MTWARA KUMEKUCHA

THE FOUR WIVES STORY

2009-11-14T12:34:00.003+03:00

Read this story thoroughly and think about it

Once upon a time there was a rich King who had four wives.
He loved the 4th wife the most and adored her with rich robes and treated her to the finest of delicacies. He gave her nothing but the best.

He also loved the 3rd wife very much and was always showing her off to neighboring kingdoms. However, he feared that one day she would leave him for another.

He also loved his 2nd wife. She was his confidant and was always kind, considerate and patient with him. Whenever the King faced a problem, he could confide in her, and she would help him get through the difficult times.

The King's 1st wife was a very loyal partner and had made great
contributions in maintaining his wealth and kingdom. However, he did not love the first wife. Although she loved him deeply, he hardly took notice of her!!

One day, the King fell ill and he knew his time was short. He thought of his luxurious life and wondered, I now have four wives with me, but when I die, I'll be all alone."

Thus, he asked the 4th wife, "I loved you the most, endowed you with the finest clothing and showered great care over you. Now that I'm dying, will you follow me and keep me a company?"
"No way!” replied the 4th wife and she walked away without another word. Her answer cut like a sharp knife right into his heart.

The sad King then asked the 3rd wife, "I loved you all my life. Now that I’m dying, will you follow me and keep me a company?"
"No!” replied the 3rd wife. "Life is too good! When you die, I'm going to remarry!" His heart sank and turned cold.

He then asked the 2nd wife, "I have always turned to you for help and you've always been there for me. When I die, will you follow me and have your company?"
"I'm sorry, I can't help you out this time!” replied the 2nd wife. "At the very most, I can only walk with you to your grave."
Her answer struck him like a bolt of lightning, and the King was devastated.

Then a voice called out: "I'll go with you. I'll follow you no matter where you go." The King looked up, and there was his first wife. She was very skinny as she suffered from malnutrition and neglect. Greatly grieved, the King said, "I should have taken much better care of you when I had the chance!! "

In truth, we all have the 4 wives in our lives: Our 4th wife is our body. No matter how much time and effort we lavish in making it look good, it will live us when we die.

Our 3rd wife is our possessions, status and wealth. When we die, it will all go to others. Our 2nd wife is our family and friends. No matter how much they have been there for us, the furthest they can stay by us is up to the grave.

And our 1st wife is our Soul. Often neglected in pursuit of wealth, power and pleasures of the world. However, our Soul is the only thing that will follow us wherever we go. Cultivate, strengthen and cherish it now, for it is the only part of us that will follow us to the throne of God and continue with us throughout Eternity.

Thought for the day: Remember, when the world pushes you to your knees, you're in the perfect position to pray. Pass this on to someone you care about, I just did. Being happy doesn't mean everything's perfect. It means you've decided to see beyond the imperfections.

STEVE FAKE RESPONSE ON MERCHANTS OF DEATH BY KEITH HARMON SNOW

2009-11-14T09:46:00.002+03:00

As the authors of "The Scramble for Africa: Darfur - Intervention and the USA," we find it necessary to respond to Keith Harmon Snow's
highly confused and misleading references to our work, and the strange litany of positions he attributes to it, and to us.

Harmon Snow writes that "The book makes no mention of covert operations or private military companies operating in South Sudan or Darfur." Yet this is demonstrably false. We mention the role of Dyncorp in both south Sudan and Darfur (page 88), and, more prominently, Blackwater – in fact, twice in the main text (88, 115), and also for two paragraphs in an endnote (248). Perhaps Harmon Snow's razor eye for detail somehow missed the book's index, in which both companies are listed.

He roundly condemns us for citing "ad nauseum all the usual
propagandists," like Eric Reeves. But of course citing does not mean
approving. In fact, we label Reeves a "hawkish commentator and
invasion advocate" (xxvii), and at different points observe that he
pursues his arguments "bizarrely" (xxvii), "very naïvely (to be
charitable)," and that he is simply "wrong" (272). In a broader point, even in writing from a leftist perspective, there is of course value in referencing mainstream works (in addition to left-wing ones) where appropriate, as doing so serves to broaden the audience that will be open to the arguments.

As is obvious, relatively few who are not already leftists will be swayed if citations are only given to left-wing works, though if a critique of US policy appears "even" in the New York Times or another mainstream publication, it is much likelier to resonate with the broader public.

Harmon Snow also incorrectly notes that while we call Omar al-Bashir a
"major war criminal," we "never similarly condemn" Western powers such as the U.S. and Israel, and their leaders. Again, the factual record, easily available to anyone who reads the book, indicates otherwise.

We note that, "Given that the U.S. has been named the biggest threat
to world security in polls of global opinion, one may wonder when a blue-helmeted UN liberation force will be deployed to the streets of Washington to halt its war against the people of Iraq" (64), and that Washington's concerns about the ICC are a reflection of the fact that
"it might become a serious instrument for justice, and will thus turn to investigating US crimes" (xxxviii). We reference Israel's "ethnic cleansing of Palestinians" (63), its "war crimes" (116), and the fact
that its "massive crimes are perceived to be in service of Western geopolitical interests" (64). Again, the positions Harmon Snow attributes to us are utterly unrecognizable.
: Even where Harmon Snow directly cites our work, he deftly manages to misrepresent our arguments. Referencing our comment in the foreword that, "there would be little to mourn in Bashir's overthrow, and such a move—depending, of course, on the actors involved, and its prospects
for success—could be cautiously supported," he comments that, "In other words, it's fine for white people from the United States to organize the overthrow of sovereign governments, as long as we selectively chose the 'right' people for the job."

We make our assertion in the context of discussing the Justice and Equality Movement-led coup attempt against Khartoum in May of this year. There is simply nothing about non-Sudanese trying "to organize" a coup, and in actuality we argue vehemently in the book against any sort of foreign-led regime change in Khartoum, and spend an entire chapter on the imperialist uses of the doctrine of "humanitarian intervention." Rather, as is obvious to any individual with any notion of the concept of "solidarity," our comments mean that we stand with
the oppressed segments of the Sudanese population in their struggle for justice, whether their oppression comes from internal or foreign sources.

What we present above suggests one of three conclusions: (1) that
Harmon Snow did not read the book, (2) that he read it and did not
understand it, or, (3) that he read it, understood it, and
nevertheless chose to deliberately misrepresent the analysis presented
therein. We will not speculate on which of the three, or perhaps some
combination of them, is behind his mangling of our arguments, though
none of the possibilities qualify him to be writing about our analysis in the first place.

We invite the editors and readers to draw their own conclusions about
the merits of our book and arguments (our website scrambleforafrica.org features several excerpts from the text, as well as our other writings on the Darfur conflict), and expect that this letter will be appropriately included on the page containing his article.

Putting aside the serious mischaracterizations of our book in this article, we are very pleased to see analyses that challenge the distorted narratives of the Western corporate press reaching readers.; It is impossible for those of us living in the U.S. to act in solidarity with the oppressed in Africa unless the realities and true causes of African conflicts are known. That is particularly true when our government plays a direct role in the violence.; Steven Fake, co-author, Scramble For Africa: Darfur - Intervention
and the USA
www.scrambleforafrica.org

MAPROFESA HATUVUNJI MSITU,NI MWALIMU WA SHULE YA MSINGI

2009-11-14T09:39:00.003+03:00

Na Profesa Joseph L. Mbele

Makala hii ilitoka katika gazeti la KWANZA JAMII May 19, 2009. Prof anaongelea juu ya mfumo wa elimu ya msingi ni muendelezo wa tafakari katika picha katika bandiko la tarehe 13/11/2009. Asante sana Prof. kwa kunifungua macho nami nimeona niibandike tena.

TUNAONGELEA sana mfumo wa elimu. Kitu kimoja ninachoona hatukizungumzii ipasavyo ni wadhifa wa mwalimu wa shule ya msingi. Jamii haimwoni mwalimu wa shule ya msingi kama mtu wa pekee sana. Lakini, akitokeza mwalimu wa chuo kikuu, kama mimi, jamii inafungua macho na kutega masikio. Jamii inamwona mwalimu wa chuo kikuu, profesa, kuwa mtu wa pekee sana, kumzidi mwalimu wa shule ya msingi.

Kwa miaka kadhaa sasa, nimejjijengea mtazamo tofauti kuhusu suala hilo. Hii ndio mada ya makala yangu hii. Hoja yangu ni kuwa, mwalimu wa shule ya msingi anastahili heshima ya pekee. Tunaposema shule ya msingi, tuzingatie neno msingi.

Neno msingi tunalitumia sana tunapoongelea ujenzi wa nyumba. Basi, tuchukulie mfumo wa elimu kama nyumba. Tunapowazia kujenga nyumba, tunazingatia sana msingi, kuhakikisha kuwa ni imara. Kila mtu anajua kuwa ukishafanya hivyo, nyumba yako itakuwa imara. Basi, na elimu ni hivyo hivyo. Ili iwe imara, ni lazima tuanzie kwenye msingi. Na hapo ndipo tunamkuta mwalimu wa shule ya msingi. Yeye ni kama yule fundi mjenzi tunayemtegemea kutujengea msingi imara. Hapo tunaanza kuelewa maana halisi ya dhana ya shule ya msingi.

Tunaweza kutoa mfano mwingine. Tukichukulia ualimu kama kazi ya ukulima, basi mwalimu wa shule ya msingi ni sawa na yule mkulima anayevunja msitu. Sisi walimu tunaokuja baadaye kwa mfano chuo kikuu, tunakuta shamba limeshatayarishwa. Kazi yetu ni nyepesi tukiichukulia kwa mtazamo huu wa kumkumbuka aliyevunja msitu. Ni lazima tumwenzi mvunja msitu, ambaye ni mwalimu wa shule ya msingi. Ni msitu gani huo anaovunja?

Mwalimu wa darasa la kwanza ana jukumu la kuleta mapinduzi katika akili ya mtoto. Anamtoa katika fikra na mazoea ya kucheza siku nzima na kuwinda ndege na kumwingiza katika ulimwengu wa ukurasa wa daftari na kitabu. Huu ni ulimwengu mwingine kabisa, na mapinduzi yanayofanyika hapa ni makubwa. Mtoto alikotoka anajua lugha ya kuongea na kusikia. Lakini mwalimu wa darasa la kwanza anambadilisha na kumfanya aifahamu lugha andishi. Maneno ambayo mtoto alizoea kuyasema tu na kuyasikia, sasa anapaswa ayaone na ayaelewe yanakuwaje kimaandishi. Ajifunze kuandika na kusoma, sio kusema tu na kusikia. Ajifunze namna ya kupanga kila herufi, neno, na sentensi kwenye mstari ulionyooka. Afahamu ukurasa unapangwaje: aanzie juu kwenda chini, si vinginevyo. Maneno ayaandike vipi, nukta na mkato aziweke wapi, na alama za kuuliza na kushangaa aziweke wapi. Haya ni mapinduzi makubwa ya akilini.

Katika mapinduzi hayo, mtoto anaanza kukiona kila kitu kwa mtazamo wa maandishi. Akiona kiti, anajua namna ya kuandika neno kiti. Akiona mnyama au mdudu, anajua namna ya kuandika mnyama au mdudu. Akili ya kuielewa lugha kama kitu cha kusema na kusikia tu inapanuliwa. Akili hiyo inakutana na lugha kwa kutumia macho. Hii ni lugha andishi.

Baada ya mwalimu wa shule ya msingi kufanya hayo mapinduzi akilini mwa mtoto, ndipo sisi walimu wa madarasa yanayofuata tunaletewa huyu mtoto. Sisi hatuleti mapinduzi. Hatuvunji msitu, wala kujenga msingi. Tunaingia darasani na kuongea sana, na wanafunzi wanaandika wanachosikia. Tunawaambia waende maktabani wakasome. Lakini hayo yanawezekana tu kwa vile mwalimu wa shule ya msingi alishawafundisha hao wanafunzi kuandika na kusoma. Bila hivyo, sisi tungekwama. Kwa bahati mbaya, tunasahau jambo hilo. Tunamsahau aliyevunja msitu na tunadhani kusoma na kuandika kuliwezekana au kulijitokeza kiurahisi tu.

Huwa najiuliza, je, nikiambiwa nikafundishe darasa la kwanza, nitaweza? Nina hakika nitaumia kichwa. Bahati nzuri, kwa miaka kadhaa nimekuwa nawatafuta walimu wa shule za msingi sehemu mbali mbali za Tanzania na kuongea nao. Wamenifungua macho kuhusu mambo kadhaa, kama vile saikolojia na tabia ya watoto. Wamenielimisha kuwa watoto wana saikolojia tofauti kufuatana na umri: watoto wa darasa la kwanza wana tabia hii na hii, na unapaswa unapowafundisha ufanye hivi au hivi. Ukifanya vile au vile, hutafanikiwa katika kuwafundisha. Mimi sikujua hayo, lakini walimu wa shule ya msingi wamenifundisha.

Walimu hao wameniambia kuwa unapowafundisha watoto wadogo, uangalie unatumia muda gani kwa kitu kimoja, ili ubadili na kufanya kitu kingine. Usijaribu kuwafundisha kitu kimoja kwa muda mrefu. Ukitoa maelezo kwa dakika kadhaa, unabadili; labda uwaimbishe wimbo. Baada ya dakika kadhaa, labda wachukue daftari na kuchora; baadaye wasome, na kadhalika. Usijaribu kutoa mhadhara kwa muda mrefu, kama tunavyofanya chuo kikuu. Elimu hii nimeipata kutoka kwa walimu wa shule za msingi. Kwa maana nyingine, ningekurupuka tu na kwenda kufundisha kule, ningeharibu mambo. Sijui maprofesa wangapi wanajua hayo.

Kitu kimoja tunachohitaji ni kumtambua mwalimu wa shule ya msingi kwa kazi anayofanya na kumpa fursa kamili ya kufanya kazi yake. Katika Tanzania, tangu miaka ya mwanzo ya Uhuru, tuna jadi ya kuwatwisha walimu majukumu ambayo si ya lazima. Kwa mfano, kwenye sherehe za kitaifa au mapokezi ya viongozi, walimu wametegemewa kuwaandaa watoto wa shule katika gwaride, nyimbo, ngoma, au halaiki. Maofisa kilimo, wahasibu na watumishi wengine ambao wangeweza kabisa kufanya shughuli hizo, hawaguswi. Kwa nini hao wasifanye hizo shughuli za magwaride, ngoma, na halaiki, kama ni shughuli muhimu? Walimu wametumika katika shughuli nyingine pia, kama vile kusimamia kura na hata kuwapikia viongozi. Hizi ni kero zisizo na sababu. Walimu wana kazi nyingi: kuandaa masomo, kufundisha, na kusahihisha daftari za wanafunzi au mitihani..

Baadhi ya matatizo yanayoendelea kuwepo kutokana na walimu wa ngazi mbali mbali kutokuwa na mshikamano. Ingekuwa bora iwapo walimu wa shule za msingi na wale wa sekondari, hadi wa vyuo vikuu, wawe na mshikamano thabiti, na mawasiliano ya daima. Kama nilivyogusia hapo juu, mwalimu wa shule ya msingi ana mengi ya kutufundisha sisi wengine. Anao uwezo wa kutupa mwanga kuhusu njia waliyosafiri wanafunzi tunaowafundisha vyuoni.

Naamini, ingekuwa bora pia kwa walimu wa vyuo vikuu kujaribu kufundisha shule ya msingi. Ingekuwa njia nzuri ya kujielimisha. Ninafahamu kuwa profesa akienda kufundisha shule ya msingi, waTanzania watamshangaa, na huenda wakadhani amechanganyikiwa. Lakini kuna mengi muhimu ambayo profesa anaweza kujifunza kwa kufundisha shule ya msingi, angalau mara moja moja.

Joseph L. Mbele
1520 St. Olaf Avenue
Northfield MN 55057

Phone: 507 403 9756
http://www.africonexion.com
http://www.josephmbele.blogspot.com

TAFAKARI YA LEO KATIKA PICHA

2009-11-13T15:16:00.001+03:00

NO COMMENT!

MERCHANTS OF DEATH: EXPOSING CORPORATES FINANCED HOLOCAUST IN AFRICA-2

2009-11-13T07:14:00.007+03:00

‘RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO’ initiative

Like the ‘Save Tibet’ campaign, the one-sided propaganda campaign and institutionalized big-money networking of the ‘Save Darfur’ movement compelled ordinary citizens to become active participants in ’stopping genocide.’ A similar agenda is driving the new ‘RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO’ initiative. While their ideological programs are advanced through the Western mass media, organizations—e.g. the International Crises Group, Center for American Progress, International Rescue Committee, ENOUGH!—work to manufacture consent and channel popular consciousness through jingoistic sloganeering and humanistic language that offers ‘news’ consumers exactly what they want to hear: peacekeeping, human rights, democracy, sustainable development, participatory mapping, Africa for the African people, and ‘never again’ interventions against genocide.

Such propaganda campaigns proscribe ideas and possibilities, and they subvert popular movements. In the end, the true grass roots initiatives for social justice and legitimate peace have been expropriated or channeled into serving narrow prerogatives of power. And the voices of the voiceless are crushed, along with their bodies. The International Criminal Court serves a similar and necessary function in manufacturing consent and consolidating Western power. It is really about keeping up appearances: the appearance of justice being served, human rights being protected.

On October 14, 2005, the ICC unsealed arrest warrants against five LRA commanders, all of them black Africans: Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti, Raska Lukwiya, Okot Odhiambo and Dominic Ongwen. In October 2008, after the LRA committed fresh atrocities in northern DRC, the ICC renewed its calls for the arrest of Joseph Kony.

Uganda’s representation at ICC proceedings to explore war crimes in Congo has included at least two very high-profile lawyers from Foley Hoag LLP, an influential Washington law firm. Similarly, the Pentagon seconded its lawyers from the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corp to the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR), where victor’s justice has arbitrarily and selectively politicized genocide in favor of the Pentagon’s UPDF/RPA proxy governments.

Foley Hoag LLP is also tied to the U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council, a consortium that involves Coke, Pfizer and Chevron-Texaco. Coke director Kathleen Black is a principle in the Hearst media empire, while Coke directors Warren Buffet and Barry Diller are directors of the Washington Post Company, and these are the media institutions that whitewash the white-collar crime in Congo. Uganda’s image is further sanitized by London PR firm Hill & Knowlton.’

From 2000 to at least 2004, Yoweri Museveni was co-chair of the euphemistically named Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa (PCHPA). The PCHPA is a front for multinational corporations and USAID, a Christian-based ’soft policy’ wing of the Pentagon that uses food as a weapon under the disguise of charity. Other PCHPA chairs include former U.S. Senator and Alston & Bird lawyer Bob Dole; Peter Seligman, Chair and CEO of Conservation International, an NGO connected to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and Jane Goodall Institute operations in DRC; George Rupp, President of the International Rescue Committee, a flak-producing organization involved in DRC; and Alpha Konare, the former Chair of the Commission of the African Union (2003-2008), the governing body responsible, for example, for oversight of the supposedly ‘neutral’ African Union ‘peacekeeping’ force in Darfur, Sudan—a force that again deploys RDF forces as proxies to secretly further U.S./U.K. interests.

One PCHPA director also represents Bread for the World, a protectionist and nationalistic U.S.-based Christian evangelical ‘charity’ whose directors include Bob Dole and former White House cabinet officials Mike McCurry and Leon Panetta. Along with Thomas Pickering, Susan Rice, Gayle Smith, Donald Payne, Ed Royce, John Podesta, Anthony Lake, Bill and Hillary Clinton and others, these are the architects of covert operations in Africa during the Clinton years.

Senator Tom Daschle is a Special Policy Advisor for Alston & Bird, and an Honorary Senior fellow of the Center for American Progress (CAP), the nationalist U.S. big money ‘think tank’ behind a multitude of front groups with hidden foreign policy agendas around Uganda, Rwanda, Congo and Sudan. These include the ENOUGH! Project, the new RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO initiative, the Genocide Intervention Network, the ONE Campaign and the International Crisis Group (ICG)—all of which somehow involve agents like John Prendergast, former national security insider for President Bill Clinton. It is interesting that a lot of the same people show up tied to different organizations involved in ‘grass roots’ campaigns to help Africa.

The ONE campaign was launched by a coalition of 11 prominent corporate so-called ‘charity’ organizations, including Bread for the World, CARE, Save the Children and the International Rescue Committee (IRC); each of these profit-based organizations has a euphemistic name that suggests a humanitarian or humanistic agenda, but they actually serve corporate interests. CARE has received funding from weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corporation. In 1996 the IRC reportedly took over bases near the Hutu refugee camps in eastern Zaire and proceeded to shell the camps with heavy weapons; also, Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright are IRC overseers. ICG director Zbigniew Brzezinski is an advisor to President-elect Barack Obama.

In July 2008, Senator Tom Daschle led a special delegation of policymakers on behalf of the ONE Campaign, described as ‘a bipartisan movement of over 2 million advocates for the elimination of global poverty and disease.’ The ONE delegation also ‘met with civic and government leaders, as well as everyday citizens and entrepreneurs, to discuss Rwanda’s courageous national reconciliation since the genocide in 1994…’

Daschle and Dole’s law firm, Alston & Bird, is a sponsor of the corporate ‘Millennium Promise’ project, and they provide pro bono legal services, in both the U.S. and Africa, for the Millennium Villages and Millennium Promise, both in Rwanda. These programs are designed to put a ‘development’ face on Africa while maintaining structural inequality, protectionist trade barriers and military superiority.

To put it simply, white people will always get the best jobs, corporations will run and ruin the world—dumping substandard and outdated products on confused populations; seeding the natural world with genetically engineered crops; peddling pretty plastic junk; pushing pharmaceutical pills; strip-mining everything—and we will all fool ourselves and ease our consciences by pretending that we are breaking down barriers of inequality and building a better world.

According to a very high level United Nations special investigator sent to negotiate with LRA commanders in DRC’s far north Garamba region in February 2007, the Uganda government had then recently ‘arrested’ a U.S. military agent and five Congolese militia leaders discovered in Uganda. Originally detained in Kampala, the U.S. military agent was nonetheless allowed to move freely in and out of the DRC.

The U.S. maintains ‘Intelligence Fusion Cells’ in Congo and one cell, in Kisangani, capital of Orientale, was situated in a compound, ringed with coils of barbed wire, near the Tshopo River power station, and was run by a ‘ex’ marine named ‘Tom’ who refused to discuss the cell. There were two U.S. military and two Rwandan military working there. MONUC’s local spokesman confirmed only that the cell revolves around a ‘tripartite security arrangement between Rwanda, Uganda and DRC,’ adding, ‘that one we don’t touch. It’s very hot.’ British soldiers stationed in Kisangani said the American fusion cell ‘monitors intelligence on tantalum extraction.’

A few years back, the U.S. donated to Rwanda two Boeing aircraft that were routinely used by the regime’s Ministry of Defense for arms and minerals trafficking between Rwanda, Belgium, Albania and Bulgaria. Operated by Silverback Cargo Freighters, a Kigali-based company blocked from European airspace since 2006, the planes were also reportedly used for CIA operations, including the transfer of U.S. ‘war on terror’ prisoners. The Rwandan government refused to aid UN investigators seeking information about the company’s clandestine operations.

Recent massive human suffering and the escalation of hostilities by the Nkunda army in eastern Congo have provoked a spate of high-visibility policy statements where some powerful Western interests are calling on the ‘international community’ to strengthen the MONUC military occupation of Congo, while other powerful interests from the new humanitarian order are calling for the European Union to send in a rapid reaction force.[58]

BLESSED BE THE PEACEKEEPERS

Congolese sources everywhere confirm the widespread involvement of MONUC soldiers in guns-for-minerals swaps and sexual violence; sources repeatedly accuse MONUC troops of delivering weapons back to militias to justify MONUC’s one billion dollar a year occupation of Congo.

‘MONUC was giving weapons to the militias,’ says yet one more Congolese official. ‘MONUC had their own ambitions. It was about gold. The peace that was achieved in Orientale around 2006 was not achieved by MONUC; the National Police Force from Kinshasa and the integrated FARDC brigades achieved it. MONUC was frustrating the peace.’ In the new Congo war documentary by Dutch filmmaker Renzo Martens, ENJOY POVERTY, we see South African mining staff of AngloGold Ashanti confirming MONUC’s pivotal role in securing the company’s access to gold in Orientale. The entire ‘humanitarian’ enterprise must be properly situated in the political economy of profit-based charity, resource control and racial injustice.

MONUC doesn’t need more guns, it needs fewer guns (but arms dealers keep shipping them in), and Congo doesn’t need more foreign mercenary forces posing as ‘peacekeepers’ but secretly serving narrow, undisclosed interventionist agendas on behalf of multinational corporations.

Ditto for Darfur. In an ‘explosive’ new book by progressive activists that mildly exposes some of the hypocrisies of the Save Darfur movement we find the authors calling for greater military intervention and sneering at others who have criticized and rejected military intervention for being what we might call the new, old humanitarian warfare in Africa.

The book, Scramble For Africa: Darfur—Intervention and the USA, cites ad nauseum all the usual propagandists that are monopolizing the English language mass media, publications from the far right to progressive left, on Darfur. These experts include Alex De Waal and Eric Reeves—and the International Crisis Group—but there are plenty of citations and references to journalists who peddle the establishment inventions and thereby black out the forces of Western control.

By page xvii of the preface, the authors—who have no experience anywhere near Sudan—have become the prosecution, judges and jury of their own private international court: ‘That [President Omar al-Bashir] is a major war criminal is beyond doubt,’ they wrote, ‘as is the fact that he should face trial for his substantial violations of international human rights law.’ The American authors, it seems, are also in the business of overthrowing governments: ‘Given the litany of abuses for which [the Government of Sudan] is guilty,’ they wrote, ‘there would be little to mourn in Bashir’s overthrow, and such a move—depending, of course, on the actors involved, and its prospects for success—could be cautiously supported.’

In other words, it’s fine for white people from the United States to organize the overthrow of sovereign governments, as long as we selectively chose the ‘right’ people for the job. The authors never similarly condemn ‘leaders’ from the United States, Canada, Israel or Europe, and they never suggest that President Bush should be overthrown, or that Donald Rumsfeld, or Henry Kissinger, or General Norman Schwarzkopf, or Maurice Tempelsman, should be prosecuted for war crimes. The book makes no mention of covert operations or private military companies operating in South Sudan or Darfur, and while it illuminates the Bush Administration’s collaboration with the Khartoum government, it is nothing more than a cheerleading tool for the opposing power blocks, including the massive so-called ‘humanitarian relief’ operations. Such is the racial obliviousness of the new humanitarian disorder.

But Darfur’s cheerleaders and Khartoum’s enemies are not so neutral as they appear.

In 1992, Darfur human rights expert Alex De Waal established African Rights, an NGO based in London, co-directed with Rakiya Omaar. In August 1995, African Rights published the report, Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance, one of the first ‘human rights investigations’ to appear after the so-called ‘100 days of killing’ and the successful RPA/UPDF coup d’etat in Rwanda of 1994.

‘Among the early reports on the genocide, none matches Africa[n] Rights, Rwanda, Death, Despair and Defiance (September 1994) for the clinical description of the atrocities inflicted upon Tutsi victims,’ wrote renowned Africa scholar René Lemarchand, ‘ranging from political murders to collective massacres in churches, schools and stadiums, and the daily manhunts conducted on the hills. Significant as it is to our understanding of the sheer savagery that has accompanied the carnage, the African Rights report is utterly silent on the grisly crimes and torture inflicted by Tutsi soldiers on innocent Hutu civilians, some of which are by now well documented (Nduwayo, 2002: 9-16; Amnesty International, 1994; Des Forges, 1999; Reyntjens and De Souter, 1994).’

Lemarchand makes the usual error of accepting the ‘clinical description of the atrocities inflicted on Tutsis’ at face value. How does he know they are all Tutsis and only Tutsis? Because African Rights says they are? Where does he get his information about ‘daily manhunts conducted on the hills’? Why would Lemarchand so quickly trust the claims of a report that he simultaneously castigates for its (authors’) extreme and obvious biases?

‘This woman of Somali origin is an RPF agent,’ says Jean-Marie Higiro of African Rights’ co-director Rakiya Omaar. Higiro was Director of the Rwandan Information Office (ORINFOR). ‘She has her office in Kigali. In 1994 she was at Mulindi, the headquarters of the RPF. As the RPF conquered territories from the Rwandan Government Forces, she collected information fed to her by the RPF.’

‘An intensive back and forth activity between this so-called British human rights organization, African Rights, and the intelligence services of the President’s office and the military, has been observed,’ wrote Paul Rusesabagina. ‘Her investigators are very close to the [RPF/RDF] military intelligence apparatus, and the modus operandi of both appears to be similar.’

The African Rights report was one of the first to manufacture and promulgate the false (one-sided) mythology of ‘genocide’ in Rwanda. It says nothing about RPF/A massacres or foreign military involvement and peddles the now clichéd and disingenuous stereotypes about victims and killers. What does the African Rights report tell us about the veracity of Alex De Waal’s ‘human rights’ reports and political analyses coming out of Darfur? Further, Alex De Waal’s ties to U.S. intelligence include his involvement with Harvard University and the Council on Foreign Relations: De Waal was a member of a CFR task force focused on defining a new military and intelligence engagement with Africa that is cloaked in ‘humanitarian’ rhetoric.

We further witness the hypocrisy and international scandal of having three battalions of Pentagon ‘trained’ Rwandan Defense Force (RDF) ‘peacekeepers’ operating in Darfur while the RDF is openly backing Laurent Nkunda’s occupation proxy force in Congo. Similarly, the UPDF—having received fresh military training by U.S. covert forces in Uganda—has been sent to Somalia. This is not ‘peacekeeping,’ it is crazy making.

A few well-placed arrests—beginning in Washington, Frankfurt, London, New York or Brussels—would redress the problem of impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity everywhere.

THE KANSTEINER CONNECTION

The Moto Gold Project is located in the Kilo Moto goldfields in the north east of the DRC, some 150 kilometers west of the Ugandan border town of Arua. Kilo Moto was President Joseph Mobutu’s private mine, but the project, at various stages, involved powerful Western interlocutors: Belgians Yves Le Norvan and the Damseau family; Roger Lemaire, a Houston (TX) insider; and an Israeli military agent identified as David Agnon. Kilo Moto’s gold, then as now, usually exited Congo (Zaire) through remote airstrips.

The present Moto Gold Mining ‘lease’—a massive land grab corruptly obtained—covers an area of approximately 1,841 square kilometers and involves sites at Durba, Watsa and Doko. Moto Gold’s partners in Orientale include Siemens and Ken Overseas. Siemens director Tiego Moseneke is also a director of PetroSA, a new South African oil minor poaching DRC oil concessions on Lake Albert. Ken Overseas Company is involved in the Minière de Bakwanga (MIBA) diamond mines in Congo’s Mbuji-Mayi province. In their reports on war and plunder in DRC, the United Nations Panel of Experts named Ken Overseas in a MIBA mining consortium linked to Belgian tycoon Philippe de Moerloose and Israeli mining magnate Dan Gertler; both men have been flagged for arms trafficking.

Walter Kansteiner III is one of the shadiest architects of Congo’s troubles. The son of a coltan trader in Chicago, Kansteiner was Assistant Secretary of State for Africa under G.W. Bush and former ‘National Security’ insider and member of the Department of Defense Task Force on Strategic Minerals under Bill Clinton. Kansteiner’s speech at The Forum for International Policy in October of 1996 advocated partitioning the Congo (Zaire) into smaller states based on ethnic lineage; Laurent Kabila was marching across Zaire at the time.

The balkanization of Congo appears to be a major objective behind the current organized chaos in the Great Lakes region. Further, it is obvious that conflicts from within the U.S.—between the Department of State, Pentagon and intelligence agencies—are translating to regional warfare on the ground in, especially, Sudan, Uganda, and Congo.

Kansteiner is a trustee of the Africa Wildlife Foundation—another profit-based ‘conservation’ corporation tied to Conservation International, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and the Jane Goodall Institute—entities whose front of gorilla and chimpanzee protection hides a deeper agenda. It is not surprising to find that one of the AWF’s premier sponsors is Barrick Gold. Kansteiner is also linked to Richard Leakey’s paramilitary front organization Wildlife Direct, and to the Africa Conservation Fund, a shady Washington D.C. entity.

Kansteiner is a director of the precious metal firm Titanium Resources Group, a company deeply tied to Sierra Rutile Limited, a firm pivotal to the bloodshed in Sierra Leone. Sierra Rutile Ltd. director Sir Sam Jonah reportedly helped finance Rwandan RCD rebel groups in DRC while he was a CEO of Ashanti Goldfields; Jonah is also a director for Moto Gold. Sierra Rutile is owned by Max and Jean-Raymond Boulle and Robert Friedland, ‘Friends of Bill’ Clinton who are linked to clandestine networks of offshore holdings and front companies involved in weapons trafficking, money laundering and human rights atrocities from Burma to the Congos to Mongolia.

On April 28, 2008, the ICC issued an international arrest warrant for militia commander Bosco Ntaganda, former commander of the Forces Patriotiques pour la Libération du Congo (FPLC), a militia that operated in the oil and gold areas of Orientale. Bosco is currently the Chief of Staff of Laurent Nkunda’s CNDP army in North Kivu.

On July 14, 2008, the prosecutor of the ICC applied for an arrest warrant for Sudanese President, Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, accused of crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur. Bashir is an Arab—another person of color—and the ICC has deeply politicized the Darfur conflict in keeping with the imperialist smokescreen of the ‘Save Darfur’ movement.

There have been no ICC indictments against a single white man who could be proven to be equally culpable in war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide, though the list of possibilities—as indicated herein—is very, very long.

‘Its name notwithstanding, the ICC is rapidly turning into a Western court to try African crimes against humanity,’ writes Mahmood Mamdani. ‘It has targeted governments that are U.S. adversaries and ignored actions the United States doesn’t oppose, like those of Uganda and Rwanda in eastern Congo, effectively conferring impunity on them.’

Kagame & RPF officials & Directors of Royal/Dutch Shell Corp. (Photo courtesy New Vision newspaper Kampala, Uganda.)

The writing is on the wall, and we can anticipate the eventual arrest of Ugandan military commanders, including Laurent Nkunda, James Kazini, James Kabarebe, Salim Saleh and Paul Kagame. Such arrests aren’t likely to involve legitimate judicial proceedings, and it won’t merely because these people deserve to be arrested, which they do, and they probably won’t be arrested before a few more million people are slaughtered in Central Africa.

The arrests will come because these are the notoriously visible people of color used to make invisible—quite literally black out—the white war criminals and covert operators wrecking havoc in Africa and elsewhere around the world. They are the embraceable black Africans, and the future fall guys, and Africa’s ‘leaders’ should take note. And so should Barack Obama.

Even more critical is the need for the Western news consuming public to recognize the face of propaganda and the nature of ‘change’ and what it means to people of color everywhere. Thus it is critical to note the recent shift in media coverage that accompanies the imminent shift in the post-election balance of U.S. power. General Laurent Nkunda has been deeply involved in Congo for years and the Kagame military machine has been shipping weapons and officers directly to Congo; these Rwanda Defense Force (RDF) officers infiltrate the country and direct the ‘rebel’ operations, and the CNDP has served as a lever of power used against the Kabila government. Reported herein—and nowhere else—is the ongoing secret military involvement of Yoweri Museveni and the Ugandan crime networks.

Only recently, as power shifts from the G.W. Bush power elite to the Obama Administration—being packed with Clintonite friends and officials, and by Democratic Party financiers like diamond kingpin Maurice Tempelsman—has Nkunda or Rwanda been subject to any kind of ‘harsh criticism’. The New York Times article of December 3, 2008, is the perfect example of the ‘news’ media serving hidden agendas. In ‘Rwanda Stirs Deadly Brew of Troubles in Congo,’ the New York Times peddles the standard narrative about ‘genocide in Rwanda’ in 1994.

Suddenly, writes Jeffrey Gettleman, one of the NYT’s chief Congo propagandists of late, there is a ’secret Rwandan brotherhood’ and Rwandan government officials are involved in the bloodletting and plunder in Congo. Such ‘exposés’ appear only because power factions—in this case a right-wing Republican faction allied with the Bush administration—are exerting leverage through their mouthpiece, the New York Times, and thus mildly exposing the obvious links of the former Clinton administration—a competing power faction, more heavily comprised of right-wing Democrats—to war and covert operations in Congo. There is a similar political economy of intervention at work vis-à-vis Darfur, Sudan.

Suddenly it is beneficial to name a few names—names like Modeste Makabuza Ngoga—names that have been known and named before. These New York Times articles are nothing more than expedience, tricks in a bag of tricks, as power jockeys for its positions, and for massive private profit, as we approach the zero hour and the twilight of savior Barack Obama’s coming, bringing ‘change’ to America, and the same old, new, humanitarian warfare to Africa.

MPIRA SASA UPO KWA WAHESHIMIWA KIKWETE NA KARUME

2009-11-11T13:43:00.001+03:00

Zanzibar
Na Ally Saleh

NILIKUWA sehemu ya historia mwishoni mwa wiki nilipokuwa katika uwanja wa Kibanda Maiti na kushuhudia Chama cha Upinzani CUF kikitangaza kuwa kimemtambua Rais wa Zanzibar Amani Karume.

Ni moja ya siku ambazo uwanja huo ulijaa sana maana wananchi, wapenzi na wanachama wa CUF walikuwa wakitarajia kusikia kitu kufuatia taarifa kuwa Seif Sharif Hamad na Amani Karume wamekutana.

Kama kuna mkutano wa hadhara niliowahi kuhudhuria ambapo watu walitulia kusikiliza hotuba basi ulikuwa ni huo. Maalim Seif, taratibu alielezea msururu wa mivutano ya kisiasa ya Zanzibar kwa zaidi ya dahari na ukimya uliokuwapo hata ingeanguka sindano basi mlio wake ungesikika.

Lakini ghafla mambo yalibadilika pale Maalim Seif aliposema kuwa Baraza Kuu la Chama hicho katika mkutano wake uliofanyika siku hiyo limeamua kumtambua Rais wa Zanzibar na Mwenyekiti wa Baraza la Mapinduzi, Amani Abeid Karume.

Kwa dakika sita hivi Maalim alibaki jukwaani lakini hakuna aliyetaka kumsikiliza. Ghafla zilisikika sauti za wananchi, wapenzi au wanachama wa CUF wakisema; “Hatutaki! Hatutaki!”. Maalim Seif akadhani ni maskhara. Lakini jinsi hali ilivyokuwa, ikamlazimu ashuke jukwaani na naamini hiyo ilikuwa ni moja ya siku ya unyonge sana kisiasa kwake.

Na kweli huo ulikuwa ni uamuzi mkubwa, mgumu, wenye athari hasi kufanywa na chama hicho lakini Waswahili wanasema inaonekana kuwa CUF imefikia hatua kwamba lazima walitafune jongoo kwa meno! Haina haja ya kukazia zaidi kuwa CUF kwa muda itakuwa imegawika mapande mawili -wanaoafiki na wasioafiki.

Na hiyo ndiyo hasara ambayo CUF itaipata hivi sasa kuelekea katika Uchaguzi Mkuu wa 2010 ambapo tokea hapo inaeleweka upinzani na ukinzani uliopo baina yake na CCM na jinsi ambavyo chati yake kwa muda itashuka kutokana na maamuzi hayo, ambapo wengi wa wanachama wake wanaona kuwa hayakujali mateso, madhila, manyanyaso na masusuiko ambayo wanachama wa CUF wanapitia.

Na hata hivi sasa ambapo Daftari la Kudumu la Wapiga Kura (DKWK) linaendelea kupita mitaani, wanachama wa CUF wameendelea kubaguliwa kwa kunyimwa kwa makusudi Vitambulisho vya Mzanzibari Mkaazi (Zan ID) na hivyo kutoweza kuingia katika daftari hilo na hivyo kukosa haki yao ya msingi ya kupiga kura.

Daftari lenyewe kwa hali nyingi limedoda kwa sababu baada ya majimbo 18 na siku 100 za kazi watu walioandikishwa ni 90,000 na hivyo kudhihirisha umuhimu wa CUF katika siasa za Zanzibar. Japokuwa Tume ya Uchaguzi inajidai imefanikiwa.

Wanachama wengi waliopinga kauli ya chama chao wanasema ni kwa sababu Katibu Mkuu Hamad hakuwaeleza wao watafaidi nini kwa uamuzi huo au pia wengine wakisema kuwa uamuzi huo ulikuwa ni mkubwa sana kutangazwa hadharani moja kwa moja na badala yake kwanza ingefanywa kazi ya kisiasa kabla ya kuushusha katika mkutano wa hadhara.

Kwa hivyo ina maana kuna wanachokosoa ni mbinu iliyotumika na wakati kwamba haukuwa muafaka. Kwa fikra zangu wote wako sahihi na hakuna haja ya kuendeleza malumbano katika hilo. Lakini bado hoja inabaki kuwa je, ni mbinu ipi ingeridhisha wote na ni wakati gani ungekuwa ni muwafaka kwa watu wote?

Kitu ambacho wapenzi na wanachama wa CUF walipaswa kukielewa ni kwamba kwa kawaida maamuzi hufanywa na viongozi na kwa kuwa viongozi wanatokana na wanachama basi itoshe kufahamu kwamba mawazo ya wananchi yanawakilishwa katika maamuzi anuai yanayofanywa na chama.

Kwa maneno mepesi; yale ya kumtambua Rais Karume hayakuwa maamuzi ya Baraza Kuu la Chama hicho kama Baraza, bali ni maamuzi ya wanachama kwa sababu wametoa mamlaka kwa Baraza lao ambalo limeona kwa wakati uliopo hiyo ndio njia bora ya kukipeleka chama mbele. Lakini kwa kulipigia kelele hilo pia ni muhimu kujua kuwa sauti ya umma pengine haikusikilizwa vyema.

Lakini pia maamuzi magumu kama hayo yameshafanywa karibuni katika nchi ya Kenya na Zimbabwe ambapo hata baada ya Wapinzani kuibiwa waziwazi katika uchaguzi, lakini hatimaye walitambua ushindi wa waliotangazwa na walikubali kuunda nao Serikali.

Itakumbukwa kuwa yalipokwama mazungumzo ya Mwafaka ni kuwa Serikali ya Umoja wa Kitaifa ilishindikana kwa kipengele cha CUF kutomtambua Karume. Ila kazi ya CUF sasa imemalizika, wamefanya kitendo cha kiungwana na kukomaa kisiasa.

Sijui kama CCM imeshaamka kujua kuwa matamshi ya CUF ya juzi yamefanya mpira sasa uwe upande wao. Kwamba sasa macho ya kila mtu yanakitizama chama hicho na wahusika wake wakuu Rais Jakaya Kikwete na Rais Karume mwenyewe.

Kwanza litakuwa ni kosa kubwa kwa CCM kujaribu kulitumia tamko la CUF kumtambua Karume kuwa ni udhaifu. Njia yoyote ya kujejea, kukebehi naamini litajenga ukuta wa chuki badala ya upendo. Pili, itakuwa ni uungwana wa kisiasa kwa CCM kuwapa fursa CUF kupita katika kipindi hiki kigumu kwa mtizamo wa kuwarudishia mpira baada ya kujeruhiwa yaani.

Tatu, ni kuwa CCM, JK na Karume wahakikishe kuwa kila linaloweza kutekelezwa wakati huu katika suala la Mwafaka basi litekelezwe. Japo kwa kipindi cha mwaka mmoja uliobaki, kwa mfano kuundwa kwa Serikali ya Umoja wa Kitaifa kutarudisha sana imani. Pia Karume atekeleze kwa haraka wajibu wake wa Kikatiba wa kuteua wajumbe wawili wa Baraza la Wawakilishi kutoka Chama cha CUF.

Tano, mchakato wa kutengeza Katiba imara zaidi ya kuwapo kwa Serikali ya Pamoja baada ya Uchaguzi Mkuu wa 2010 uanze haraka na tabaan uwe shirikishi. Dhana ya kwamba Katiba ni mamlaka ya chama tawala na Serikali imepitwa na wakati.

Sita, ni suala la DKWK. Daftari hilo halijafika mbali na CUF wana wasiwasi mkubwa na uandishi wake.

Na kama hivyo ndivyo basi Serikali ijenge mazingira ya kufanya uhakiki kwa vile daftari hilo ni kama kwamba ndio limeshikilia amani ya nchi kwa sasa.

Saba, suala la Zan ID hapana shaka limezusha zogo kubwa. Na mbali ya sababu za Masheha kuwakatalia wenye haki, lakini pia watu wengi wamekosa kuandikishwa kwa sababu ya kukosa vyeti vya kuzaliwa na baadhi ya walivyonavyo wamekuwa wakiambiwa kuwa havitambuliwi.

Binafsi katika eneo la Mji Mkongwe nimekusanya majina 80 ya watu wasio na Zan ID lakini wana vyeti vya kuzaliwa na wamekataliwa na Masheha.

Lakini kuna majina mengine 220 ya watu wasio na Zan ID na hawataweza kupata vitambulisho hivyo kwa sababu hawana vyeti vya kuzaliwa. Kwa nia njema ya kutambuliwa Karume lazima Serikali ichukue hatua ya kutangaza utaratibu maalum wa watu kupata Zan ID.

Bila ya shaka baada ya muda vumbi la kishindo cha CUF kumtambua Karume litasita. Lakini wakati vumbi linatua CCM, Kikwete na Karume wajue mpira tayari uko kwao na ijapokuwa watatamani kutumia tukio hilo kwa faida ya kisiasa lakini pia naamini wanajua kuwa siasa ni mbinu za nipe nikupe na ukijifanya khiyana na bakhili upokee wewe tu, iko siku utaumbuka, maana kutakuwa hakuna tena cha kukupa isipokuwa damu na roho za watu. CCM, Kikwete na Karume wasisubiri kufikia hatua hiyo.

+255 777 4300 22

HASHEEM THABEET AVUNJIKA TAYA/HASHEEM'S JAW BROKEN DURING HIS DEBUT

2009-11-11T07:26:00.003+03:00

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) -- Memphis Grizzlies rookie center Hasheem Thabeet, the second overall pick in the June draft, left Tuesday night's game against the Portland Trail Blazers with a broken jaw.

The 7-foot-3 center from UConn was injured late in the first quarter during a battle under the Memphis basket. Replays appeared to show Thabeet's jaw colliding with forward Zach Randolph's head.

Thabeet had just entered the game a minute earlier.

Thabeet was playing in his seventh game of the season. He had scored four points and grabbed 11 rebounds in his previous six games, and also recorded six blocks.

BLOGU HII INAMPA POLE NA KUMUOMBEA APONE HARAKA.

MAJI YA MKONDO HAYACHAGUI NJIA

2009-11-09T09:21:00.003+03:00

Na: Paschally Mayega

RAIS wangu, Waswahili husema maji hufuata mkondo. Wazamivu katika sheria wanasema sheria pia hufuata mkondo. Waswahili na wanasheria katika hili wanakubaliana kuwa katika kufuata mkondo, sheria na maji havina utashi wa kuchagua vielekee wapi bali kule mkondo ulikoelekezwa.

Rais wangu, kama itakupendeza naomba kabla ya kuendelea na mada ya leo, kwanza nitoe fundo lililopo kifuani mwangu. Inawezekana ukawa ni ukweli kuwa mfinyanzi analia vigaeni. Unamkuta mtu kutwa anahangaika, akitangatanga huku na huko akiwalilia wenzake.

Anajinyima na kujidhiki kwa ajili ya wengine. Mara nyingine watu hawa hujikuta wamejikita katika shida za wenzao na wakasahau kuwa wao nao wana dhiki zaidi. Na hawa, huwa hawana wakuwalilia. Nani atawalilia na wao ndio wanaowalilia wengine?

Rais wangu, habari za Kampuni ya NICOL kutetereka zimenigusa kwa namna ya pekee. Wanasema mbuzi wa maskini hazai. Ikitokea akazaa, huzaa mwaka wa njaa, mtoto lazima aliwe. Nimeusikia msemo huu tangu ningali mdogo, lakini leo nausikia kwa uchungu mwingi zaidi. Nausikia kwa sononeko.

Ndugu Rais, baada ya kuhitimu masomo yangu ya falsafa, mwaka 1975 nilijiunga na Jumuiya ya Afrika Mashariki iliyovunjika katika Shirika la Posta na Simu. Niliitumikia nchi yangu kwa muda wa miaka 20 hadi 1994 nilipoomba kustaafu kwa hiari.

Zaidi ya miaka 15 sasa niko mtaani naishi maisha ya kubangaiza. Mhangaikaji. Jua langu, mvua yangu. Sina mchana sina usiku mimi. Nachakurachakura kama kuku jalalani ili mimi na familia yangu tupate kitu cha kuingiza tumboni.

Kama serikali yetu ingetulipa malipo kama yalivyokuwa yameainishwa katika barua ya kustaafu kwa hiari ya mwaka 1994, leo hii dhiki yangu isingekuwapo. Kesi yetu mpaka leo iko mahakamani. Pamoja na ukwasi mkubwa wa baadhi ya viongozi wetu, serikali yetu inathubutu kutulipa pensheni ya sh 20,250 kwa mwezi.

Matumizi ya sh 675 kwa siku ni unyanyasaji. Mcha Mungu anaweza akasema mimi ni mwongo. Tunapokutana na hawa jamaa katika nyumba za ibada tunawaangalia hatuwamalizi. Mungu hadanganyiki! Viongozi wetu hawaelewi kuwa dunia njia wote tunapita tu. Tanueni na teseni kwa jasho tulilolivuja sisi, lakini mkumbuke kila mtu ana siku yake.

Waziri, baba mtu mzima analidanganya Bunge kuwa anatulipa sh 37,000 na sasa atatulipa sh 50,000. Anadanganya ili iweje? Mpaka leo tunapokea sh 20,250. Kila tulipoenda kuulizia nyongeza ya pensheni ya wastaafu wa iliyokuwa Jumuiya ya Afrika Mashariki tuliambiwa kwanza hata hizo sh 20,000 haijulikani tunalipwa na nani! Tumemwachia Mungu!

Kiongozi anashika uongozi mara tu anaanza kuotesha majumba kila mahali. Anapasua mashamba makubwa na mifugo mingi ya kisasa bila hata kuwalipa majirani fidia. Wanaendeshwa katika magari ya anasa na wakielea angani dege lao la anasa linakula sh milioni sita kwa kila saa.

Bila aibu mtu anaenda nalo hata kwa safari za kipuuzi kushabikia uchafu nchi za mbali. Katika hali kama hii ni chizi peke yake anaweza kuwaambia watu kuwa serikali haina fedha ya kuwalipa wastaafu inavyostahili au kuwasomesha watoto wetu vyuo vikuu. Naye ataitikiwa na machizi wenzake.

Nimesema mbuzi wa maskini hazai, lakini ikitokea akazaa huzaa mwaka wa njaa, mtoto lazima aliwe. Hapo katikati serikali iliamua kutupoza kidogo, ikatulipa kiduchu katika kile kingi tunachoidai. Wakatokea watu wazima na heshima zao wakatutangazia kampuni iitwayo NICOL.

Wakasema ukiwekeza utaondokana na umaskini. Nani anautaka umaskini bwana! Mimi si nikapanda mbegu zangu pale! Nikawekeza hisa 3,000. Ninapoambiwa NICOL ni DECI nyingine, nguvu zote zinaniisha mwilini. Kama ni kweli, hawa ni binadamu gani wenye roho za kinyama namna hii? Kudhulumu mpaka yatima na maskini?

Majina yao mazito. Wengine mwanzoni sikuwasikia, ningewasikia nisingepanda mbegu zangu pale kwa kuwa wamezoea kujiuzulu. Lakini tumeambiwa kuwa mwana mwema Reginald Mengi, ndiye alikuwa Mwenyekiti wa Kamati ya Uwekezaji ya NICOL akiwa na waziri wa zamani aliyejiuzulu, Iddi Mohammed Simba.

Ningependa kujua je, ni kweli ndugu Mengi alihusika katika kuiingiza NICOL kichwa kichwa kwa ununuzi wa Pharmacetical and Beverage Limited (IPBL) iliyokuwa inafilisika kwa kutumia fedha zetu kiasi cha sh bilioni nne?

Sijui kiwanda hiki ni cha nani na sijui kuna uhusiano gani, lakini ni matumaini yetu kuwa bwana Reginald Mengi atatokeza hadharani kutufafanulia jambo hili ili kulinda hadhi yake katika nchi hii. Fundo lililojaa katika mioyo ya wanahisa juu yao kwa ufisadi huu ni hatari kwao kuliko sumu ya nyoka.

Kweli nyongo hukaa na ini. Sasa tunaanza kuwaza mambo mengi. Yawezekana wanaosimama majukwaani kila siku na kuonekana katika vyombo vya habari wakigawa fedha kama msaada wakawa wanagawa fedha hizi hizi zetu? Lazima kieleweke.

Haiwezekani tuwe wajinga ndio waliwao! Kumdhulumu mnyonge zaidi na kumpa mwenye nafuu ili wewe uonekane mwema unatoa misaada mingi ni nini kama si ufisadi uliopitiliza ufisadi papa? Unaweza kweli ukatumia jina la rais wetu au hata jina la Mwenyezi Mungu katika uovu huu?

Tunaomba serikali iwachukulie hatua za kisheria watu hawa hata kama ni kuwafilisi ili kunusuru mbegu zetu. Hapa padogo tunafisadi, tukifanikiwa kupata uongozi wa nchi kipi kitasalimika?

Ndugu Rais, na mimi ni binadamu kama wengine. Nina nyongo na moyo wangu ni wa nyama. Ninaililia nafsi yangu na wana NICOL wenzangu. Baba yetu Reginald Mengi sikuhukumu. Nayaelekeza haya yote kwako kwa sababu kati yao wewe waonekana u mwema.

Tuambie, ni nini hiki mlichotufanyia maskini wenu weusi? Wewe na sisi ni ndugu, mama yetu mmoja, Tanzania. Ukitueleza kwa ufasaha tutakuelewa. Ndugu Rais, ngoja sasa nirudi kwenye mada yangu ya leo.

Rais wangu, Uchaguzi wa Serikali za Mitaa umepita. Mapungufu makubwa yaliyojitokeza kama yatafanyiwa kazi ni Mungu peke yake anajua. Mwenyekiti wa Tume ya Taifa ya Uchaguzi ameteuliwa kushika wadhifa huo na mwenyekiti wa taifa wa chama chezaji.

Ndiye aliyempa kula. Huyu ndiye refarii. Kwa maneno mepesi ni kwamba anayempa kula au ushindi mchezaji wa kinyang’anyiro cha urais, ndiye baadaye naye humpa kula yule aliyempa kula. Hii peke yake inaondoa uwezekano wa kuiona haki ikitendeka hata kama haki hiyo itatendeka.

Mwenye akili timamu anayecheza mchezo ambao mwamuzi wake ameteuliwa na mpinzani wake, hachezi kwa faida ya mchezo huo. Anacheza kutimiza lengo lake tofauti na lengo la mchezo huo.

Wagombea wetu wa urais kutoka upinzani hali hii wanaiona, lakini wanashiriki katika mchezo huo kwa sababu nia yao kubwa si urais, nia yao iko katika mioyo yao. Chama chenye wanachama wengi kwa maelfu, watakuwaje na mgombea mmoja tu anayeshindwa katika kila uchaguzi?

Kila msimu mgombea ni yuleyule na sera zake ni zilezile. Huyu hana jipya. Ikijakutokea, kama itakujakutokea, wakaupata urais utashangaa kuwaona na wao wenyewe wakishangaa kuupata urais. Haiwezekani kwa mgombea wa upinzani kuupata urais kwa mkondo huu tulionao sasa, na wao wenyewe wanalijua hili.

Mgombea urais wa upinzani atagombea urais mara ya kwanza, anashindwa. Akishindwa na mara ya pili atataka na mara ya tatu na ya nne. Huyu bila kuzuiwa atataka awe mgombea shindwa wa maisha. Tumejipangia kuwa rais hata akipendwa vipi vipindi vyake ni viwili, wewe mgombea shindwa unapendwa vipi uwe mgombea wa maisha?

Hali ya uchaguzi katika nchi yetu ni sawasawa na mfereji uliokwishachimbwa. Ukimwaga maji (uchaguzi) ndani yake maji hayachagui yaende wapi. Yatafuata kule mfereji ulikoelekezwa. Kushindwa katika chaguzi kwa vyama vya upinzani mara nyingi, ni matokeo ya ubinafsi. Hali hii itaendelea kuwepo kwa sababu viongozi wabinafsi katika upinzani wanaendelea kupewa nafasi.

Wananchi lazima waelewe kuwa, lengo, nia na madhumuni pekee ya chama chochote cha siasa ni kutaka kutawala. Kwenda Ikulu. Viongozi wa vyama hivyo ndio wanataka kutawala badala ya hawa waliopo. Si vyama vya ukombozi hivi. Wananchi lazima watofautishe kati ya chama cha siasa na chama cha ukombozi.

Wanachowaambia wapinzani ni maovu yanayotendwa na viongozi wa sasa. Lakini hiyo haionyeshi usafi wao. Wengine wanaweza kuwa wabaya hata zaidi ya hawa tulionao. Ukitaka kuona uchu wa madaraka walionao viongozi wetu wa upinzani, wengi wao wako tayari hata leo hii kwa serikali ya mseto, wao wanaita serikali ya umoja wa kitaifa.

Nia waambulie hata u-DC tu. Jaribu kutafuta mawaziri bora 20 tu kutoka katika vyama vyetu vya upinzani maarufu kama NCCR-Mageuzi, TLP, CUF na CHADEMA. Wanaoleta fujo kwenye vyama vyao hivi sasa nao watataka wawe bora mawaziri kama baadhi ya bora mawaziri tulionao hivi sasa.

Kazi njema inayofanywa na upinzani naitambua na kuiheshimu sana na hasa kufichua maovu yanayotendwa na viongozi wetu wa sasa. Lakini hii peke yake haitoshi kuonyesha kuwa wewe utakuwa mtawala bora!

Ndugu Rais, bado nakubaliana na mawazo ya Mwalimu Nyerere kuwa, rais bora lazima atoke CCM. Uongozi wa CCM sasa hivi umejawa na uozo mwingi. Wema wengi wamefunikwa na waovu wakubwa wachache.

Kwa mara ya kwanza katika historia ya nchi yetu, Bunge la Jamhuri ya Muungano limekubali kuwa Katibu Mkuu wa chama tawala – CCM, Yusuf Makamba kafanya ufisadi, yaani ni fisadi na mtu huyu bado ni Katibu Mkuu, tena wa chama kinachotawala. Chama kitakuwaje kisafi? Unatenganishaje chama na viongozi wake, na hasa wa juu?

Wale wana CCM walio wema wanapaswa kumkana mtu huyu si kunyamaza. Ikishindikana matakwa ya Baba wa Taifa Mwalimu Nyerere yatimie kwa CCM hii kupasuka katika vipande viwili. Na hapo ndipo utakapozaliwa upinzani wenye maana katika nchi hii.

Wapo wanaosema uongozi wa juu wa CCM na serikali ni dhaifu. Wengine wanasema uvumilivu na upole vimezidi. Lakini mtu mpole kupindukia na ***** wanatofautiana vipi? Wote hukaa kimya, hata pale wanapotakiwa kutoa maamuzi muhimu.

Idadi ya watu wanaojiandikisha na kujitokeza kupiga kura inazidi kupungua siku hadi siku. Hawaoni faida yake tena. Walitaka wakipiga kura mabadiliko wanayoyatarajia yatokee, lakini hiyo haiwi. Wamechoshwa na namna wanavyotawaliwa. Kupiga kura wanaona ni sawa na kumwaga maji katika mfereji.

Kadiri watu wengi zaidi wanavyozidi kususa kupiga kura, ndivyo tunavyokaribia maangamizi makubwa. Matakwa yao ya mabadiliko yanazidi kukua na kupanuka na kwakuwa wameishaona kuwa sanduku la kura halisaidii kuleta mabadiliko wayatakayo, watayatafuta kwa njia nyingine maana kiu ya mabadiliko haiachi kusumbua.

Ole wao wote walioufupisha upeo wao wa kuona kwa sababu ya ulafi tu. Rais wa nchi atachaguliwaje kwa asilimia chini ya hamsini kama si kutaka kuleta maasi katika nchi? Kwa mkondo huu, CCM 2010 hata wakimsimamisha mbuzi agombee urais, itashinda. Baada ya ushindi huo, hakuna kingine kitakachofuata bali machafuko na maangamizi.

Maafa makubwa yatakayoichafua historia nzuri ya taifa letu. Nani atakubali kutawaliwa na mbuzi? Mwenyezi Mungu atusaidie waja wake kwa kutuondolea kwa njia yoyote ile wote anaowajua yeye kuwa ni viongozi batili. Tunahitaji amani. Amani yetu inachafuliwa na wachache.

Rais wangu Kikwete, watu wako tutakwenda mbele tutarudi nyuma, lakini hakuna tutakachokipata bali kukurudia wewe. Tuondolee hizi baruti kabla hazijatulipukia. Tutengenezee mazingira ya kupata tume huru ya uchaguzi. Mgombea ashinde kwa asilimia inayoonyesha kukubalika na wengi.

Mkurugenzi Mtendaji wa Halmashauri ya Wilaya aliye chini ya mamlaka yako kusimamia uchaguzi ambao na wewe ni mgombea ni ubatili mtupu. Watu wametawaliwa na tamaa zote, madaraka na mali, wao wenyewe, watoto wao mpaka wake zao.

Maskini na watoto wao wanabaki wakiwa, hata elimu tu nayo wananyimwa, fedha za madini na rasilimali nyingine za taifa lao pamoja na kodi zao vinalambwa na baadhi ya watawala wachoyo, manyang’au.

Ni kujidanganya kusema hali hii itaendelea milele. Iko siku inakuja na wala siku hiyo haiko mbali sana. Mwenyezi Mungu anijalie nisiione siku hiyo! Siku ya kihoro!

Chanzo: Tanzania Daima

KUTOKA DAR ES SALAAM

2009-11-09T07:46:00.006+03:00

Jumba wanalokaa Mapolisi Dar es Salaam pale Msimbazi Kariakoo. Ukilitizama unaweza kudhani ni yale magofu ya enzi za utumwa kule Bagamoyo au lile la Fort Jesus kule Mombasa.Jinsi wasivyolitunza.Hiyo ni sehemu ya chooni na bafuni kwa nje. Sijaweza kuingia ndani kujionea.

Maji taka kutoka katika jumba la kuishi maaskari jiji la Dar es salaam Msimbazi/Kariakoo. Ukipita hapo unakumbana na harufu inayoambatana na kinyesi. Nadhani mabwana Afya wapo na wanaliona hili. Kwa nini pasitangazwe eneo la hatari kwa maambukizi ya Kipindupindu.

Njia panda ya kuelekea Muhimbili na Barabara ya Umoja wa Mataifa kuelekea Salender Bridge ama daraja la Salender. Chemba inamwaga maji barabara nzima imejaa maji machafu. Ni njia ambayo vigogo huitumia kuelekea kazini. Uzio unaoonekana ni wa shule ya Msingi Muhimbili.

My Take:

Nadhani kabla ya kuanza kuwakamata wamachinga na wapiga debe na wengineo, mamlaka na halmashauri zingeanza kushughulikia kwanza hili. Mfumo wa maji safi na maji taka Dar es Salaam siku hizi hauna tofauti yaani unaweza kukuta mfumo wa maji taka umeungana na ule wa maji safi. Kunywa maji ya bomba Dar es Salaam siku hizi ni hatari sana.

SANAMU YA NEBUKADNEZA NA WATANZANIA MASALIA

2009-11-05T13:18:00.002+03:00

Lula wa Ndali-Mwananzela

MOJA ya visa vya kusisimua katika masimulizi ya kale ya Kibiblia ni kile cha marafiki wa tatu wa Nabii Daniel waliokutwa na kile ambacho tunaweza kukiita kuwa ni "kisongombingo" cha Mfalme Nebukadneza wa Wababeli aliyetawala kama miaka 600 hivi kabla ya Kristo.
Wengine wanaweza kuita kisanga kile kuwa ni “kasheshe” la karne. Tunawafahamu marafiki hao kwa majina ya Shedraki, Meshaki, na Abednego.
Unaweza kusoma kisa chenyewe kwenye kitabu cha Daniel sura ya tatu. Mimi hata hivyo ninaangalia siasa za simulizi hilo na kuona mfanano wa ajabu kati yake na kile kinachoendelea katika taifa letu Tanzania leo hii; hususan katika ulingo wa siasa.
Kisa hiki kinaanza pale ambapo Mfalme Nebukadneza alipoamua kusimamisha sanamu ya dhahabu yenye urefu wa kama mita 27 hivi (dhiraa sitini) ili watu wake waiabudu. Sanamu hiyo iliyotengenezwa kwa dhahabu ya thamani ilipokamilika aliisimamisha kama “mungu” wa wababeli hao.

Na kisha ukatumwa ujumbe katika pande mbalimbali za Babeli na mataifa yaliyokuwa chini ya ufalme huo kuwa watu waje kuiabudu sanamu ya Nebukadneza.
Na kwa maelfu yao walikusanyika mbele ya sanamu hiyo na ikatolewa amri kuwa watu watakaposikia sauti ya tarumbeta basi wote waanguke mbele ya sanamu hiyo na kuiabudu; vinginevyo watawekwa kwenye tanuru ya moto.
Tunasimuliwa kuwa: “Basi maliwali, wasimamizi, watawala, washauri, watunza hazina, waamuzi, mahakimu na maafisa wengine wa jimbo walikusanyika kwa ajili ya kuizindua sanamu ile ambayo mfalme alikuwa ameisimamisha. Nao wakasimama mbele ya hiyo sanamu.”
Kwa maneno mengine ni kuwa yeyote aliyekuwa “mtu kati ya watu” alikuwepo kwenye uzinduzi wa sanamu hiyo.

Tunachoambiwa ni kuwa wanasiasa na watawala na wasomi wa wakati ule wote walikuwepo kwenye uzinduzi wa sanamu hiyo na pale panda ilipopigwa tunasimuliwa kuwa “watu wa kabila zote, mataifa na watu wa kila lugha wakaanguka chini na kuiabudu ile sanamu ya dhahabu ambayo Mfalme Nebukadneza alikuwa ameisimamisha.”
Hapa tunachodokezwa ni kuwa maprofesa, madaktari, wanafizikia, wafanyabiashara wakubwa, n.k wote walianguka mbele ya sanamu hiyo ya Nebukadneza.

Hawa wote walifanya hivyo kwa sababu waliamini kabisa kuwa maisha yao na mafanikio yao yamo mikononi mwa Mfalme Nebukadneza. Maelfu hawa wa watu kila ulipofika uchaguzi walijikuta hawana jinsi isipokuwa kuendelea kuchagua utawala wa Nebukadneza na kutokana na ukweli huo walipoitwa kuipigia magoti sanamu yake walijua hawana uchaguzi.
Walijua utawala wa Nebukadneza ulikuwa na ufisadi wa kila namna, lakini pia ndio uliowafanya waishi wakijisikia wako na “amani, utulivu, na mshikamano”.

Kilichowatisha ni moto

Watu hawa wote walipiga magoti mbele ya sanamu hii baada ya kusikia tarumbeta kwa sababu tangazo lilisema kuwa “mtu ye yote ambaye hataanguka chini na kuiabudu sanamu hiyo atatupwa saa hiyo hiyo ndani ya tanuru iwakayo moto.’’
Watu walijua kuwa wakifanya uamuzi kinyume na hilo agizo la mfalme, basi watakiona kile wahenga walikiita cha “mtema kuni”; yaani kutupwa kwenye tanuru la moto ambalo bila ya shaka lilitumika kufulia dhahabu ile.

Ukitupwa kwenye tanuru hiyo hakuna kupona. Hivyo watu wote waliojua ukweli huo na wengine labda wakijua pia kuwa sanamu ile “si lolote wala chochote” walijikuta wanaanguka kifudifudi ili kusalimisha maisha yao na ya watoto wao.

Kwa maneno mengine, waliuza utu wao na haki yao ya kuwa huru kwa sababu ya kumuogoa Mfalme Nabukadneza. Isipokuwa vijana watatu.

Vijana wale watoto walijua kuwa hawawezi kuiabudia sanamu hata kama imetengenezwa kwa thamani kubwa na inasimama kama “jitu la dhahabu”. Walifahamu kuwa imani yao (ya Kiyahudi) inawakataza kuabudu sanamu ya aina yoyote.

Hawa walijua kuwa uchaguzi wao ulikuwa ni rahisi kweli. Kwamba kama ukiabudu sanamu hiyo utakuwa na mafanikio, usalama, maisha mazuri na kutengemaa kwa kila namna.
Walijua pia kuwa kutoabudu sanamu hiyo na kukana imani na dhamira yao kunamaanisha kifo. Walijua gharama ya kutokuiabudu sanamu.

Walikuwa ni masalia ya wale wenye kuamini katika “Mungu mmoja” na ambao wanajua kuwa hana mshirika na wala hashirikishwi na kitu chochote au kiumbe chochote. Walijua kuwa Mungu hana mbia mwingine yoyote, na hivyo walikuwa tayari kuingia kwenye tanuru ya moto kuliko kukana imani yao hiyo.

Vijana Meshaki, Shedraki na Abednego (majina yao ya Kibabeli) walishitakiwa kwa kutopigia magoti sanamu na mwisho wake wakutupwa kwenye tanuru la moto. Hawakujua kama wataokolewa lakini walikuwa tayari wamejisalimisha kwa Mungu wao kuwa ni heri kufa kuliko kupigia sanamu magoti. Tunaambiwa waliokolewa na yule “mtu wanne” ndani ya tanuru ile.

Sanamu yetu ya leo ni CCM!

Katika taifa letu hili tumesimamishiwa sanamu kubwa iliyotengenezwa kwa thamani nyingi sana nayo yaitwa CCM. Sanamu hii tunaambiwa na watawala wetu kuwa ndiyo njia pekee ya uhakika ya watu wetu kufanikiwa. Watu wetu leo hii wanaamini kabisa kuwa pasipo “CCM” hawawezi kuishi kwa mafanikio na pasipo kujisalimisha kwake basi maisha yatakuwa magumu na mipango ya mafanikio itakoma.

Hivyo tunakuta makundi ya wasomi wetu mbalimbali, wafanyabiashara, wanataaluma na watu ambao wanaonekana kuwa na upeo mkubwa wa kimtazamo wakipiga magoti mbele ya chama hiki.

Wapo majaji, wakuu wa majeshi, polisi, magereza, wasomi kwenye vyuo vyetu na hata wananchi wa kawaida ambao wamechagua CCM kwa sababu moja tu; nayo ni kuwa pasipo CCM maisha yao hayawezi kwenda mbali na hawawezi kufanikiwa kiurahisi.

Hivyo, utaona kuwa hata katika maeneo ambayo yameathirika zaidi na ufisadi kama Dar es Salaam, Mwanza, Mbeya, Kilimanjaro n.k wanaichagua CCM kwa wingi zaidi kwa sababu kutoipigia magoti ni kutaka kuingizwa kwenye tanuru ya moto!

Huko tunakoenda kuelekea uchaguzi mkuu wa mwakani tutawaona watu wengi zaidi wakijitokeza zaidi kujiunga na CCM, na kugombea nafasi mbalimbali kupitia chama hicho kwa sababu wanajua bila ya hivyo wamekwisha.

Hata kwenye kikao cha bunge kinachokuja utaona watu wenye akili timamu na wasomi waliobobea wakikitetea chama chao (sanamu) kuwa “ni safi” na kuwa ufisadi ni wa mtu mmoja mmoja.

Kama vile waliotukuza dhahabu iliyotengeneza sanamu ya Nebukadneza, vivyo hivyo tutawaona watu wengine wakiitukuza CCM kama vile sanamu ile!
Pamoja na mgongano tunaouona ndani ya CCM hivi sasa , ukweli ni kuwa hawa wote wanaabudu sanamu ile ile, na hawawezi kufikiria maisha nje ya CCM. Wanahofu kuna tanuru la moto!

Wanatafutwa Watanzania Masalia!

Wanatafutwa wananchi wasomi na wasio wasomi, matajiri na wasio matajiri, wenye kitu na wasio na kitu, wazee kwa vijana, kinamama kwa kinababa kuwa kama wale vijana watatu wa zama za Daniel ambao watakuwa tayari kukataa kuipigia magoti sanamu hii iliyosimamishwa katika taifa letu.

Watu hawa watatakiwa kuwa majasiri ambao wako tayari kulipa gharama kubwa zaidi hata ya maisha yao ili kuiokoa nchi yao.
Wanaotafutwa ni wale ambao wanajua Tanzania ndiyo iko juu ya chama chochote cha siasa, juu ya itikadi yoyote, sera zozote au mwelekeo wowote wa kisiasa.

Wanaotafutwa ni watu ambao hawajali majina na hadhi zao, majasiri wasioteteleka, wajuzi wa tunu bora za kale, walinzi wa njozi za kizazi kilichopita! Wanatafutwa tena watu ambao watamkatalia mtawala wetu wa leo kuwa hawako tayari kupiga magoti mbele ya CCM!
Watu ambao watafuata mfano kama wa Augustine Lyatonga Mrema ambaye amelipa gharama kubwa zaidi ya kisiasa na kimaisha na aliyetupwa kwenye tanuru ya moto na kufikiriwa kuwa ameungua na ameteketea. Mrema ni mmoja wa vigogo wachache wa zamani ambao hadi sasa hawajakubali kurudi na kuipigia sanamu hii magoti ili maisha, afya, na mambo yao yafanikiwe.
Pengine Mrema ndiye mtu pekee katika historia yetu ambaye alilipa gharama kubwa zaidi katika zama hizi za CCM kwa kukejeliwa, kupuuzwa na kufanywa duni.

Ni mtu ambaye amekataa kuipigia sanamu hii (CCM) magoti ingawa anajua kabisa kuwa akifanya hivyo mambo yake yatamnyookea; kwani amewaona wenzake waliokuwa pamoja walivyouza dhamira zao, utu wao na hadhi zao ili mambo yao yawanyokee!
Wanatafutwa ‘Watanzania Masalia’ ndugu zangu! Je wewe ni mmoja wa wanaoendelea kuipigia magoti CCM kwenye sanduku la kura? Je wewe ni mmoja wa wale wanaoamini kabisa kuwa sanamu hii ina uamuzi juu ya maisha na hali yako?

Kama ndiyo, endelea kufuata imani yako hiyo; kwani wewe ungekuwa mmoja wa wale walioipigia magoti na kuisujudia sanamu ya Mfalme Nebukadneza!
Tanzania itajengwa na wale waliosalia; ambao ikibidi wataingia kwenye tanuru ya moto kama Augustine Mrema!

Source: Raia Mwema

MERCHANTS OF DEATH: EXPOSING CORPORATES FINANCED HOLOCAUST IN AFRICA

2009-11-05T09:25:00.006+03:00

War in Congo has again been splashed across world headlines and the same old clichés about violence and suffering are repackaged and rebroadcast as ‘news’. Meanwhile, early indications out of America are that President-elect Barack Obama will assemble a foreign policy-team primed for business as usual.

How will Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State compromise the Obama Administration’s capacity to honestly redress the untold suffering, massive theft of resources and millions of deaths in Africa?

And Tom Daschle? Behind the media smokescreens are people whose involvement has been documented and exposed, but there is always some African fall guy—the ‘embraceable’ black subordinate or ‘rebel’ commander—charged with war crimes and used to deflect attention from the leaders of organized white-collar crime networks.
Blacked out are the corporate executives, government officials and expatriate personnel of Western enterprises whose success amidst chaos implicates them in the deracination and death of millions of black people. What’s behind the recent hostilities and media posturing in Central Africa?

THE SHORT, BRUTISH LIFE OF SANDRINE

On a darkling plain in a far away place the skeletons of hundreds of unnamed people lie strewn over the land amidst the red dirt and brown grasses scorched by the equatorial sun. Bones poke into the air here and there, hidden by the tall grass, tripping you up as you walk; others lay bleaching white in piles where the bodies fell. These are the killing fields of Bogoro, a small hillside village on a southerly road out of Bunia, a metropolis of suffering in the wild, wild east of Congo.

The grassy plains of Bogoro were guarded by soldiers and when I arrived the militia of the day wore black trench coats and black mirror sunglasses to enhance the aura of terror that surrounds them. With AK-47’s slung over their shoulders they talked on shiny Nokias and Motorolas and Samsungs—cellphones built with the blood minerals of the Congolese people.

Militia soldier talking on is cell-phone while guarding the killing fields of Bogoro.
Photo copyright 2007 Keith Harmon Snow.

Sandrine—not her real name—is a survivor who participated in the massacre at Bogoro. I interviewed Sandrine, just seventeen at the time, in 2007, and she recounted her ordeal as the sex slave of soldiers. Sandrine told how people were forced by militia commanders to chase down neighbors and kill or be killed. I found Sandrine living in misery in an evacuated refugee camp.
Sandrine knows nothing at all of the vast mining operations or minerals shipments being flown out of remote jungle airstrips in her home territory—or even that such airstrips exist. Ditto for the Congolese researchers I met, in Orientale, who worked with the International Criminal Court. Moto Gold? Mwana Africa? Walter Kansteiner? They had never heard of such companies, or such people.

In Western media reportage the plunder of raw materials in Congo is usually de-linked from the killing, even though the extractive industries are directly behind it, and even though almost everyone has begun to parrot the accusation of ‘resource wars’ in Congo.
The Bogoro massacre occurred in February 2003 and, like the Hutu-Tutsi stories from Rwanda, the media whipped up the specter of ancient tribal animosities between Hema and Lendu tribes. But the real story is not quite so black and white. Or is it?

Today the International Criminal Court (ICC) holds three Congolese ‘warlords’ in the ICC prison at The Hague, Netherlands, and all three were associated with events at Bogoro. However, the white patrons reaping the profits behind the bloodletting in the eastern Congo are protected by a new humanitarian order predicated on permanent inequality, structural violence and race politics.

But for a few brief periods of relative calm, the war in Congo’s eastern Orientale and Kivus provinces has hardly stopped since its’ beginning in 1996, and the realities have been shrouded in media clichés and stereotypes and disingenuous expressions of outrage that deflect attention from the true protagonists and root causes of war and plunder in Africa.

GOOD VERSUS EVIL AND THE NAMES GAMES

The UPC, FPRI, FNI—these are three of the scores of militias that have risen and fallen in Orientale since the war began in 1996 and, more poignantly, they are meaningless acronyms used to scramble the brains of western spectator-news-consumers.

First there was the Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) that invaded Rwanda, and then came the Alliance for the Democratic Liberation of Zaire (ADFL) that marched across Zaire to unseat President Mobutu. Next came the ‘rebellion’ with Jean-Pierre Bemba and the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), and all the different factions of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie, or Congolese Rally for Democracy—RCD, RCD-G (Goma), RCD-K, RCD-K-ML—backed by Rwanda and Uganda.

Here are the comrades in arms who studied together at the Marxist University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania: Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s president; Laurent Desiré Kabila, the ADFL figurehead and assassinated president of the Democratic Republic of Congo; Meles Zenawi, president of Ethiopia; Isaias Afwerki, president of Eritrea; Africa scholar Mahmood Mamdani; former RCD leader Wamba dia Wamba; Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president; and John Garang (d. 2005), former leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and first president of South Sudan.

Both the RPF/A and SPLA waged successful covert guerrilla wars against governments that were considered ‘undesirable’ by Washington; both achieved their objectives of seizing land and gaining control, and both insurgencies were covertly backed by U.S. Committee for Refugees official Roger Winter—a pivotal U.S. intelligence asset operating in Sudan and a dedicated ally of Yoweri Museveni, Paul Kagame and John Garang.

Winter’s protégé is Susan Rice, Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Rice was one of the primary architects of the Pentagon’s prized Africa Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI)—a euphemistically named entity created to project U.S. power in Africa, and run by U.S. Army Special Forces Command (SOCOM).

The coups d’etat in Rwanda and Burundi occurred after the presidents Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira were assassinated on April 6, 1994. Similarly, more than a decade of covert U.S. military support for the SPLA, channeled through Uganda and Ethiopia, led to the Naivasha Peace Agreement of January 2005 and the creation of the autonomous country of South Sudan.

The ‘Rwanda genocide’ began with the 1990 invasion of northern Rwanda by Ugandan forces that brutally targeted everyone in their path. By the time the RPF/A forces—comprised mostly of seasoned Ugandan troops—reached Kigali, more than 800,000 IDPs (internally displaced persons) were hovering around the capital city: they were terrified, they were homeless, they were hungry, they were angry and—justifiably—they took up arms. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) and its Canadian General Romeo Dallaire clandestinely backed the illegal guerrilla war.

The guerrilla wars in Rwanda and South Sudan were prosecuted much like the CIA-backed low-intensity guerrilla warfare, spawned by Washington, against populist movements in Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile and Guatemala. This is exactly what is playing out in Congo and Sudan today: low-intensity guerrilla warfare prosecuted by powerful shadow forces competing for land and loot.

SPLA leader John Garang received military training at the School of the Americas, Fort Benning, Georgia. Paul Kagame received training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. At the time he was sent for training, Kagame was Museveni’s director of military intelligence; upon his return he assumed command of the army created, financed and trained by Uganda: the Rwanda Patriotic Army.

Both Garang and Kagame likely received ‘counter-insurgency’ training through the Pentagon’s International Military Education and Training Program (IMET). Since 1998, the IMET program has provided training to 318 RDF and 291 UPDF soldiers. Many other IMET soldiers who attended the notorious School of the Americas are today known human rights violators in Latin America.

In North Kivu province we find the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and the National Congress for the Defense of the People, the CNDP, created by self-appointed Rwandan ‘General’ Laurent Nkunda. Here the media has historically cast General Nkunda as good, the FDLR as evil. Only recently has Nkunda come under any kind of ‘harsh’ criticism.
The war in Eastern Congo is almost universally described with clichés about the ‘Rwanda genocide.’ The usual targets of white media racial profiling and hysterical academic polemics are the Hutu—the infamous Interahamwe and FDLR—the ‘killers’ that ‘fled Rwanda after committing genocide’ there. This is how millions of innocent Hutu people—comprising over 85% of the populations of Rwanda and Burundi—are collectively dehumanized.

Congolese Mai Mai militias are described as ‘nationalists’ sometimes ‘wearing bathroom fixtures on their heads’ and ’shooting magic bullets.’ The Mai Mai are the closest thing to a people’s or indigenous justice movement in Congo. The Mai Mai have most recently allied with the Congo’s national army, the Armed Forces for the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC), and the Mai Mai are sometimes cast as good, but usually as evil.

In 2007 the Mai Mai and FLDR joined forces to form the Front for the National Liberation of Kivu (FNLK). Backed by the FARDC, the FNLK is purportedly vying for power against General Nkunda’s CNDP. However, alliances are constantly shifting based on private profit and ‘warlord’ fiefdoms, and ALL factions, at some point or other, have collaborated in war and resource plunder.

Western news stories throw the acronyms and names of militias around with little or no information about their rise or fall, and nothing substantive about foreign backers they collaborate with. Militias mysteriously appear and disappear. Indeed, the more you read about Congo from venues like the New York Times, Harper’s, The New Yorker, or the Atlantic Monthly, the less you will understand. This is no accident, and—no, you are not dumb.

Take the militia FNI: but for the victims and their suffering, it makes no difference what the acronym stands for, it’s all one big sadistic joke of language and power. The most significant fact to remember about this ‘F’ ‘N’ ‘I’ is that they served as the private proxy army for the gold mining operations of Metalor, a Swedish firm, and AngloGold Ashanti, headquartered in South Africa and partnered with Barrick Gold. Secondly, they were agents for Ugandan power brokers.

Anglo-Gold Ashanti directors include Sir Sam Jonah, who is also a director of shady mining-cum-military companies operating in Sierra Leone and connected to Tony Buckingham and other white-collar mercenaries. Buckingham affiliated companies—e.g. Heritage Oil and Gas, Branch Energy, Saracen Uganda—collaborate with the Museveni regime. Saracen’s top shareholder is General Salim Saleh, half-brother of Yoweri Museveni, and Congo’s nemesis, a Ugandan agent cited by the United Nations for war and plunder in Congo.

AngloGold Ashanti is the Anglo American mining conglomerate of the Oppenheimers and De Beers mining cartels of Britain and South Africa, interests deeply aligned with Belgian American intelligence insider Maurice Tempelsman—the godfather of covert operations in Africa. Tempelsman’s diamond interests in Congo were, at least partially, displaced by the Israeli cartels of Dan Gertler and Benny Steinmetz. It is a no-brainer that the Tempelsman gang backs Rwanda’s occupation of eastern Congo.

For a second example, media corporations have consistently blacked out the truth about the lucrative corporate ‘conservation’ industry with articles like the recent New York Times production ‘Congo Violence Reaches Endangered Mountain Gorillas’ (Jeffrey Gettleman, 11/18/08). Unreported however are the many accusations coming out of North Kivu that link the Jane Goodall Institute and Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund to local Mai Mai and FDLR: like every other militia, or occupation army, these factions have infiltrated villages and now prey on, intimidate and abuse the locals. The white agents working for Western ‘conservation’ NGOs—and we know their names—are directly responsible for extortion, racketeering, land theft, human rights atrocities and for ripping apart the social fabric.

‘The commander of the Mai-Mai is Colonel Ntasibanga and the commander of the FDLR is Colonel Faraja,’ report Congolese locals who have been documenting the abuses (the facts are confirmed by a Spanish journalist). ‘We count already five people killed because of this [conservation] project… DFGF and JGI are without doubt corrupt… they are paying armed groups and forcing us off of our lands.’

The Gettleman NYT article, on the other hand, cites one of these agents, Samantha Newport, described as ‘a spokeswoman for Virunga National Park,’ who in fact works for Richard Leakey’s organization Wildlife Direct, a shady paramilitary entity involving Walter Kansteiner.

A LITTLE MATTER OF GENOCIDE

The international arrest warrants issued by Spain and France against some 40 former RPF/A and current Rwanda Defense Force (RDF) are patently dismissed by Western media of all stripes, buried behind waves of pro-RPF propaganda and intimidation that labels anyone who does not support the Kigali military dictatorship as genocide deniers, themselves guilty, by extension, of genocide.

While the RPF/A and UPDF are often named for leading the charge and supplying the bulk of the forces, the 1996 invasion of Zaire, launched from Uganda and Rwanda, involved U.S. covert forces with state-of-the-art C4ISTR—Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance—and there were Humvees and C-130 aircraft ferrying black-skinned U.S. Special Forces into South Sudan and northeastern Congo. The invasion also involved Israeli military experts, an assortment of Eritrean and Ethiopian regulars, and SPLA forces.

The Anglo-European-Israeli forces penetrated eastern Zaire through the Gulu and Arua Districts of northwestern Uganda—the heart of Acholiland and ground zero for the ongoing genocide of the indigenous Acholi people—and they backed the RPA/UPDF who marched across Zaire massacring refugees, mostly women and children, mostly Hutus, that fled Kigali in 1994.

Howard French, then the Africa Bureau Chief for the New York Times, witnessed the Hutu genocide in Zaire, and wrote about it. Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani—who by no means was an impartial observer when he arrived in Goma in September 1997—described ‘an indiscriminate slaughter’ of Interahamwe, of unarmed Hutu refugees, and of Congolese Hutus in the Kivus. Bill Richardson, President Clinton’s Ambassador to the United Nations, stated in a may 1997 interview: ‘I think there’s strong evidence that there have been these massacres.’

But the subject of Hutus being slaughtered was only broached as a tool to hammer down the uppity black rebel who diverged from his script and upset Washington’s plans. Indeed, the rise and fall of ADFL figurehead Laurent Desire Kabila exemplifies the embraceable black leader transformed almost overnight into the unembraceable black fall guy. In the end, a bullet dispatched Laurent Kabila on 16 January 2001, exactly 40 years after the assassination of Patrice Lumumba (17 January 1961).

Anyone who dismisses the organized and intentional RPF/A and UPDF military campaign against millions of Hutu people—massacred and chased from the Uganda border to Kigali, into to eastern Congo, and finally attacked in refugee camps and butchered all the way across Zaire—is a genocide denier. (Of course, the UPDF-RPF/A alliance also summarily executed and massacred Rwandan Tutsis and indigenous Twa, and Congolese people.) Similarly, anyone who dismisses the organized persecution and atrocities against the Acholi people in northern Uganda—maintained by the Museveni government and the UPDF occupation—is a genocide denier.

The criminality of the Kagame regime is whitewashed by the massive public relations campaigns involving Kagame’s special advisor/sponsors: former Ambassador Andrew Young and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Young’s Goodworks International also backs the Museveni regime. Buffing the shiny image of the government of Congo’s President Joseph Kabila is Stevens and Schriefer Group the Washington D.C. PR-firm that twice helped get George W. Bush elected [http://www.ssg-dc.com/].

The New Yorker and CNN have consistently manufactured the pro-RPF/A propaganda, reported by Christiane Amanpour and Philip Gourevitch. Amanpour is married to James Rubin, Bill Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State and Madeleine Albright’s right-hand man, and now economic adviser to President-elect Barack Obama. Gourevitch—who produced the celebrated pro-RPF/A text We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, is a close friend of Paul Kagame and a conduit for State Department disinformation passed by James Rubin, who was also Chief Spokesman for the Clinton State Department (1997-2000), and whose sister, Elizabeth Rubin, was dating Gourevitch.

U.S. business tycoon Joe Ritchie ‘has volunteered in Rwanda for the past five years introducing the country to business leaders around the world.’ Ritchie also runs an ‘entrepreneurial philanthropy’ called Friends of Rwanda and serves on President Paul Kagame’s Advisory Council and as CEO of the Rwanda Development Board. Like Walter Kansteiner, Joe Ritchie is a commodities and options trader from Chicago with deep pockets and dark secrets: involved in a private attempt to overthrow the Taliban in 2000, Joe and James Ritchie were aided by their favorite consultant, former national security adviser Robert McFarlane, who successfully lobbied the CIA to dispatch an Unmanned Aerospace Vehicle (UAV) to the skies over Afghanistan.

The Congo wars have direct links to the many long years of war in Sudan and Uganda, and they are intertwined with the current low-intensity warfare and the mass murder in Darfur, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. If we apply the genocide label to conflicts where it surely fits, then genocide is ongoing in Congo’s Orientale and Kivus provinces, and in Acholiland in Northern Uganda. But it is also occurring in Iraq, Afghanistan, Burundi, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Botswana, Columbia, the Palestinian Territories and Malaysia, to mention a few irrefutable cases.

These geopolitical and strategic hotspots remain mostly blanketed by media reportage that quite literally blacks out key white protagonists by putting a black African face on things. Another example: there has been little reported about the perpetual warfare and human rights atrocities in Orientale linked to tight little airstrips carved out of the rainforest and paved with support from the Pentagon-connected United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Consider Mwana Africa, a South African firm that controls the Kilo-Moto gold fields in Zani, DRC. The Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), led by Thomas Lubanga, occupied the Zani gold fields in 2002 and stirred up ethnic animosities that led to massive suffering and depopulation. However, according to Congolese locals, it was the white missionaries from the Africa Inland Mission (www.aimint.org/usa/where_we_work/) that deeply divided local ethnic groups. French tycoons Jacques and Alvaro Hachuel own Mwana Africa.

Mwana Africa’s European director, Etienne Denis, began his long career of impoverishing the Congo at Umicore, formerly the Belgian mining giant Union Miniere, in 1974. The Mwana Africa airstrip at Zani, and nearby roads, were built with USAID backing, and the gold is flown out to Tanzania—one of the most underappreciated criminal players funneling weapons to Uganda and Congo—or sometimes shipped out by road through Uganda. Mwana Africa is also involved in Congo’s bloody MIBA diamond concessions in Mbuji Mayi and the cobalt/copper concessions in Katanga.

Similarly, almost nothing in context has been reported of the white mercenaries and their petroleum operations on the Uganda border with Orientale. Like the ongoing covert war in Darfur, where the backers of the ‘mysterious’ rebel groups are never exposed, the militias operating in Congo are proxy armies that serve the interests of external power blocks at the expense of their competitors.

Most reporting from the Kivus zooms in on sexual violence and the Western media always blames the victims—Congolese soldiers caught in the maelstrom of international proxy warfare and organized crime—but we hear nothing about U.S. or Canadian or Australian mining companies—and for those rare times that we do the reportage de-links the mining from the mass murder. More often, the media turns the story upside down, claiming that responsible Western mining executives are waiting in the wings for security to improve so they can provide jobs and accountability and ’sustainable development’ for the Congolese people. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A recent front-page news feature, ‘Congo’s Riches, Looted by Renegade Troops,’ about the Bisie tin mine in North Kivu, offers the perfect example. ‘On paper, the exploration rights to this mine belong to a consortium of British and South African investors who say they will turn this perilous and exploitative operation into a safe, modern beacon of prosperity for Congo,’ wrote Jeffrey Gettleman for the New York Times. ‘But in practice, the consortium’s workers cannot even set foot on the mountain. Like a mafia, Colonel Matumo and his men extort, tax and appropriate at will, draining this vast operation, worth as much as $80 million a year.'

And thus do the valiant white knights of the New York Times shine their spotlight on plunder and extortion in Congo. Alas, it is a selective shining, an expedient ‘humanitarian’ concern, and an arrogant moral high ground. Indeed, it is just another shade of the black and white race politics behind the politicization of the International Criminal Court.

THE BLACK AFRICAN FALL GUYS

In June of 2008 the ICC charged two black African rebel leaders, Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, with six counts of war crimes (willful killing; inhuman treatment or cruel treatment; using children under the age of fifteen years to participate actively in hostilities; sexual slavery; intentionally directing attacks against civilians; and pillaging) and three counts of crimes against humanity (murder, inhumane acts and sexual slavery).

ICC prosecutors say that Chui and his commander Katanga—known as Simba—led a militia called the Front for Patriotic Resistance of Ituri (FPRI); Chui was also a commander in another militia, the National Integrationist Front (FNI). The FPRI was fighting against the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC); another militia in Congo backed by outsiders, in particular, some faction from the U.S.

UPC commander Thomas Lubanga—another black man—was the first person detained at the ICC’s Scheveningen prison at The Hague. Charles Taylor, former ‘warlord’ and president from Liberia was the second. Germaine Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui were next to be chosen for this auspicious club. Congolese ‘warlord’ Jean-Pierre Bemba is the last of five detainees now held at the ICC. Bemba was the leader of the Congolese rebel army, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), but he is charged with crimes in the Central African Republic.

These five men all have more in common than the charges against them. They are all black men, once embraced by the system and empowered as local or national leaders, and they are now the black stooges who fell from grace to become, in the language of anthropologist and scholar Dr. Enoch Page, ‘unembraceable’.

The unembraceable status, applied to Africa, is reserved for black males, for dictators and warlords, rapists and killers, for ‘dirty’ Arabs like Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan, and for former ‘Marxist’ guerillas, like Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe. Always they are people of color: they are the O.J. Simpsons and Michael Jacksons of Africa, formerly embraced black males now ruthlessly persecuted by the Western establishment—primarily through racial surveillance and targeting in the mass media. Such treatment is rarely applied to white males, anywhere.

Someone has to be held responsible for the mass murder at Bogoro, but who paid the 29 year-old ‘warlord’ Germaine Katanga? Why should he be the only one prosecuted? Who provided the jeeps for the ‘warlord’ Mathieu Chui? Where did ‘warlord’ Thomas Lubanga get the satellite phone to coordinate his private militia? How did Charles Taylor go from Harvard University to money laundering in Liberia to a Massachusetts prison—which he ‘escaped’ from—and then on to become first the ‘President’ and later ‘warlord’ of Liberia?

How does Moto Gold Mining Company extract gold from a war zone? And how do the shiny black leather belts and pressed camouflage fatigues and crisp felt berets and rocket-propelled grenades find their way to Laurent Nunda’s ‘rebel’ army now fighting in the North and South Kivu provinces of Congo?

Aware of their vulnerability as black African fall guys—and soon after the ICC arrest of Jean-Pierre Bemba—the top brass of the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces curtailed their international travel plans and convened a special meeting at Uganda’s Bombo army headquarters near Kampala, in June 2008, to discuss fears of ICC warrants being issued against them.

Of course, the U.S. Government and its business partners dictate the operations of the ICC. While considering soldiers of the United States and its allies to be above international humanitarian law and protected from the jurisdiction of the ICC, the Pentagon has simultaneously directed the formation, operations and legal precedents of the ICC through the involvement of members of the U.S. military’s Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps, the legal arm of the Pentagon.

Congolese troops and militias connected to Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and wife Janet and their military collaborators operate extortion and racketeering networks that are plundering Congo. While former militias responsible for plunder have ostensibly been disbanded, new military networks have replaced them again and again.

UGANDA ARMING MILITIAS YET AGAIN

‘The Congolese military [FARDC] works with Ugandans,’ reported Christian Lukusha, an expert with Justice Plus, a Congolese human rights NGO based in Bunia, ‘including Salim Saleh, Museveni’s half-brother. And they ship timber and minerals across the border at both Aru and Mahagi. It’s completely clandestine.’

According to the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC), fighting in Orientale in September 2008 drove over 90,000 additional IDPs from their homes and lands. Fighting continued into October and November, and militias new and old are today floating between Uganda, South Sudan and DRC, recruiting and conscripting soldiers, including children, and training and indoctrinating them in the ideology of their ‘mysterious’ leaders.

The FPJC—Front Congolaise Pour la Justice au Congo—is but the latest militia to suddenly emerge from the hills of Orientale. On September 29, 2008, the FPJC, described as ‘a newly formed rebel group,’ attacked and pursued retreating contingents of President Joseph Kabila’s regular army, the FARDC, before raiding and looting villages. Since mid-September the FPJC has engaged FARDC troops in firefights along the Lake Albert border zone.
According to Congolese sources in Bunia, the FPJC is solidly backed by Uganda and provides a second front in an alliance with Laurent Nkunda’s Rwandan army, which has freely operated in the Kivu provinces for years.

‘The FPJC rebels are in the bush close to the Semliki River and the Uganda border,’ says Godefroid (not his real name), a Congolese professional in Bunia who travels back and forth to Uganda by land. ‘There is some new recruitment of former militias along the Congo-Uganda border by Thomas Lubanga’s former UPC minister Mr. Avochi, a Congolese who as been in exile in Uganda since 2004.’

Military training camps for the new FPJC recruits are today operating from at least four sites on the Uganda side of the border: {1} in the Kikong-Hoima district; {2} in Kasatu (close to Djegu) in Nebbi district; {3} in the Urusi area (close to Mahagi) of Nebbi district; and {4} in Bondo (close to Aru and Arua) in the Uganda district.

‘Such trainings cannot happen without a clear agreement and support of the upper authorities of Uganda,’ says Godefroid. ‘It’s all connected to the oil under Lake Albert and the gold in Orientale.’

According to this source, a senior FPJC military commander named Sherif confirmed that Laurent Nkunda and his National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) are involved with these Ugandan bases. ‘They are providing CNDP military training and recruits are given the CNDP ideology.’

Coincidentally—but not reported by the media—a hornet’s nest of Western petroleum and mining companies, all linked to international private military companies, local militias, and the national armies of Uganda, Rwanda and Congo, are fighting for control of the land on both sides of the Congo’s eastern border.

‘Salim Saleh is involved in all of this,’ said one Congolese official at the border town of Aru, DRC. ‘He is certainly responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Saleh worked with Jerome Kakwavu when he was the big chief in Aru. Kakwavu is a FARDC general now, in Kinshasa. Salim worked all the different groups, trading arms, playing them off one against the other.’

Petroleum companies that have recently emerged and now laying claim to DRC or Ugandan concessions on Lake Albert include: Tower Resources; South African consortiums PetroSA and Divine Inspiration; and H Oil & Minerals Ltd.[30] Tower Resources is a U.S.-U.K. firm affiliated with U.K.-based Hardman Resources and tied to oil exploitation in Kenya and Namibia.[31] H Oil & Minerals is a European firm operating in South Sudan, DRC and Angola; financiers include the Deutsche Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction & Development, and the Belgian giant Société Generale—one of the Congolese people’s greatest historical enemies. H Oil & Minerals is also closely linked to Marc Rich and his Switzerland-based company Glencore International, both known for arms trafficking in Angola and DRC through Angolagate notable Pierre Falcone. An Arizona (USA) republican, Falcone is reportedly very tight with the Joseph Kabila government. Marc Rich is the fugitive Swiss financier who for years appeared on the FBI’s list of most wanted criminals on charges ranging from trading with embargoed states, tax evasion, racketeering and arms trafficking; Marc Rich was pardoned by Bill Clinton on Clinton’s last day in office.

One of the most notorious global arms traffickers involved in Congo, Namibia and Zimbabwe is John Bredenkamp, one of Britain’s 50 richest men. Walter Hailwax, the Belgian honorary consul to Namibia, is a director of arms producer Windhoeker Maschinenfabrik, and the local director of Bredenkamp’s arms brokerage company ACS International Ltd. A key agent in Zimbabwean and DRC organized crime networks, Bredenkamp is one of the phantom white-collar criminals behind Robert Mugabe, another black African fall guy now targeted by the Western press, think tanks and flak organizations, to the exclusion of other major interests. Of course, the Ndebele people suffered war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide under Mugabe, with the bulk of the atrocities committed from 1981-1988. (Mugabe remained an embraceable black agent of white power until about 1999, and today—according to the Western economic and policy establishment, and the mass media, who no longer embrace him—he is the devil incarnate in Zimbabwe.)

THE LORD’S RESISTANCE ARMY

If you asked Western media consumers to name a bloodthirsty guerrilla movement in Africa it is likely they would point to ‘warlord’ Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), this thanks to the one-sided fictional media campaigns waged by National Public Radio, Time Magazine, Washington Post, or by Christopher Hitchens—who calls them ‘a Christian Khmer Rouge’—and Vanity Fair.

In the simplistic Western media narratives, the LRA is always described as a ‘fanatical Christian cult’ that abducts children and forces them to commit atrocities. In the dichotomy of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’ the LRA is ‘wicked’ and the forces they are fighting against, President Museveni and the UPDF, are benevolent. Indeed, evangelical Christian missionaries from the United States have been deeply involved with the SPLA war against the ’satanic’ forces of the LRA and the Islamic Government of Sudan.

Spilling over from the wars in Uganda and Sudan and operating a clandestine network of terror and extortion in the north of Congo today, the LRA has waged a low-intensity war against the Museveni regime since circa 1987. The LRA is a Ugandan guerrilla force backed by the government of Sudan (Khartoum) and its allies and clandestinely supported by unnamed factions in Congo, Europe and Washington.

‘For 19 years, Joseph Kony has been enslaving, torturing, raping, and murdering Ugandan children,’ wrote Christopher Hitchens, ‘many of whom have become soldiers for his ‘Lord’s Resistance Army,’ going on to torture, rape, and kill other children.’ Parroting the establishment line, Hitchens has no complaints about the UPDF brutalizing children in the refugee camps of Acholiland, and he never mentions the SPLA’s conscription of thousands of child soldiers.[36]
According to a high-level United Nations source working in the DRC, the LRA maintains very high-level political ties in New York and Washington D.C. through Jongomoi Okidi-Olal, a Ugandan-American representative living in the U.S. The Uganda government has purportedly asked the Bush Administration and the United Nations to arrest Okidi-Olal and hand him over to the ICC. Other sources claim that Okidi is a fraud.

Interestingly, we find that Mwana Africa—whose vast Kilo-Moto mining concessions sprawl across northern Orientale—is also operating in Angola and South Africa, and at five major mining concessions in the so-called ‘failed state’ of Zimbabwe.[38] The government of Angola has always backed President Joseph Kabila, is very hostile to the Kagame gang, and currently controls Congolese territory (Kehemba) near the Angolan border. Given the spoils to be had, it is likely that factions from Angola or Zimbabwe also back the Lord’s Resistance Army in a bid to displace Mwana Africa and other competitors from mining and petroleum sites in northeastern Congo.

Congolese sources claim that MONUC moved into the Watsa region in northern Orientale only after the LRA—coming in through Garamba National Park near the Sudan border—began threatening the operations of AngloGold Ashanti, Mwana Africa and Moto Gold Mining. Additionally, Garamba National Park is rich in diamonds and gold.

While the LRA is also supported by Ugandan factions opposed to the Museveni dictatorship, it is widely believed the LRA is a tool of the Museveni government used to manipulate public opinion, create chaos across the region, gain international sympathy from foreign donors and thereby procure massive financial backing to facilitate some of the world’s most lucrative and unappreciated AID-for-ARMS scandals. It is the perfect ruse to facilitate permanent foreign military intervention.

The LRA also reportedly moved into the northern DRC to displace SPLA troops that had a long history of plundering the area, shooting wildlife and harassing villages. Thus while the evil LRA is always in the crosshairs of the international media, the same media protects the saintly SPLA, no matter the justice or criminality of either.

The mass media and foreign policy discourses are saturated with the writings, op-eds and policy briefs of ‘experts’ that serve as apologetic propagandists for foreign interventions and hidden agendas. Such ‘experts’ exercise stark biases in naming or delineating the ‘killers’ versus ‘victims’ and for this reason they often gain exclusive access to mass media venues. The system of information control becomes self-perpetuating in favor of power and deception.

Experts working for the Pentagon, State Department, or national security apparatus deploy arguments cloaked in righteous assumptions of higher morality about human rights or humanitarian concern. For example, Sudan ‘experts’ like Dr. Eric Reeves and Alex De Waal provide a constant barrage of one-sided propaganda to manufacture consent at home and project American power in Sudan.This propaganda is unassailable by Western ‘news’ consumers, because consumers are not otherwise privy to, interested in, or compelled to discover the deeper truths

ALICHOSEMA DR. MWAKYEMBE NDIYO KAULI YA VITA

2009-11-04T11:55:00.002+03:00

Na M. M Mwanakijiji

Katika makala yangu ya ukosoaji wa mikakati ya wapiganaji CCM (ikiwa ni makala ya kukosoa wapiganaji ili kuwanoa) mojawapo ya magazeti yaliyotumia makala hiyo yaliipa kichwa cha habari ambacho bila ya shaka kilikuwa na lengo la kupotosha hasa ni kitu gani nimesema.

Gazeti hilo lenye mrengo wa kifisadi lilitumia makala hiyo na kudai kuwa ujumbe wake mkubwa ni kuwa wananchi “wale fedha za kina Mwakyembe lakini wasiwachague” ifikapo uchaguzi mkuu 2010. Nitakuwa msaliti wa mapambano na mpiganaji uchwara endapo ningesema kitu cha namna hiyo. Hadi hivi sasa sijaona sababu yoyote ile ya kunifanya nisite au nipinga kwa Dr. Mwakyembe kurudi Bungeni mwakani, na watu wa Kyela wanaweza kujikuta wanafanya kosa la milele endapo watafanya uchaguzi wao kwa kuongozwa na kitu kingine zaidi ya maslahi yao na yale ya Taifa.

Ndio maana kwa wakati huu nikielewa siasa za Kyela na Mbeya kwa ujumla zilivyo na mvutano wa makundi nisingeweza kusema kitu cha namna hiyo. Hata hivyo kwa kadiri wakati unavyoenda na endapo kuna ulazima wa kufanya hivyo, sitosita kuchukua msimamo wa kumuunga mkono mtu au kumpinga mtu kwa kipimo changu kimoja tu nacho ni je “atalifanyia nini taifa”?

Pamoja na kuweka hilo sawa (kwani nimepokea barua nyingi pepe za watu ambao walishangaa jinsi mada hiyo ilivyopotoshwa na gazeti hilo) ni vizuri nirudi nyuma kidogo kuzungumzia kile ambacho Dr. Mwakyembe alidaiwa kusema kwenye mkutano wa NEC akimtetea Spika Sitta kuwa mgogoro ulioko ndani ya CCM na kwenye taifa kwa ujumla ni mgogoro dhidi ya ufisadi (niseme mfumo wa utawala wa kifisadi) na kuwa “Ugomvi huu utaisha pale ufisadi utakaposhindwa. Zaidi ya hapo hakuna kinachoweza kumaliza ugomvi wetu”

Si ugomvi dhidi ya matajiri

Ni muhimu kuelewa kuwa tunachopigania si utajiri wa watu fulani au wivu unaotuongoza; hatuna ugomvi na matajiri wa Tanzania kwani utajiri siyo sawa na ufisadi! Hili ni muhimu kulielewa vinginevyo tutajikuta tunapigana sisi kwa sisi na pasipo kujua kuwa tunaumizana. Ni muhimu kulielewa ili tusije tukaingia kwenye mtego ambao hatuwezi kujinasua. Vita hii ya ufisadi siyo vita dhidi ya matajiri wa Tanzania.

Kwa sababu kama tunapigana dhidi ya utajiri ina maana tunapigania umaskini! Na nina uhakika hatupiganii umaskini kwa hiyo basi hatuwezi kupigana dhidi ya utajiri au matajiri. Tatizo letu kubwa na kiini cha mgongano huu ni mfumo uliotengeneza na unaoendelea kutengeneza matajiri nchini; yaani mfumo wa utawala wa kifisadi. Si fisadi mmoja mmoja au kikundi cha watu wachache, la hasha ni mfumo ambao unafanya kazi kama mashine ijiendeshayo (automatic) na kila kukika ikiibua matajiri wa haraka haraka ambao wametumia mfumo huo kuvuna wasichopanda, kula wasichopika na kulala katika nyumba isiyo yao!

Ndio maana ni vizuri sana kuelewa mfumo wa utawala wa kifisadi (MUK) ili kuweza kuelewa vita hii ni pana na kubwa kwa kiasi gani. Nimesoma mahali fulani ambapo watu wanamshangaa Waziri wa Nchi ofisi ya Waziri Mkuu anayeshughulikia Sera na Bunge Mhe. Marmo ambaye anailaumu Katiba kuwa inafanya vita dhidi ya ufisadi kuwa ngumu kweli. Marmo anachosema ndicho ambacho nilikiandika kwenye sehemu ya kwanza ya kuuelewa mfumo wa ufisadi; ni mfumo ambao umetengenezwa na kujipenyeza kwenye uchumi, sheria, na siasa. Hivyo Marmo anaposema “Kama serikali tunaona tuna mapungufu katika katiba, ndio maana hata utekelezaji wa mapendekezo ya Kamati teule ya bunge kuhusu uchunguzi wa Richmond yanachelewa” anasema ukweli nusu.

Ni ukweli nusu kwa sababu anachozungumzia ni taratibu zinavyogongana kati ya serikali (watendaji) na Bunge na taasisi nyingine. Lakini ukweli kamili ni kuwa Bunge linasimama kama msimamizi wa serikali na siyo serikali kuwa ni msimamizi wa Bunge; Bunge lina nguvu kubwa kuliko wizara, idara, n.k na maagizo yake yanatakiwa kutekelezwa siyo kujadiliwa tena. Kosa alilolifanya Mhe. Pinda katika suala la Richmond ni kuanzisha uchunguzi mwingine badala ya kutii maagizo ya Bunge na hivyo kusababisha mgongano usio wa lazima.

Ndio maana ni vyema kuelewa kuwa mgongano huu hauhusishi mtu mmoja mmoja tu bali ni mfumo mzima na hivyo ni mgongano ambao hata ukimuondoa mtu mmoja au kufunga jela watu wanne au sita bado mfumo utaendelea kutengeneza mafisadi wengine.

Mjadala na mafisadi hauwezekani

Mojawapo ya vitu ambavyo tunaweza kuviona muda si mrefu ujao na hasa kwenye kikao kijacho cha Bunge ni kitu kama mjadala kati ya wale wanaogemea kambi ya ufisadi na wale walio kinyume. Wapo ambapo wanaamini kuwa tunaweza kukaa meza moja na mafisadi na kukubaliana nao jinsi ya kuwashughulikia.

Na hili ndilo kosa la Rais Kikwete alipoamua kuunda timu ya kina Mwanyika akijaribu kutafuta ukweli zaidi wa wizi wa EPA; lilikuwa ni kosa kwa sababu alichofanya ni kujikuta anawalazimisha watendaji hawa kukaa meza moja na mafisadi na mwisho kujikuta kuwa mafisadi kumbe hawako mbali sana na wengine wako karibu “sana” na matokeo yake ni kupatwa na kigugumizi cha ghafla.

Suala la Richmond, EPA na mengine ni masuala ambayo yalihitaji kuchukuliwa hatua za kisheria, mengine ni mbele ya safari. Baada ya kashfa ya EPA kuibuliwa tu kiongozi makini angeifumua Benki Kuu nzima ile na kuwatia pingu watu na kuwaburuza toka maofisi yao! Lakini kwa kuamua kukaa meza moja nao na kuwapa muda tukawatengenezea mazingira ya kutafuta nani awe kafara!

Hapa Dr. Mwakyembe yuko sahihi; hakuna kitu kinachoweza kumaliza ugomvi au mgogoro huu dhidi ya ufisadi nchini isipokuwa ushindi tu. Kama hatuko tayari kushinda, basi ni bora tusipigane kabisa; kama tunataka kutoka droo na mafisadi tusipigane kabisa kwani kutoka droo nao ni kushindwa kwetu, na ushindi kwao!

Wapiganaji wote walenge kuubadili mfumo

Hadi hivi sasa hatujasikia wapiganaji wakizungumzia hii mashine tuliyonayo inayotutengenezea mafisadi utadhani mashine ya kusaga! Wapiganaji wetu bado hawajagusa injini yenyewe inayoibua mafisadi. Wao wanazungumzia dalili na matokeo tu ya kazi ya mashine hii, Ni lazima kama wanataka kuushinda ufisadi kuanza kuzungumzia matatizo ambayo Marmo ameyagusia na aliyekuwa Katibu Mkuu wa OAU na Waziri Mkuu wa zamani Dr. Salim ameyatanaibisha kwa mbali kuwa tatizo ni mfumo!

Yeye Dr. Salim alinukuliwa na gazeti moja kusema hivi kuhusu tatizo hasa nchini (akikaribiana zaidi na mimi katika kutambua tatizo hilo), “Rais Kikwete anajitahidi na ana nia ya kupambana na rushwa, lakini bado 'system' (mfumo) haijajitayarisha vya kutosha kupambana rushwa”

Lakini ukweli ni kuwa mfumo haujashushwa na shetani au haukukua ardhini kama uyoga; mfumo huu wa utawala wa kifisadi tumeujenga na kuukuza kwa sheria zetu na taratibu zetu sisi wenyewe. Katiba ni yetu na kama Marmo anajua kuwa Katiba ina matatizo kwanini wasije na mapendekezo ya kubadili Katiba au hata kuandika upya katiba yetu ili itusaidie kweli kupambana na ufisadi?

Tudhamirie kuleta watu watakaoleta mabadiliko ya mfumo 2010

Tunapoelekea uchaguzi mkuu mwakani, tusikubali watu wenye kutuahidi vile vile ambavyo wamekuwa wakituahidi; maji, shule, hospitali, barabara n.k Hivi vyote ni vizuri na ni matamanio yetu, lakini ni katika vitu hivyo hivyo ndipo tunaona ufisadi mkubwa sana ukitokea.

Ukisema tutajenga shule, maana yake hadi hiyo shule ijengwe kuna watu watamaliza na wenyewe nyumba zao; ukisema tujenge barabara usishangae hadi barabara ije kukamilika ukakuta fulani amejenga nyumba na magari kadhaa ya kutanua nayo.

Kumbe, hivi vyote tunavyoahidiwa wakati mwingine ndiyo hivyo hivyo vinageuka kuwa vyombo vya kubebea mafisadi na kuwanufaisha mafisadi. Tunachotaka ni kujua hao wanaotaka kuja kututawala 2010 watafanya nini kuondokana na mfumo wa kifisadi? Ni mabadiliko gani ya Katiba wanayapendekeza na watayatekeleza ndani ya muda gani wakiingia madarakani? Je, tukiwachagua watafanya mabadiliko gani katika ofisi ya DPP, Mwanasheria Mkuu, Polisi au Usalama wa taifa?

Tusikubali tena kukaa na kufanya mapatano na mafisadi; tunapoelekea 2010 ni sisi ndio tutatengeneza ajenda ya mabadiliko tunayoyataka. Wale wasioyataka mabadiliko hayo au kukumbatia ajenda hiyo, basi wao watakuwa wamechagua upande wa ufisadi.

Na kwa hilo, hatuna mapatano nao tena, na ugomvi wetu hautaisha isipokuwa kwa ushindi! , Dr. Mwakyembe yuko sahihi.

Niandikie: mwanakijiji@mwanakijiji.com

WHO KILLED JUVENAL HABYARIMANA OF RWANDA ON 1994?-5

2009-11-03T07:30:00.003+03:00

The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda's Tutsis and Hutu political moderates by Hutus under the Hutu Power ideology. Over the course of approximately 100 days, from the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana on 6 April through mid-July, at least 500,000 people were killed.^[1] Most estimates indicate a death toll between 800,000 and 1,000,000,^[2] which could be as high as 20% of the total population.

In 1990 the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group, composed mostly of Tutsi refugees, invaded northern Rwanda from Uganda. The Rwandan Civil War, fought between the Hutu regime, with support from Francophone nations of Africa and France itself,^[3]^[4] and the RPF, with support from Uganda, vastly increased the ethnic tensions in the country and led to the rise of Hutu Power, an ideology that stressed that the Tutsi intended to enslave Hutus and thus must be resisted at all costs. Despite ongoing ethnic tension, including the displacement of large numbers of Hutu in the north by the rebels and periodic localized ethnic cleansing of Tutsi to the south, pressure on the government of Juvénal Habyarimana led to a cease-fire in 1993 and the preliminary implementation of the Arusha Accords.

The assassination of Habyarimana in April 1994 was the proximate cause of the mass killings of Tutsis and pro-peace Hutus. They were carried out primarily by two Hutu militias associated with political parties: the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi. The genocide was directed by a Hutu power group known as the Akazu. The killing also marked the end of the peace agreement meant to end the war and the Tutsi RPF restarted their offensive, eventually defeating the army and seizing control of the country.

Background

In 1957 the Hutu Emancipation Movement called Parmehutu published the "Bahutu" Manifesto, in which it alleged a monopoly of power held by the Tutsi minority. In the 1960s, these denunciations led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the Republic headed by Gregoire Kayibanda. This was a regime which persecuted the Tutsi, who in many cases were forced to flee. The persecution also went on under the regime of Juvénal Habyarimana who had seized power in 1973 and promised progress and reconciliation.

Civil war

The Tutsi refugee diaspora was by the late 1980s a coherent political and military organization. Large numbers of Tutsi refugees in Uganda had joined the victorious rebel National Resistance Movement during the Ugandan Bush War and made themselves a separate movement. In October 1990 the RPF invaded Rwanda to restore themselves within the nation. The journal Kangura, a Hutu counteraction towards the Tutsi journal Kanguka, active from 1990 to 1993, was instrumental in incitement of Hutu disdain for Tutsis,^[5] on the basis of their ethnicity, rather than their previous economic advantages. Hassan Ngeze, founder and editor of Kangura, published the widely read Hutu Ten Commandments, which called for the formal installment of Hutu Power ideology in schools and the establishment of an exclf the transitional government, was open to all parties, including the RPF. The extremist Hutu Coalition for the Defence of the Republic (CDR), nominally controlled by President Habyarimana, was strongly opposed to sharing power with the RPF, however, and refused to sign the accords. When at last it decided to agree to the terms, the accords were opposed by the RPF.^{[citation needed]} UN Peacekeepers were deployed to patrol ceasefire and assist in demilitarization and demobilization. A March 1993 report found that 10,000 Tutsi had been detained and 2,000 murdered since RPF 1990 invasion. In August 1993, Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN forces, made a reconnaissance trip to evaluate the situation and requested 5,000 troops; he was given 2,500. He saw the situation as a standard peacekeeping mission.

Preparations for the genocide

The killing was well organized^[6] and by the time it had started, the Rwandan militia numbered around 30,000 — one militia member for every ten families — and was organized nationwide, with representatives in every neighborhood. Some militia members were able to acquire AK-47 assault rifles by completing requisition forms. Other weapons, such as grenades, required no paperwork and were widely distributed. Many members of the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi were armed only with machetes.

Rwandan Prime Minister Jean Kambanda revealed, in his testimony before the International Criminal Tribunal, that the genocide was openly discussed in cabinet meetings and that "one cabinet minister said she was personally in favor of getting rid of all Tutsi; without the Tutsi, she told ministers, all of Rwanda's problems would be over."^[7] In addition to Kambanda, the genocide's organizers included Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, a retired army officer, and many top ranking government officials and members of the army, such as General Augustin Bizimungu. On the local level, the genocide's planners included Burgomasters, or mayors, and members of the police.

Government leaders communicated with figures among the population to form and arm militias called Interahamwe, "those who stand (fight, kill) together", and Impuzamugambi, "those who have the same (or a single) goal". These groups, particularly their youth wings, were responsible for much of the violence.^[8]

Media propaganda

According to recent commentators the news media played a crucial role in the genocide: local print and radio media fueled the killings, while the international media either ignored or seriously misconstrued events on the ground.^[9] The print media in Rwanda is believed to have started hate speech against Tutsis which was later continued by radio stations. According to commentators anti-Tutsi hate speech "became so systemic as to seem the norm." The state-owned newspaper Kangura had a central role, starting an anti-Tutsi and anti-RPF campaign in October 1990. In the ongoing International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the individuals behind Kangura have been accused of producing leaflets in 1992 picturing a machete and asking "What shall we do to complete the social revolution of 1959?" - a reference to the Hutu revolt that overthrew the Tutsi monarchy and the subsequent politically orchestrated communal violence that resulted in thousands of mostly Tutsi casualties and forced roughly 300,000 Tutsis to flee to neighboring Burundi and Uganda. Kangura also published the infamous "10 Hutu Commandments," which regulated all dealings with Tutsis and how Hutus are to treat them, and generally communicated the message that the RPF had a devious grand strategy (one feature article was titled "Tutsi colonization plan").^[10]

Due to high rates of illiteracy at the time of the genocide, radio was an important way for the government to deliver messages to the public. Two radio stations key to inciting violence before and during the genocide were Radio Rwanda and Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM). In March 1992, Radio Rwanda was first used in directly promoting the killing of Tutsi in Bugesera, south of the national capital Kigali. Radio Rwanda repeatedly broadcast a communiqué warning that Hutu in Bugesera would be attacked by Tutsi, a message used by local officials to convince Hutu that they needed to protect themselves by attacking first. Led by soldiers, Hutu civilians and members of the Interahamwe subsequently attacked and killed hundreds of Tutsi.^[11] At the end of 1993, the RTLM's highly sensationalized reporting on the assassination of the Burundi president, a Hutu, was used to underline supposed Tutsi brutality. The RTLM falsely reported that the president had been tortured, including castration of the victim (in pre-colonial times, some Tutsi kings castrated defeated enemy rulers). From late October 1993, the RTLM repeatedly broadcast themes developed by the extremist written press, underlining the inherent differences between Hutu and Tutsi, the foreign origin of Tutsi, the disproportionate share of Tutsi wealth and power, and the horrors of past Tutsi rule. RTLM also repeatedly stressed the need to be alert to Tutsi plots and possible attacks and called upon Hutu to prepare to 'defend' themselves against the Tutsi.^[11] After April 6, 1994, authorities used RTLM and Radio Rwanda to spur and direct killings, specifically in areas where the killings initially were resisted. Both radio stations were used to incite and mobilize, then to give specific directions for carrying out the killings.^[11]

The RTLM had used terms such as inyenzi (cockroach in Kinyarwandan) and Tutsi interchangeably with others referring to RPF combatants and warned specifically that RPF combatants dressed in civilian clothes were mingling among displaced people fleeing combat zones. These broadcasts gave the impression that all Tutsi were necessarily supporters of the RPF force fighting against the government.^[11] Women were part of the anti-Tutsi propaganda prior the 1994 genocide, for example the "Ten Hutu Commandments" published in December 1990 by "Kangura" included four commandments which portrayed Tutsi women as tools of the Tutsi people, as sexual weapons that would be used by the Tutsi to weaken and ultimately destroy the Hutu men.^[12] Gender-based propaganda also include cartoons printed in newspapers depicting Tutsi women as sex objects. Examples of gender-based hate propaganda used to incite war rape include statements by perpetrators such as "You Tutsi women think that you are too good for us" and "Let us see what a Tutsi woman tastes like ".^[12]

There were 50,000 civilian deaths in Burundi in 1993.

United Nations

On January 11, 1994 Lieutenant General Dallaire (United Nations Force Commander in Rwanda) notified Military Advisor to the Secretary-General, Major-General Maurice Baril of four major weapons caches and plans by the Hutus for extermination of Tutsis. The telegram from Dallaire stated that an informant who was a top level Interahamwe militia trainer was in charge of demonstrations carried out a few days before. The goal of the demonstrations was to provoke an RPF battalion in Kigali into firing upon demonstrators and Belgian United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) troops into using force. Under such a scenario the Interhamwe would have an excuse to engage the Belgian troops and the RPF battalion. Several Belgians were to be killed, which would guarantee a withdrawal of the Belgian contingent. According to the informant, 1,700 Interhamwe militiamen were trained in Governmental Forces camps and he was ordered to register all the Kigali Tutsis. Dallaire made immediate plans for UNAMIR troops to seize the arms caches and advised UN Headquarters of his intentions, believing these actions lay within his mission's mandate. The following day headquarters stated in another cable that the outlined actions went beyond the mandate granted to UNAMIR under Security Council Resolution 872. Instead, President Habyarimana was to be informed of possible Arusha Accords violations and the discovered concerns and report back on measures taken. The January 11 telegram later played an important role in discussion about what information was available to the United Nations prior to the genocide.^[13] On February 21 extremists assassinated the Minister of Public Works, and UNAMIR failed to gain approval to investigate the murder.

On the April 6, 1994 the RTLM accused the Belgian peacekeepers of having shot down – or helping to shoot down – the president's plane. This broadcast has been linked to the killing of ten Belgian UN troops by soldiers of the Rwandan army.^[14]

The situation proved too "risky" for the United Nations to attempt to help. The RPF successfully brought the country under their sway, although their efforts towards a conclusion to the conflict were delayed after the UN-mandated French-led force, under Operation Turquoise, established and maintained a "safe zone" for Hutu refugees to flee to in the southwest. Eventually, after the UN Mandate of the French mission was at an end, millions of refugees left Rwanda, mainly headed to Zaire. The presence of Hutu refugees (see Great Lakes refugee crisis) on the border with Rwanda was the cause for the First and Second Congo Wars with clashes between these groups and the Rwandan government continuing.^[1]

The UN's mandate forbids intervening in the internal politics of any country unless the crime of genocide is being committed. France has been accused of aiding the Hutu regime to flee by creating what is known as Operation Turquoise. Canada, Ghana, and the Netherlands provided consistent support for the UN mission under the command of Roméo Dallaire although it was left without an appropriate mandate for the capacity to intervene from the U.N. Security Council. Despite emphatic demands from UNAMIR's commanders in Rwanda before and throughout the genocide, its requests for authorization to end it were refused and its intervention-capacity was even reduced.

Religion

The Roman Catholic Missionary "White Fathers" came to Rwanda in the late 1880s and developed the "Hamitic" theory of race origins which taught that the Tutsi were a superior race.^[15] The Church itself has been considered to have played a significant role in fomenting racial divisions between Hutu and Tutsi.^[15] Some in its religious hierarchy have been brought to trial by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and convicted.^[15] The Roman Catholic Church affirms that genocide took place but argues that those who took part in it did so without the permission of the Church.^[15] As of 2007 there has been no official statement by the Church comparable to We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah with regard to Jews and the Holocaust.^[15]

Though religious factors were not prominent (the event was ethnically motivated) the Human Rights Watch reported that a number of religious authorities, particularly Roman Catholic, in Rwanda failed to condemn the genocide. ^[16] Bishop Misago was accused of corruption and complicity in the genocide but was cleared of all charges in 2000.^[17] The majority of Rwandans, and of Tutsis in particular, are Catholic.

Catalyst and initial events

On April 6, 1994, the airplane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the Hutu president of Burundi, was shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali. Both presidents died when the plane crashed. Responsibility for the attack is disputed, with both the RPF and Hutu extremists being blamed. But in spite of disagreements about the identities of its perpetrators, the attack on the plane is to many observers the catalyst for the genocide.

On April 6 and April 7 the staff of the Rwandan Armed Forces (RAF) and Colonel Theoneste Bagosora clashed verbally with the UNAMIR Force commander Lieutenant General Dallaire, who stressed the legal authority of the Prime Minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, to take control of the situation as outlined in the Arusha Accords. Bagosora disputed the authority, and Dallaire gave an escort of UNAMIR personnel to Mrs. Uwilingiyimana to protect her and to allow her to send a calming message on the radio the next morning. But by then, the presidential guard had occupied the radio station and Mrs. Uwilingiyimana had to cancel her speech. In the middle of the day, she was assassinated by the presidential guard. The ten Belgian UNAMIR soldiers sent to protect her were later found killed; Major Bernard Ntuyahaga was convicted of the murders in 2007. Other moderate officials who favored the Arusha Accords were quickly assassinated. Protected by UNAMIR, Faustin Twagiramungu escaped execution. In his book Shake Hands with the Devil, Dallaire recalled the events from April 7, the first day of the genocide:

I called the Force HQ and got through to Ghanaian Brigadier General Henry Anyidoho. He had horrifying news. The UNAMIR-protected VIPs - Lando Ndasingwa [the head of the Parti libéral], Joseph Kavaruganda [president of the constitutional court], and many other moderates had been abducted by the Presidential Guard and had been killed, along with their families [...] UNAMIR had been able to rescue Prime Minister Faustin, who was now at the Force HQ.^[18]^[19]

Genocide

Numerous elite Hutu politicians have been found guilty for the organization of the genocide. Military and Hutu militia groups systematically set out to murder all the Tutsis they could capture, irrespective of their age or sex, as well as the political moderates. The western nations evacuated their nationals from Kigali and abandoned their embassies in the initial stages of the violence. National radio, with the exacerbation of the situation, advised people to stay in their homes, and the Hutu power station RTLM broadcast vitriolic propaganda against Tutsis and Hutu moderates. Hundreds of roadblocks were put up by the militia around the country. Lieutenant-General Dallaire and UNAMIR were in Kigali, escorting Tutsis, and were unable to stop the Hutus from escalating their attacks. During this time, the Hutus also targeted Lieutenant-General Dallaire, and UNAMIR personnel through the RTLM. On April 8 Dallaire sent cable to NY indicating ethnicity was the driving force of killings. The cable detailed killings of politicians and peacekeepers (Chairman of Liberal party, Minister of Labor, Minister of Agriculture and dozens more). Dallaire informed the UN that campaign of violence is well organized, deliberate—conducted primarily by presidential guard.

On April 9, UN observers witnessed the massacre of children at a Polish church. The same day 1000 highly armed and trained European troops arrived to escort European civilian personnel out of country. The troops did not stay to assist UNAMIR. Media coverage picked up on the 9th as the Washington Post reported the execution of Rwandan employees of relief agencies in front of their horrified expatriate colleagues. On April 9-10, US Ambassador Rawson and 250 Americans were evacuated.

Killings quickly took place throughout most of the country. The first person to organize killings on a genocidal scale was the mayor of the northwestern town of Gisenyi, who on the evening of April 6 called a meeting to distribute arms and send out militias to kill Tutsis. Gisenyi was a center of anti-Tutsi sentiment, both as the homeland of the Akazu and as a refuge for thousands of people displaced by the rebel occupation of large areas in the south. While killing occurred in other towns immediately after Habyarimana's assassination, it took several days for them to become organized on a similar scale. The major exception to this pattern was in Butare Province. In Butare, Jean-Baptiste Habyarimana was the only Tutsi prefect and the province was the only one dominated by an opposition party.^[20] Habyarimana opposed the genocide, resulting in the province becoming a haven of relative calm, until he was deposed in lieu of an extremist, Sylvain Ndikumana.^[20] Finding the population of Butare unenthusiastic about the killings, the government proceeded to fly in militia members from Kigali by helicopter, and the killing began immediately.^[20]

Murambi Technical School, where many victims were killed, is now a genocide museum.

Most of the victims were killed in their villages or in towns, often by their neighbors and fellow villagers. Militia members typically murdered their victims by hacking them with machetes, although some army units used rifles. Victims were often found hiding in churches and school buildings, where Hutu gangs massacred them. Ordinary citizens were called on by local officials and government-sponsored radio to kill their neighbors, and those who refused to kill were often murdered themselves. "Either you took part in the massacres or you were massacred yourself."^[21] One such massacre occurred at Nyarubuye. On April 12, more than 1,500 Tutsis sought refuge in a Catholic church in Nyange, then in Kivumu commune. Local Interahamwe, acting in concert with the priest and other local authorities, then used bulldozers to knock down the church building.^[22] People who tried to escape were hacked with machetes or shot. Local priest Athanase Seromba was later found guilty and sentenced to life in prison by the ICTR for his role in the demolition of his church and convicted of the crime of genocide and crimes against humanity.^[22]^[23]^[24] In another case, thousands sought refuge in Ecole Technique Officielle school in Kigali where Belgian UNAMIR soldiers were stationed. However, on April 11, Belgian soldiers withdrew from the school and members of the Rwandan armed forces and militia killed all the Tutsis who were hiding there.^[25]

There is no consensus on the number of dead between April 6 and mid-July. Unlike the genocides carried out by the Nazi Germany and by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, authorities made no attempts to record deaths. The RPF government has stated that 1,071,000 were killed, 10% of whom were Hutu. Philip Gourevitch agrees with an estimate of one million, while the United Nations lists the toll as 800,000. Alex de Waal and Rakiya Omar of African Rights estimates the number as "around 750,000," while Alison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch states that it was "at least 500,000." James Smith of Aegis Trust notes, "What's important to remember is that there was a genocide. There was an attempt to eliminate Tutsis — men, women, and children — and to erase any memory of their existence."^[26]

Out of a population of 7.3 million people - 84% of whom where Hutu, 15% Tutsi and 1% Twa - the official figures published by the Rwandan government estimated the number of victims of the genocide to 1,174,000 in 100 days (10,000 murdered every day, 400 every hour, 7 every minute). Other sources put the death toll to 800,000, 20% of whom were Hutus.^{[citation needed]} It is estimated that about 300,000 Tutsis survived the genocide. Thousands of widows, many of whom were subjected to rape, are now HIV-positive. There are about 400,000 orphans and nearly 85,000 of them have become heads of families.

Several individuals were active in attempting to halt the Rwandan genocide, or to shelter vulnerable Tutsis, as the genocide was being carried out. Among them there are Pierantonio Costa, Antonia Locatelli, Jacqueline Mukansonera, Paul Rusesabagina, Carl Wilkens, and André Sibomana.

War rape

In 1998, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda made the landmark decisions that war rape in Rwanda was an element of the crime of genocide. The Trial Chamber held that "sexual assault formed an integral part of the process of destroying the Tutsi ethnic group and that the rape was systematic and had been perpetrated against Tutsi women only, manifesting the specific intent required for those acts to constitute genocide."^[27] Although no explicit written orders to rape or commit sexual violence have been found, evidence suggests that military leaders encouraged or ordered their men to rape Tutsi as well as condoned the acts taking place, without making efforts to stop them.^[12] Compared to other conflicts the sexual violence in Rwanda stands out in terms of the organized nature of the propaganda that contributed significantly to fueling sexual violence against Tutsi women, the very public nature of the rapes and the level of brutality towards the women.^[28]

In his 1996 report the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Rwanda, Rene Degni-Segui stated that "rape was the rule and its absence the exception." The report also stated that "rape was systematic and was used as a weapon" by the perpetrators of the massacres. This can be estimated from the number and nature of the victims as well as from the forms of rape. The Special Rapporteur estimated that between 250,000 and 500,000 Rwandese women and girls had been raped.^[29] A 2000 report prepared by the Organization of African Unity’s International Panel of Eminent Personalities concluded that "we can be certain that almost all females who survived the genocide were direct victims of rape or other sexual violence, or were profoundly affected by it".^[29] The victims were mostly Tutsi women and girls, of all ages, while men were only seldom the victims of war rape.^[12] War rape during the genocide was also directed against Hutu women considered moderates, but also occurred regardless of ethnicity or political affiliation, with young or beautiful women being targeted based only on their gender.^[^{citation needed}^] Sexual violence against men was much less common, but frequently included mutilation of the genitals, which were often displayed in public.^[12] The perpetrators of war rape during the Rwanda genocide were mainly members of the Hutu militia, the "Interahamwe". Rapes were also committed by military soldiers of the Rwandan Armed Forced (RAF), including the Presidential Guard, and civilians.^[12]

Sexual violence against women and girls during the Rwanda genocide included: rape, gang rape, sexual slavery (either collectively or individually through "forced marriages"), rape with objects such as sticks and weapons often leading to the victim’s death, sexual mutilation of, in particular, breasts, vaginas or buttocks, often during or following rape. Pregnant women were not spared from sexual violence and on many occasion victims were killed following rape. Many women were raped by men who knew they were HIV positive and it has been suggested that there were deliberate attempts to transmit the virus to Tutsi women and their families. War rape occurred across the country and was frequently perpetrated in plain view of others, at sites such as schools, churches, roadblocks, government buildings or in the bush. Some women were kept as personal slaves for years after the genocide, forced to move to neighboring countries after the genocide along with their captors.^[28]

UNAMIR and the international community

A school chalkboard in Kigali. Note the names "Dallaire", UNAMIR Force Commander, and "Marchal", UNAMIR Kigali sector commander.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) was hampered from the outset by resistance from numerous UN Security Council members, who were reluctant to become involved, first in the Arusha process and then the genocide.^[30]^[31] Only Belgium had asked for a strong UNAMIR mandate, but after the murder of ten Belgian peacekeepers protecting the Prime Minister in early April, Belgium pulled out of the peacekeeping mission.^[32]

The UN and its member states appeared largely detached from the realities on the ground. In the midst of the crisis, Lt. General Roméo Dallaire was instructed to focus UNAMIR on only evacuating foreign nationals from Rwanda. The change in orders led Belgian peacekeepers to abandon a technical school filled with 2,000 refugees, while Hutu militants waited outside, drinking beer and chanting "Hutu Power." After the Belgians left, the militants entered the school and massacred those inside, including hundreds of children. Four days later the Security Council voted to reduce UNAMIR to 260 men.^[33]

Following the withdrawal of the Belgian forces, Dallaire consolidated his contingent of Canadian, Ghanaian, and Dutch soldiers in urban areas and focused on providing areas of "safe control". His actions directly saved the lives of 20,000 Tutsis.^[^{citation needed}^] The administrative head of UNAMIR, former Cameroonian foreign minister Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh, has been criticized for downplaying the significance of Dallaire's reports and for holding close ties to the Hutu militant elite.^[^{citation needed}^]

The U.S. government was reluctant to involve itself in the "local conflict" in Rwanda and refused to label the killings as "genocide", a decision which then-president Bill Clinton later came to regret in a Frontline television interview. In the interview, five years after the genocide, Clinton stated that he believes if he had sent 5,000 U.S. peacekeepers, more than 500,000 lives could have been saved.^[34]

The new Rwandan government, led by interim President Théodore Sindikubwabo, worked to minimize international criticism. Rwanda at that time had a seat on the Security Council and its ambassador argued that the claims of genocide were exaggerated and that the government was doing all that it could to stop it.

The UN conceded that "acts of genocide may have been committed" on May 17, 1994.^[35] By that time, the Red Cross estimated that 500,000 Rwandans had been killed. The UN agreed to send 5,500 troops, mostly from African countries, to Rwanda.^[36] This was the original number of troops requested by General Dallaire before the killing escalated. The UN also requested 50 armoured personnel carriers from the United States, but for the transport alone they were charged $6.5 million (U.S.) by the U.S. Army. Deployment of these forces was delayed due to arguments over their cost and other factors.^[37]

French role

A French soldier, part of the international force supporting the relief effort for Rwandan refugees, adjusts the concertina wire surrounding the airport.

In the analysis of U.K. Linda Melvern, documents recently released from the Paris archive of former president François Mitterrand show how the RPF invasion was considered as clear aggression by an Anglophone neighbour on a Francophone country^[38]. The documents are said to argue that the RPF was a part of an "Anglophone plot", involving the President of Uganda, to create an English-speaking "Tutsi-land" and increase Anglophone influence at the expense of French influence. In Melvern's analysis, the policy of France was to avoid a military victory by the RPF. The policy had been made by a secretive network of military officers, politicians, diplomats, businessmen, and senior intelligence operatives. At its centre was Mitterrand. French policy had been unaccountable to either parliament or the press.^[38]

On June 22, with no sign of UN deployment taking place, the Security Council authorized French forces to land in Goma, Zaire on a humanitarian mission. They deployed throughout southwest Rwanda in an area they called "Zone Turquoise," quelling the genocide and stopping the fighting there, but often arriving in areas only after genocidaires had expelled or killed Tutsi citizens. Operation Turquoise was charged with aiding the Hutu army against the RPF by Jacques Bihozagara, the then-Rwandan ambassador to France, who later testified, "Operation Turquoise was aimed only at protecting genocide perpetrators, because the genocide continued even within the Turquoise zone." ^[39]

Following an investigation of the plane crash of 6 April 1994 that killed both the Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira and precipitated the genocide, and in which three French crews had died, the French judge Jean-Louis Bruguière indicted eight associates of Rwandan president Paul Kagame on November 17, 2006. President Kagame himself was not indicted, as he had immunity under French law as a head of state. Kagame denied the allegations, decrying them as politically motivated, and broke diplomatic relationships with France in November 2006. He then ordered the formation of a commission of his own Rwandan Justice Ministry's employees that was officially "charged with assembling proof of the involvement of France in the genocide".^[40] The political character of that investigation was in turn further averred when the commission issued its report solely to Kagame - symbolically on November 17, 2007, exactly one year after Bruguière's announcement - and the head of the Rwandan commission, Jean de Dieu Mucyo, stated that the commission would now "wait for President Kagame to declare whether the inquiry was valid."^[40] In July 2008, Kagame threatened to indict French nationals over the genocide if European courts did not withdraw arrest warrants issued against Rwandan officials, which by then included broader indictments against 40 Rwandan army officers by Spanish judge Fernando Andreu.^[41]^[42] Findings of the commission were released at Kagame's order on August 5, 2008 and accused the French government of knowing of preparations for the genocide and helping to train the ethnic Hutu militia members; named 33 senior French military and political officials of involvement in the genocide, including then-President Mitterrand and his then general secretary Hubert Védrine, then-Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, then-Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, and his chief aide at the time, Dominique de Villepin ^[43]^[44]^[45] A statement accompanying the release claimed that "French soldiers themselves directly were involved in assassinations of Tutsis and Hutus accused of hiding Tutsis... French forces committed several rapes on Tutsi survivors", though the latter was not documented in the report.^[43] A BBC report commented that French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, denied French responsibility in connection with the genocide but said that political errors had been made.^[43] Another BBC report delved into the motivations for the Rwandan report and stated that

Chief among them has been an iron determination to keep the world's attention focused on the genocide, rather than on the role of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the force that took power in 1994, bringing President Paul Kagame to power. In recent years uncomfortable questions have been raised about the war crimes the RPF are alleged to have committed during and after 1994. While stressing there can be no equation between genocide and war crimes, Alison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch says RPF leaders do have a case to answer. "Their victims also deserve justice," she says.^[46]

The suspicions about United Nations and French policies in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994 and allegations that France supported the Hutus led to the creation of a French Parliamentary Commission on Rwanda, which published its report on December 15, 1998.^[47] In particular, François-Xavier Verschave, former president of the French NGO Survie, which accused the French army of protecting the Hutus during the genocide, was instrumental in establishing this Parliamentary commission. The commission released its final report on December 15, 1998. It documented ambiguities and confusion in both the French and UN responses. Regarding Operation Turquoise, it regretted that the intervention took place too late, though it noted that this was better than the non-response from the UN and the opposition by the U.S. and U.K. governments to such a response. The report documented mixed success at disarming the Rwandan Army and militias, but a definite and systematic attempt (though not fast enough as far as then-General Paul Kagame of the opposing RPF forces was concerned, in documentation of the latter's communications with the French forces). It did not find any evidence of French participation in the genocide, of collaboration with the militias, or of willful disengagement from endangered populations, to the contrary. It documented multiple French operations, all at least partly successful, to disable genocide-inciting radio broadcasts, tasks which the UN and the United States had rejected calls for assistance with. The report concluded that there had been errors of judgment pertaining to the Rwanda Armed Forces, but before the genocide only; further errors of judgment about the scale of the threat, at the onset of the genocide; over-reliance on the UNIMAR mission without awareness that it would be undercut by the United States and other parties; and ineffective diplomacy. Ultimately, it concluded that France had been the foreign power most involved in limiting the scale of the genocide once it got started, though it regretted that more had not been done.^[47]

American role

Prior to the war, the U.S. government had aligned itself with Tutsi interests, in turn raising Hutu concerns about potential U.S. support to the opposition. Paul Kagame, a Tutsi officer in exile in Uganda who had co-founded the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) in 1986 and was in open conflict with the incumbent Rwandan government, was invited to receive military training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, home of the Command and General Staff College. In October 1990, while Kagame was at Fort Leavenworth, the RPF started an invasion of Rwanda. Only two days into the invasion, his close friend and RPF co-founder Fred Rwigema was killed, upon which the U.S. arranged the return of Kagame to Uganda from where he became the military commander of the RPF.^[48] An article in the Washington Post of August 16, 1997, authored by its Southern African bureau chief Lynne Duke, indicates that the connection continued as RPF elements received counterinsurgency and combat training from U.S. Special Forces.^[49]^[50]

In January 1994 NSC member Richard Clark developed formal US peacekeeping doctrine, Presidential Decision Directive 25 (PDD-25).

Unlike French and U.N. troops, there were no U.S. troops officially in Rwanda at the onset of the genocide. Nevertheless, the U.S. government and military made a number of decisions, some of commission and most of omission, that had the effect of facilitating and extending the genocide.^[^{citation needed}^] A National Security Archive report points out five ways in which decisions made by the U.S. government contributed to the slow U.S. and worldwide response and to the continuation of the genocide:

1. Contrary to later public statements, the U.S. lobbied the U.N. for a total withdrawal of U.N. (UNAMIR) forces in Rwanda in April 1994;

2. Secretary of State Warren Christopher did not authorize officials to use the term "genocide" until May 21, and even then, U.S. officials waited another three weeks before using the term in public;

3. Bureaucratic infighting slowed the U.S. response to the genocide in general;

4. The U.S. refused to jam extremist radio broadcasts inciting the killing, citing costs and concern with international law;

5. U.S. officials knew exactly who was leading the genocide, and actually spoke with those leaders to urge an end to the violence but did not follow up with concrete action.^[51]

Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) renewed invasion

Main article: Rwandan Civil War

VODA-FOUNDATION YATOA KOMPYUTA MTWARA GIRLS

2009-11-03T07:17:00.002+03:00

Wanafunzi wa Mangamba/Mtwara Girls wakitumia Kompyuta walizopewa na Voda-Foundation. Hongera Vodacom kwa kuweza kutoa misaada mbalimbali kwa jamii.

TANZANIA NA UONGOZI WA ZIMAMOTO INAWEZEKANA

2009-11-02T14:18:00.002+03:00

Ukikiangalia chombo hiki utaniambia kiko katika hali gani. Usalama wa maisha ya watu, mali zao pamoja na chombo chenyewe uko shakani. Ajali ikitokea tutaundiwa tume ya kuchunguza mchawi ni yupi na mwisho itasemwa Kazi Ya Mungu Haina Makosa.

Picha: Mjengwa blog

MBUNGE WA RUANGWA AFARIKI DUNIA

2009-11-02T11:32:00.000+03:00

Leo majira ya saa sita na robo usiku mbunge wa RUANGWA mkoani LINDI MHE. SIGFRIDI N'GITU ameaga dunia katika hospitali ya moi kutokana na ugonjwa wa shinikizo la damu, Mungu ailaze roho ya marehemu mahali pema peponi Amina.

Bunge limeharisha kikao chake leo asubuhi kwa mujibu wa kanuni

COUNT DOWN TO UCHAGUZI MKUU 2010-15

2009-11-02T07:12:00.002+03:00

Dear Reader,

The Commission for Justice and Peace of the Tanzania Episcopal
Conference is pleased to offer you this Manifesto.
This text is an invitation to reflect together on the pertinent issues
which face us as a nation.

We are grateful to the Christian Professionals of Tanzania who
prepared this document.
As the elections of 2010 are not far off we feel it is very important to
put forward our priorities as a society and to tell the future leaders
what we want them to do for our society. We do not only vote in the
elections, we must also express our views on what we consider to be
most important.

In publishing this Manifesto we want to exercise our patriotic right to
build a better future for us all.

Archbishop P. Ruzoka
Archbishop of Tabora
CHAIRMAN
Justice and Peace Commission - TEC

CHRISTIAN PROFESSIONALS OF TANZANIA (CPT)

MANIFESTO
OUR PROPOSAL OF NATIONAL PRIORITIES

A. A basic view

Some basic questions
What is an economy and politics for?
What is the driving force of political organisation?

Our vision

Our basic vision is ethical: human beings, created in God’s image with the same
dignity, rights and duties, are the purpose and reason for political and economic
activities. Our country’s culture, our ujamaa tradition – agreed with this ethical view:
togetherness, solidarity, familyhood –was much more than political ideology.

The Ujamaa Socialist economic choice we made had positive and negative aspects but
not all must be neglected or thrown out. Present policy reforms are many and some
of them good and necessary. But not all are positive.

There may be bettereconomic growth, but the distribution of the benefits of growth is very unequal. The liberal market economic principles have not only economic and social weaknesses,
but also, culturally and ethically, people tend to see them as foreign and imposed
and only good for the rich and those who have capacity.

There is intensifying alienation in our society: between those who have and those who have not, between those who go ahead and those who are left behind. Many of our present policies
see the driving force of development in the growth of our economic performance (in
monetary terms) . Therefore, we give preference to those activities and factors
which bear the potential to increase growth. It is a capitalistic outlook.

This results from our having a narrow viewpoint, basing our policies on a few
economic growth sectors, leaving aside the great majority of our people. To make all
Tanzanians the foundation of our economic policy and our development is not only
ethical, but it also makes good economic sense. Only when the whole nation takes
part in production and shares in the consumption of goods and services, (benefits of
growth) can the markets expand.

Western countries made a leap forward in economic development when they
expanded their own internal markets, in both terms of consumption and terms of
production. The same happened in Eastern countries (like Japan, Korea, Vietnam)
and the same is now happening in China, India, Brazil.

In Tanzania we tend to do the opposite. To have successful reforms, we must
change our views from concentrating on economic growth and aim at uplifting the
common man and woman. We cannot hope to solve the poverty issue by using
some narrow growth sources like tourism and mining. The trickle down or spill over
from a small container remains too small an amount to alleviate the large
widespread poverty we face.

The talk of formal – informal sectors is one example of the wrong mentality of
classifying our economic structure. Since the majority of Tanzanians belong to the
informal sector, they are thereby turned into the insignificant people who are
economically of little value.

Tanzania’s basic puzzle

We have a basic puzzle to solve: Tanzania is rich in resources –
The majority of Tanzanians are poor – Why?
Poverty in Tanzania is not a sickness for which there is an easy remedy.
In fact, poverty is the result of a process of factors that act together to cause poverty
to exist in the midst of plenty of resources and riches.

There is a combination of factors that gives rise to this reality. We need to analyse
these factors and especially look at ourselves, our behaviour, and recognise our true
identity, its positives and negatives. To get out of poverty demands a process, a
transformative process. The ones to lead that process are we ourselves. We must
lead this process. Not foreigners, donors, or money from elsewhere; not learning
and adopting solutions from elsewhere. Dependency is a break on our development
and lack of commitment of the agents of development is the first and most important
causal factor of our poverty. We must, therefore, commit ourselves to the cause of
disentangling ourselves from this trap. We must strive to seek solutions to our
problems from own initiative and own resources.

The Manifesto’s Objective

We have the plans, the policies, the codes and the strategies laid out; we have the
theoretical knowledge for the solutions to our problems. Yet, we do not perform well.
What is mostly missing is our commitment to their implementation; the lack of
courage and willingness to act, to be dedicated and to work hard; to be doing our
duty and giving our best towards serving the common good; our being faithful
patriotic agents and workers in society. Let us face the truth about ourselves. The
truth will make us free, said John (8: 32)

By this Manifesto, we make an open invitation and appeal to all Tanzanians to
consider seriously the major challenges that face our country and the greater
majority of her citizens who are materially poor, marginalized and vulnerable. The
challenges require genuine priorities and solutions that address squarely the
problems of poverty, marginalization and vulnerability of that majority. This
Manifesto’s meant to serve as a guide to people in their individual choices of parties
and candidates in the 2010 general elections.

B. Implications for policy priorities

In the light of our basic view on our society and our general assessment of its
performance, therefore we here present our ideas on priorities for our nation, as a
contribution to the public debate before the 2010 elections.

1) Human dignity

The purpose and reason for all human interactions in society is to give each
individual person the human dignity he/she deserves. This requires that each
person is provided with the basic needs that enable him/her to live a decent life.
That must be priority number one. All human beings are created as equal in the
eyes of God. Kila mtu ni sawa.

Hence we propose:

- Moral values must be the foundation of our nation, enshrined in the
Constitution and guiding all codes of conduct.
- Formulation and implementation of a mass civic adult education programme
on the basic human rights and duties of every citizen.
- The teaching of the people about the need of and provide them with
ombudsman facilities so that the said facilities may effectively lobby the
public administrative services and provide the people with a forum and ways
to bring their complaints to higher authority.
- It is a basic right of every citizen to be given the opportunity to voice his/her
complaints and to be heard. The right must be made effective in law and
administration.
- Ethical codes and meritocracy to be the criteria for recruitment, selection,
appointments, and promotion in institutions.

2) Constitutional Review
The Constitution expresses the Basic Social Contract of a people regarding how
it wants to organise its living together. It is more than a legal document. It is an
ethical vision and a philosophical description of the values and principles the
people want to live by in order to ensure peace, justice as well as respect and
tolerance for different view points. No political party or government of the day
can legitimately use the Constitution to its own political advantage.

The Constitution belongs to the people in all its diversity and plurality. As the
nation is a living organism, it is natural and imperative that a regular review be
provided to enable the people pronounce their views. It should not be left to
specific lobby groups or interested parties (social, economic or religious) to
agitate for change. Since the Nyalali Commission delivered its report, this
request for Constitutional Review has received limited and unsatisfactory
responses. Among the issues we would prioritise in this regard are:

- a clear statement of basic national and moral/ethical values that should
underpin our Constitutional review process.

- There is need of creating a Constitutional Review Forum. In various
political systems, there are different ways of providing this: Constitutional
Court, Second Chamber in Parliament, Constitutional Assembly.
We propose a Council of Elders, appointed by social sectors, or elected
by various social, religious and learning institutions.

This body would be elected and guaranteed in accordance with the
Constitution itself and should be independent from the Executive.
- Regulation and rendering transparent by law of funding made available
for political parties and for candidates.

- Regulation of selection of candidates within political parties with a view to
rendering them more democratic and transparent.

- To introduce the proportional representation system in the place of the
current one of the first past the post.

- To allow independent candidates (except for Presidential positions).

- To respect the principle of the Secularity of the State and not to allow
religious institutions (like Kadhi courts and membership of OIC) to
become part of the public system.

- To defend the rights of the unborn children.

3) Public Leadership

Public service as Leader is a very important role in any human society. That is
why great care must be taken in any society of the ways and means whereby it
selects leaders and how it organises regular supervisory control over the conduct
of leaders. Power in the hands of human beings asks for a delicate handling if it
is not to become unbalanced, abusive and even corrupt.

At the present time, with its many instances of ufisadi, selective decision making
in favour of some economic interests (foreign and local) we want to prioritise the
following:

- Greater transparency in all the processes of appointments to public
service and offices, to public commissions and governing boards.

- Review of presidential power of appointment of ministers, number of
ministries; greater independent power for the governing boards of public
utilities.

- Public code of leadership including an overseeing mechanism to remove
and exclude those who make serious abuse of office.

- Encouragement and support of legitimate investigative reporting and
seeking of information on performance of public services as a basic right
for all citizens.

- Encouragement of a culture of serious public evaluation of leadership
performance, by providing a mechanism and resources for academia,
media, civic and religious groups to participate in such public evaluation.

4) Legal System

To do justice requires more than following laws and procedures. The moral
quality of those in charge of running the institutions of law and order, and the
basic respect these agents should have for the dignity of every human person
and for the common good and maintenance of peace and harmony, are
requirements that must never be over-looked; and must be the subject of regular
and ongoing formation.

The Police, members of the court, advocates, prison wardens, legislators and
administrators are not bosses over people. They are the caretakers of the good
order of our society. They must be sensitive to the broader needs of our society
and not be narrow minded legal enforcers.

At this point, we offer the following priorities.

- a better balance must be established and sustained in the regulation of
the three pillars of the State in governance: It is too heavily tilted in
favour of the Executive. It is false to think that control of the Executive
decision making powers will create delays and inefficiency. The contrary
is true. Many wrong decisions and resultant controversies can be
avoided. It is equally imperative to disaggregate further and distribute to
lower levels the power to make administrative decisions, subject to right
of appeal.

- Parliament’s supervisory role over Executive Power needs further
strengthening. Progress has been made recently, but more needs to be
done, because Parliament which represents the constituencies, is
expected to offer critical evaluation of executive decisions.
Parliamentarians must maintain regular contacts with their electorate. A
minimum regulation should be established for MP’s to be available in their
areas, with a time table and places where people can meet them.
Parliamentarians must restrain themselves in allocating themselves
privileges and special incomes and bonuses.

- Reduction of the secrecy in top-level decision-making processes:
Openess and transparency improve the quality of decisions.

- Decision making and concrete action is often blocked by the subsidiarity
principle not being applied and the system depending on the big person in
charge. Subordinates must be encouraged to take responsibility and
superiors must learn to delegate. The whole legal system will improve a
lot by this.

- Reduction of the interference of politicians in the administrative affairs and
services.

- Social anger needs to be properly addressed by political institutions and
agencies of law and order. We support the community policing policy and
propose to increase the number of alternative forms of dispute resolution
and greater use of social mediators and arbitrators, alternative forms of
punishment for small wrongdoers (community service, compensation,
public repremand) – more probation centres for young offenders.

- Our prisons need to provide more educational programmes, ethical
prisoner rehabilitation and possibilities/opportunities for prisoner –
complainant/victim reconciliatory contacts.

- Our legal system must study, involve and implement tools and
procedures that increase efficiency and effectiveness. Delays and
lethargy, lack of commitment and absences in judicial performance are
experienced by citizens as frustrating and make them lose confidence in
getting justice through the legal system. They see no possibility of prompt
redress in such cases and thus tend to take the law into their own hands.
The legal system itself must introduce disciplinary self-evaluation of its
performance and apply more modern tested principles of management
performance.

- The judiciary should spend a larger part of its available resources on the
Primary and District/Resident Magistrates Courts (in terms of salaries,
buildings, modern office gear/equipment and facilities, number of
magistrates, secretaries). It is at those levels that the great majority of
Tanzanians come in contact with the judiciary.

5) Industry Commerce and Finance

Too many incentives are given to investment on a large scale and not enough
care is taken for the small scale production units. Foreign investors and big
companies are not the solution to the alleviation of poverty of the majority of
Tanzanians. Too many professionals are attracted by the “big – modern –
foreign.” They chase foreign capital and means while local money lies idle in our
financial institutions.

We propose the following priority actions:

- Before all else we must tackle the issue of dignity of work and the moral
obligation of each one to contribute to society and not be a sucker of
society. Idleness, and laziness are sins in the eyes of the Creator and is
also a wrong doing in the eyes of society. Loitering has always been
illegal. It is indecent behaviour to do nothing, payment is not the sole
mover for a person to work. Human dignity itself demands it.

- Integrate supportive investment institutions (credit facilities, infrastructure
and advisory services, market accessibility) for the small scale production
sector.

- Prioritise the creation of local market and local consumer capacity to
make local production effectively the driving engine of our economy.
Industry and Commerce must be home grown.

- Intervene in agricultural production in order to guarantee income of the
small scale farming by pricing policies that give small producers a
guaranteed income from their crops: Mechanisms of hedging farmers
against falls in world market prices should be provided.

- Livestock keepers’ interests, rights and obligations need more serious
consideration and better legal and administrative provisions that
guarantee them their basic rights and freedom under the Constitution.

- Make firmer regulatory financial mechanism for investors’ profits and
privileges benefit more the local population rather than foreign parent
investor.

- Make serious review of providing attractive packages for foreign
investors. We must not treat them as benefactors.

- Intervention by government to regulate the financial market in favour of
the small borrower: Take supportive action for facilities in rural credit and
savings schemes,

- Informal shopkeepers are not a societal nuisance. We agree this sector
needs regulation, but not by the police, but by offering economic initiatives
that make these people viable agents: Integrate them into the whole of
the commercial sector including credit facilities, tax contributions,
standard service, provision of licences and places to do business at a
small scale, not only in the garden of big houses.

- Strengthen the loan availability for building private houses: Institute a
mortgage policy favouring ordinary income earners. Construction is a
major driving force in any economy.

6) Economics

As a matter of principle, and given the current challenges as far as the magnitude
of poverty is concerned, our focus on economics needs to go beyond growth
considerations. We need to emphasize access to opportunities for a wider
population, with special focus on the poor and vulnerable. Growth has to be
shared, pro poor, benefiting the majority and not only a few privileged. People
should, therefore, be given opportunity to participate in productive activities and
in the growth process so they benefit through their effective engagement, leading
to general development of the country. For people to effectively participate,
facilitation is required. Facilitation is done through investment in education,
health, facilitative infrastructure, etc. A proper system needs also to be
developed to ensure effective and judicious utilization of our common heritage,
i.e., natural resources. This calls for strengthened capacity of governance and
oversight institutions. A balance should be sought with regard to the roles of the
State and the market. Also important is how we shape our relations with the
international community. Effective partnerships have to be developed and
nourished based on mutual respect; country interests should guide such
partnerships. Thus country ownership and leadership of development policies,
strategies, programmes, and management of the budget process have to be the
guiding principle.

We know now that it is not only production and provision of goods and services
which constitute the purpose of economics and economic policy. Economics
must be a tool to guarantee the basic quality of life of all citizens, serving the
common good, and fair and equal access to resources and services available.
Our economic policy is too one – sided, favouring the capacity of those who have
capacity already. Social issues need new emphasis.

In this regard:

- We propose that health care and education be made the priority number one
for our economic planning. The most important asset of our nation is its
people. To look after the health and education of people is, first of all, the
natural responsibility of caring for life and promoting well-being. It must also
be the first purpose of all political and economic planning. To neglect looking
after the health and education of people is morally wrong.

From an economic point of view, it is misleading to speak of the cost of those
services. It is better to speak of enhancing the quality of the human factor so
that its capacity is expanded. The dividends reaped from this investment are
immediate and long-lasting and raise the total level of productivity in a
country.

- People working in health care and education are in vocational professions,
quality in education and health care comes first of all from loving dedication
and professional commitment.

We challenge the basic assumption of our present economic outlook, namely
that, we must aim, first, at economic growth and, then, we can expand
spending on social services. Our view is that we need to spend more on
social services so that economic productivity and growth may result from it.

- We propose a review of the cost – sharing policy in respect of social services:
This public- private partnership policy leaves a lot to be desired and is a
direct contributor to social destabilisation and consolidation/intensification of
class formation in our society, where some can afford social services and
others cannot and therefore do not have access to them.

· Education policy:

Emphasis should be placed on high quality standardization of education in all
schools and avoidance of second-rate standards for the poor and the rural
people. It should be adopted for teaching and learning as well as school
management and administration at all levels of education; primary, secondary
and tertiary.
At primary school level, education should be free and the financial burden
distributed between taxes coming from central government and local
government.

At secondary school level and tertiary level the whole education policy
requires review and the planning must be government led and there should
not be the present prolification of programmes, working conditions of
teachers: Tuition must be reviewed, fee paying must be regulated, loan
systems should become more transparent and chargeable to the general tax
system and not to individual parents.

Review the examination system and base evaluation on continuous
assessment and not on a one single event of test.

· Health care policy:

We propose a return to free medical care for basic health needs at
dispensary and hospital levels and imposition of a fine on local government if
these basic services are not available in their area.

Integrate fully the non-profit making hospitals and dispensaries run by
voluntary or religious bodies, into the public system and render them run on
the same conditions.

Make health insurance for basic needs obligatory for all Tanzanians.

· Labour and employment policy:

This policy is in urgent need of a re-think. It has become a puzzle of
historical conditions and views and privileges and it affects various sectors
and groups in very different ways. The foundation should be salary income.

A living wage at the basis, not a minimum wage. Additional payments in
terms of bonuses, allowances of all types, special costs have now become
parallel income, which is neither taxed nor controlled. Those who are in the
position to grant themselves privileges do so liberally and are not willing to
give up their privileges, beginning with top level public functionaries.

Not only is the employment policy unjust, it is also unhealthy and creates a lot
of tension and discontent in society as the strikes of teachers and medical
personnel have shown recently. The forceful way these issues were handled
was simply shameful.

· General Socio-economic policy outlook:

We must have the courage to determine our needs and priorities and what
their realization demands. Donors, World Bank, IMF, benefactor countries
may, of course, have their word to say. But they should not determine the
setting of our needs and priorities and take charge of the process of
developmental transformation as has hitherto generally been the case.

In this we have ourselves to blame. Too often we are attracted by money and
are too ready to accept any conditions without thinking through the
implications and without considering the overall picture; without seriously
studying the inter-linkages between different economic and structural realities
of our country. Too often we are “project – focussed” and we fail to apply
wholesome planning for development.

Agriculture and livestock farming/keeping should be accorded their deserved
priority as they remain to be the economy’s mainstay. Food and Cash crops
suitable for each area (District or Region) should be scientifically identified;
people be assisted in undertaking serious farming through facilitation of
investments in agro-processing industries, supply of agro-inputs, agrimachinery,
marketing and extension services with a view to high quality and
quantity production.

7) Social Protection
A direct way of diminishing poverty in Tanzania is to provide social protection for
targeted and vulnerable groups. This policy could reduce hard poverty by half in
a fairly short period and at an affordable cost.
· We propose:
- A universal pension scheme for all Tanzanians above 60 years old.
- A free meal a day at primary school level.
- A monthly benefit for every handicapped child.

- We further propose a strengthened social welfare system:
social protection requires more inputs into it than money. Vulnerability
and disability require care and special consideration from all the citizens.
A society is not civilised and ethically upright if it neglects those who are
vulnerable and disabled. To respect their human dignity is part of
showing dignified human behaviour. To treat them in less than human
ways is criminal behaviour as well as morally sinful.

In calling for strengthening the social welfare system we propose to
deepen the collaboration between efforts of voluntary groups (like those
of the Small Christian Communities and Muslim Zakat system), and those
of (local and central) government . It asks for an increase in the number
of social workers who can liaise between voluntary efforts and
government institutions. To care for vulnerable people and for those with
disabilities is not an easy task and, to succeed, it requires collaboration
among actors in the whole population..

We must get convinced that this is a very noble task and in fact, the main
fruit of such a societal effort is that our society would become more
human, more morally upright and would show a beautiful quality of caring
which is a counterweight to other tendencies like greed, selfishness and
corruption. Such caring for vulnerable people should, indeed, make our
society ethically better and more human.

CONCLUSION

Finally, we propose an in-depth reflection on who or what are the “drivers” of our
economy and of our national comparative advantage and competence.
Encourage a debate led by economists on whether development is pushed by
increasing demand or by enabling increased supply? What drives our economy?
Is it investment, or increasing supply of money to create employment and goods
and infrastructures? Do we aim at increasing demand and the local consumption
so that we stimulate local production to fulfill local demand and thereby increase
our capacity to produce goods of increased value, instead of only providing raw
materials.

Listening to this debate we are convinced that we are not so much in need of
money, but in need of ideas and of hard work. A certain passivity has taken hold
of our society and so also has a thirst for easy money without work. This will not
bring us any real development.

Indeed, the country has so much intellectual talent, so many unutilized
opportunities. And, yet, she has also so many bureaucratic bottlenecks that are
exploited for selfish ends. We need to institutionalize strategic thinking and
establish an organ dedicated to the promotion and defence of our common good
and the best achievements of our national heritage.

We need a moral revival, a return to basic ethical
values and willingness to practice solidarity, care for
the common good and giving each one a place, a
chance, a responsibility.

CPT - NATIONAL TEAM