minute was silent, his face became all at once very sad.

“Listen! I took the case of children only to make my case clearer. Of the other tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from its crust to its centre, I will say nothing. I have narrowed my subject on purpose. I am a bug, and I recognise in all humility that I cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is. Men are themselves to blame, I suppose; they were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven, though they knew they would become unhappy, so there is no need to pity them. With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidian understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly; that everything flows and finds its level — but that’s only Euclidian nonsense, I know that, and I can’t consent to live by it! What comfort is it to me that there are none guilty and that cause follows effect simply and directly, and that I know it?

I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have believed in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I haven’t suffered simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer.

But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them? That’s a question I can’t answer. For the hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions, but I’ve only taken the children, because in their case what I mean is so unanswerably clear. Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It’s beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the harmony of the future? I understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers’ crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn’t grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old.

Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: ‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.’ When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can’t accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child’s torturer, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ but I don’t want to cry aloud then. While there is still time, I hasten to protect myself, and so I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It’s not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to ‘dear, kind God’! It’s not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for.

They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don’t want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price.

I don’t want the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will, let her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her mother’s heart. But the sufferings of her tortured child she has no right to forgive; she dare not forgive the torturer, even if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, what becomes of harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don’t want harmony. From love for humanity I don’t want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.”

Darling of the West, terror to his opponents: Meet Rwanda’s new scourge – Paul Kagame – Africa – World – The Independent

Rwandan President Paul Kagame

Enemies of Kagame – the despot so beloved by Western democratic leaders and charity dupes – seem to have a strange habit of dying in disturbing circumstances.
Over the years a succession of prominent critics and campaigners, judges and journalists, have been killed. They have been beaten, beheaded, shot and stabbed, both at home in Rwanda and abroad in nervous exile. Some were good people, others far from saints – and their deaths came after crossing Kagame.

Read full story here
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/darling-of-the-west-terror-to-his-opponents-meet-rwandas-new-scourge–paul-kagame-9037914.html

My immediate response to this sad development, if there is even a fraction of truth in the story is that ‘Elimination’ of political opponents must always be condemed. It is ancient politics. Modern day human rights laws and justice systems will sooner or later catch up with perpetrators. It is one of the scourges of third world politics. Many will beg to differ though and say ‘westerners’ are also masters of this game.
It need not require only the voice from the ‘west’ for the world to scream out its outrage against politically motivated murders anywhere in the world. Lets hear the watchdogs from the ‘east’ shout against it too, and adjust their political and economic ties with perpetrators accordingly. Above all let the ordinary people of the affected countries be organised and be heard speaking out the loudest against all such instances no matter what else good the murderers are known to be doing that which is benefiting their countries and making them “darlings” in the eyes of foreign onlookers.

We Need a Reset Button – Tendai Biti

Tendai Biti  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 by Tendai Biti

Wanachi , an avid discussant of these chronicles calling himself Yancer Bell, got me laughing this morning. He made the point that if Africa was a gadget then he would activate the reset button so that Africa would start from all over.

 

Sadly this is a true generational indictment of five decades of
waste, in respect of which we have seen predation, and arbitrage
codified and institutionalized on our continent.

 

It is hard to believe that many African countries at their
Independence had economies that were equal to if not stronger than many
countries in South East Asia, South Korea included.

 

That Ghana for instance had more than four hundred million pounds in
reserve, the equivalent of at least $2 billion at today s exchange
rates. That Zimbabwe for instance had in per capita terms the third largest manufacturing sector in the world at independence. Certainly the landscape of doom, gloom and the deficit status quo
reflects the one distinctive deficit that Africa had, and in this case,
did not have. That is visionary leadership with the craft competence, the love and
the patriotism to carry out genuine change on the continent necessary to
effect the real transformation that Africa needed. Is it not ironic that the Nationalist, has in the name of nationalism done so much unpatriotic harm on the continent. Nothing is more unpatriotic than the neo-colonial and neoliberal
looting and patronage that has continued and is continuing unabated on
the continent to date. Africa thus found itself with leadership kwashiorkor, without its own, Mohathir, Lee Kuan Yew or Chairman Deng Xiaoping.

Africa thus found itself with leadership kwashiorkor, without its own, Mohathir, Lee Kuan Yew or Chairman Deng Xiaoping.

 

Speaking of China very few will understand that as recent as 1980
China’s micro economic indicators were worse than Zimbabwe’s and that
three quarters of its huge population lived below the poverty datum
line. However under the leadership of Chairman Deng ,in less than forty years it has now become the world’s second largest economy.

 

Zimbabwe more than any other country is reflective and proof of a
country that has suffered at the hands of crippled selfish leadership
,that has never had vision ,direction and love to carry and transport
this country to a supersonic level of development . Yet our potential was and is so huge. Our education, our climate and our natural endowment make this
country a natural cheetah but we have been forced to crawl and scrounge
like the crocodile we have become, lazy, cunning and predatory. In the post-election period, where evidence of short memory and quick
surrender to Zanu Pf seduction and charm is fashionable, it is easy to
forget that this is a country mired in reckless poverty, with some of the
world’s most desperate human indicators, and with a crippled
microeconomic status quo. It is easy to forget that this is a country that has functioned on
violence and exclusion, a country with more than a quarter of its
citizens out of the same. It easy to forget that this is a country where democracy has been demoted from vogue to the morgue. A country which, thirty three years after independence, has only one television station and no independent radio stations. Don’t tell me about those two so called independent radio stations. We can talk about the structural constrains brought by colonialism,
but I refuse to buy these arguments thirty three years after
independence. Bad selfish leadership has placed us where we are. A little arrogant country known for stagnation and regression. We have been held captive by this leadership. The collective
creativity and energy of this nation has been sucked and liquidated by
this group of man.

 

We have been held captive by this leadership. The collective
creativity and energy of this nation has been sucked and liquidated by
this group of man.

 

As result politics and indeed ugly politics that dominate the entire
discourse of the nation. It does not matter whether it’s in churches,
schools, buses or sports arenas. Everything you touch, the air you breathe is so polluted by ugly politics. You cannot run away from same. It is disempowering corrosive and debilitating.

 

Years ago the Church in Zimbabwe commissioned a paper called, the Zimbabwe we want. That paper spoke on the fundamentals of economic and political revival of our country.

I suspect that this is one country that needs a true Renaissance. A
genuine moral, spiritual and intellectual upliftment of a nation that
has been battered-as I said previously- by mediocrity, arrogance,
ignorance, indifference, entitlement and impunity. These are things we live with every day, and unfortunately, in
dominated social formations such ours, we the victims also struggle to
reproduce asymmetrically the crimes of those oppressing us.

 

Of the above vices one that kills me, is the suffocating culture of mediocrity and its attendant twin, indifference. Whether it is at a saloon, or a line for passports ,or our in famous
road blocks, people are lackadaisical ,indifferent and unaccountable. Someone serving the public will be speaking on three mobile phones,
if you confront her, she will shout at you or call the next customer. The quality of work is shoddy and there is no pride in one’s workmanship. There is no respect, no Ubuntu. Long gone are the days when to serve
was an honour, and to work was to pray. To serve was a privilege.

 

As they say, the country has gone to the dogs.

 

Where the hardware of the State collapses so too the software. A long time ago those governing us stopped caring. When they so stopped, Wananchi noticed. Wananchi stopped caring too. That in essence is the breakdown of the social contract. The breakdown of that invisible moral glue that keeps a nation together.

 

Sadly the story of Zimbabwe is largely the same story of Africa but with different levels and shades of the narrative. My friends call it the Zanufication of the African Continent.

 

So if this is what you Yancer Bell you are referring too, then I concur.

 

Let us press the Reset button, so that factory settings can be restored.

 

But there is another Africa I know, that is beautiful and full hope. It is the Africa of a hard working Wananchi, struggling honestly to eke a clean living for its children. The Africa of my poor widowed mother, and mother in law, honest women with nothing but the welfare of their children at heart. It is the Africa of the Kiberas, of this world, the Mandebvus of this
world where poor souls do not question God for their poor fate but get
on with it quietly and efficiently. It is the Africa ,of the Malian Griots, that yell through the vocal cords of a Baba Maal, or Ishmael Lo. It is the Africa of Maria Mutola,Patrice Lumumba.Koffi Olomide ,of
Bantu Biko of Chitepo ,Castor Semenya ,and the great Roger Milla. The Africa of Pepetela, Soyinka, Achebe, Dangarembgwa, Gapah, Vera , Ngugi and others. That Africa of desserts that whisper poetry and giant national parks
like the Serengeti that house creatures that are yet to be named and
mysterious shores like Mombasa Pemba or Swakopmund whose deep secrets
seduce you to their sandy beaches.

 

That is the Africa that many I know will seek to reclaim from the post independent mafia that has hijacked the same.

 

That is the simple mission in life.

In difficult times, such as the present, sometimes it is hard to understand the Central Strategic objective of a generation.

 

In difficult times, such as the present, sometimes it is hard to understand the Central Strategic objective of a generation. More so when a mind-set was geared for a sprint and had no mental
preparation of the realty that change, real change is not a sprint. So cannibalism becomes the order of the day to the oblivion of the
real cause. Opportunism, rumour and malice become malignant, but Rome
continues to burn .

 

It is October after all. The season of slime.

 

This is a simple generational obligation: returning Africa to its true owners, the Wananchi, rebuilding the same and pushing it forward.

 

That is the least we can do.

 

It is a s simple as that.

 

Zikomo.

Related articles

• African Billionaires Flourish as Population Explosion Starves Masses (webpronews.com)
• Chinamasa’s finance plan immoral: Biti (thezimbabwean.co)
• Tendai Biti Strips Down Dictators (webstermadanhi.wordpress.com)
• Post-election economy discussion with Tendai Biti and Brian Kagoro (sirnige.com)
• Zimbabwe poachers poison 91 elephants (thestar.com)

Zimbabwe is not an African Problem. It’s a Headache

Originally published here

There is nothing African about the Zimbabwe situation. Indeed, insisting that Zimbabwe represents an African problem plays into the stereotype that dictatorship and lawlessness are African traits. By accepting that we need to solve this in an ‘African way’ we reinforce the idea that the African continent has the global market cornered on stolen elections and bankrupt leaders like Mugabe and the ZANU-PF acolytes who surround him.
The imbroglio over Ambassador Lindiwe Zulu’s style of diplomacy, and the looming disaster of the Zimbabwean elections scheduled for next week, highlight the need for South Africa to rethink the idea of African solutions to African problems.

The credo of African solutions to African problems was championed by President Thabo Mbeki in the era of a self-confident, cosmopolitan African leadership intent on signaling its independence from neo colonialism and Western paternalism; and rightly so. But inherent in the idea is the notion that there is something unique about Africa’s problems, and that the solutions to these unique African problems can be found in some uniquely African approach to solving problems.

For a long time, I have wanted to believe this. But a decade into a strategy that has guided our diplomacy, especially our AU ad SADC engagements, I think it is worth testing the assumptions that underpin this. In other words, does an ‘African’ analysis (whatever that may be) actually help to resolve the ‘African problems that we have confronted?

Using Zimbabwe (our most persistent and pressing foreign policy issue) as a case study, let us first examine the idea of an African problem. Is there something uniquely African about the breakdown of rule of law in Zimbabwe? Is there something African about the failure of one party to depart gracefully when the people vote it out of power, as was the case after the 2008 Zimbabwean elections?

The problem is that there is nothing African about the Zimbabwe situation. Indeed, insisting that Zimbabwe represents an African problem plays into the stereotype that dictatorship and lawlessness are African traits. By accepting that we need to solve this in an ‘African way’ we reinforce the idea that the African continent has the global market cornered on stolen elections and bankrupt leaders like Mugabe and the ZANU-PF acolytes who surround him.

To suggest that there is something inherently African about the tyranny of Mugabe’s rule, is to proceed from the wrong starting point. Indeed, as an African, I find it offensive.

The bottom line is that big problems need big solutions. Zimbabwe is a big problem. If we cloak our problems in African garb it doesn’t make them any prettier. It doesn’t change the nature of the problems. What it does do is distract us from their true nature, and sends us looking for all manner of emissaries instead of doing that which is difficult but necessary. It is only once we strip the Zimbabwe problem of its silly costume that we will find a proper and lasting solution.

We live in a global world. Chinese technology drives African power plants, Indian manufacturing propels African growth, and African minerals are driving Western expansion. Our leaders wear silk ties, order Thai food for lunch, and shop in Malaysia. The political systems they have adopted emerged from Ancient Greece and were heavily influenced by African scholars. In an inter-connected world, the notion of an African solution is in itself a complex idea; one that requires nuancing and thinking through before we swallow it wholesale.

It is therefore disingenuous for African leaders to seek to turn back the clock to find a pristine African way of resolving a problem that is not pristinely African. Frankly, as an African woman whose kind have been historically excluded from processes of African decision-making, I find it hard to defend an elitist and un-transparent model of decision-making.

I am not proposing that South Africa should adopt a Western model (whatever that is). I am under no illusions about the fact that Western democracies are hardly worth emulating with their in-built structural exclusions of minority and poor populations and their seemingly infinite tolerance for regimes that abuse human rights, so long as they work in their economic interests.

The bottom line is that we have a problem in Zimbabwe that no amount of Africanising will resolve. The softly softly African approach has not worked precisely because the primary cause of Zimbabwe’s demise has donned the costume of the most revolutionary and authentic African on the planet. As the anointed Africanist, he successfully pilloried Mandela for his popularity amongst Whites. He played Thabo Mbeki by forcing him to play the subordinate role. Mugabe played the ‘elder statesman’ which required Mbeki – by the conventions of ‘African diplomacy’ to respect him as an elder.

It is in this same vein that Mugabe has used that old sexist trope – control your woman – to put President Zuma in his place. Ambassador Zulu has been treated in a misogynistic manner by an old patriarch, and the Presidency has – unsurprisingly – not defended her.

It is time that South Africa realised that buying into the logic of Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF will not work. They are masters of the Africanist terrain because for many years now they have disempowered and disenfranchised Zimbabweans on the basis of their ‘liberation’ credentials. In other words they have assumed ownership of the mantle of authentic African-ness.

Pulling out of that logic system – not in favour of a western model but in favour of an honest conversation about the conditions for a free and fair system through which Zimbabweans can elect their leader – is the only way to solve this problem. Playing the African card is tired. It will only bring us more of the same: no change for Zimbabweans. DM

Is the ICC Ready for the Murky World of African Politics?

Originally published here

ICC investigations
Green: Official investigations (Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Darfur (Sudan), Kenya, Libya, Côte d’Ivoire and Mali)
Light red: Ongoing preliminary examinations (Afghanistan, Colombia, Georgia, Guinea, Honduras, Nigeria, and South Korea)
Dark red: Closed preliminary examinations (Palestine, Iraq, and Venezuela)

Few days before African Union’s 50th Anniversary celebrations in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where the organisation was founded, initially as Organisation of African Unity on 25th May 1963, Nafie Ali Nafie, Sudan’s Presidential assistance was quoted by Sudan Tribune that he had told the country’s official news agency that African Union (AU) was going to endorse “an en masse withdrawal” of its membership from the International Criminal Court (ICC), allegedly due to the court’s unfair targeting of Africans.

And yes, it was easy to see why al Bashir’s assistant was eager to advance such claim, true or false. It is the interest of Sudanese leadership, whose president Omar al Bashir is an ICC indict that the ICC is discredited, at least by the continent’s leadership. Like most folks in my circle of friends, I thought the membership withdrawal was highly unlikely, given the lack of cohesion within the AU and among its member states. Take for instance, last year the AU was forced to shift its meeting from Lilongwe, Malawi to Addis Ababa after Malawi’s Joyce Banda (barely three months in office at the time) refused to host the conference if al Bashir, arguing that as ICC signatory Malawi had mandate to arrest al Bashir.

Sudan has all the reasons to try their luck knowing it now has allies in Uhuru Kenyatta, the Kenyan president, who together with his deputy, William Ruto are also fighting to clear names at the court. No single AU member pulled out but the organisation issued a strong statement, accusing the court of “racial hunting”. The ICC are mostly likely getting used to responding to these criticisms, the court has faced it so many times before from various people, institutions etc. The significance of this occasion is that it was the first time the accusation came directly from the African Union.

Writing for Al-Jazeera, Solomom Ayele Dersso, a legal academic based in Addis Ababa notices that the ICC’s current list of cases puts into question the claimed international status of the court, giving credence to descriptions that the court is, in practice, an “international court for Africa.” Dersso observed that Professor Mahmood Mamdani has previously made the similar point that “the ICC is turning into a western court to try African crimes against humanity.”

Such critics do not deny the fact that atrocities have been committed in various parts of the continent and that those being tried at the ICC have cases to answer. These critics question why is that the court is not pursuing perpetrators of similar atrocities elsewhere. Dersso notes that among these critics is Professor William Schabas who wonders: “why prosecute post-election violence in Kenya or recruitment of child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but not murder and torture of the prisoners in Iraq or illegal settlements in the West Bank?”

These are legitimate questions, and the ICC recognise that these concerns are legitimate and ought to be addressed if the court is to save its own face. The court has emphasised that most of the cases has actually been referred by Africans themselves. ICC has a point, according to Dersso, of the 18 cases currently at the court, Africa have indeed initiated 12 of them. The other six were United Nations Security Council referrals.

“>

The puzzle is why is the African Union accusing the ICC of “racial hunting” when most of the cases are initiated by its own members? Does this constitute to double standards or its is a manifestation of confusion with the AU? Are these facts suggesting that ICC is flooded with African suspects only because Africans are too enthusiastic about the court unlike elsewhere? Or is it because unlike other parts of the world Africa lacks justice systems that Africans themselves can trust? South Africa’s Daily Maverick argues that AU’s concern is not about the alleged “racial hunting” or trying to protect Kenyatta et al; African leaders are simply trying to protect themselves – most of fear they will end at the court.

It is a valid point, Ugandan opposition have since decided to take advantage of the ICC’s thirst for African cases; they are asking the court to charge the country’s president, Yoweri Museveni (one of the AU’s powerful men) after the country’s security personnel teargased demonstrators protesting against economic hardships in the country. Teargas is perhaps the most abused substance by the continent’s security enforcers.

How many of these cases is the ICC prepared to deal with? Is it really what the court wants to be doing? And of course Uganda’s opposition will only need the court so long as they remain in opposition. Once in power they will join the AU bandwagon. Is this what the ICC wants to get itself into? The court’s seemingly unquenchable thirst for African cases is slowly but surely getting it into the murky world of African politics, and this will do nothing to mend its tattered reputation.

By Jimmy Kainja
Writter, Social and Political analyst
Jimmy is an Academic, writer, news media & communications scholar. Interested in political and social changes in Sub Saharan Africa and Malawi in particular. Jimmy can be contacted through his email: j.kainja@gmail.com

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What do Names Of African Countries Mean

By
Vincent Hiribarren
Interested in a nonsensical map of Africa? Have a look at this map displaying a translation of each African country’s name. This picture is only a screen capture of an interactive map I have created. You can see the full version here

Source
http://www.vincenthiribarren.com/maps/afriketymo/index.html