People of the South

A member of the Basarwa minority in Botswana. Photograph by Dietmar Temps.

The Basarwa have been forced off their ancestral lands. The government say it is for environmental protection, but some believe it has more to do with diamonds and tourism.

For the last decade or so, the Basarwa minority group in Botswana has been locked in hard-fought legal battles with the government over access to their ancestral lands. Thelong-marginalised Basarwa people (also known as Bushmen and San) have been in and out of court contesting their eviction from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in central Botswana, and claim the government has been using strategies of intimidation, arbitrary detention and violence to keep people off the land. Accusations have also been circulating about the state’s reasons for wanting to clear the reserve, raising complex questions regarding the tensions between development and minority rights.

1.173. ÍDASSE 2005, ”Tontem”, oleo s/ tela, 120 x 80cm

(via Tilandia - Mozambican Art Gallery)

A South African National Defence Force soldier helps hand out food and goods to people displaced by floods at Licilo, Mozambique, yesterday. However, the relief supplies are often not adequate for the needs Picture: KEVIN SUTHERLAND

(Source: timeslive.co.za)

Too many African states have been governed by the wrong kind of millionaires and even billionaires – those who have “earned” their money while being in office, extracting resources from the state in various ways. Indeed, one of the challenges for African political development has been that state office has too often been seen as the only viable road to personal enrichment in the context of quite limited market opportunities.

But as followers of South African politics now know, billionaire (in terms of South African currency at least) Cyril Ramaphosa was just elected deputy president of the ANC. Ramaphosa was a founding member of the National Union of Mineworkers, and his leadership of the 1980s strikes contributed to the fall of apartheid. His trajectory is reminiscent of Brazil’s “Lula,” a former union leader, who served two successful terms as state president after a few failed bids for office. And yet, Cyril largely stayed on the fringes of politics for more than a decade to join the brave new world of black empowerment, through various holding companies and corporate leadership positions.

So what does a guy do when he’s worth, according to Forbes, over $600 million (more than 5 billion South African Rand)? He found himself elected to the number two spot of the somewhat embattled, but still extremely dominant ANC. As pointed out in today’s Mail and Guardian, this does not necessarily mean he will become the next deputy president ofgovernment (though re-elected party president Jacob Zuma surely will take another turn as state president), but either way, he has now reached a new level of political power that had seemed his destiny at the dusk of apartheid government.

What might it mean to have a guy in office who really doesn’t need the spoils of corruption? Unfortunately, of course, “need” can vary, and for some, 600 million might not seem like enough. But since I live in a city that’s been governed pretty darn well by a billionaire, I’d like to contemplate the optimistic scenario that Ramaphosa could help the ANC to chart a better course, serving the public interest in ways that have become increasingly rare. (Hopefully, he won’t push too hard on downsizing the size of soft drinks…) In fact, too many of the ANC’s moral and good governance core, including Desmond Tutu, Trevor Manuel, and many others, have chosen the exit option. Ramaphosa could inject some new ideas about process and efficiency, and quality service delivery; including the South African private sector’s desperate need for a better educated and better trained workforce. Most important, all of that money in the bank just might help him push back against the increasingly pervasive practice of self-enrichment through sweetheart deals, and private perks from the public purse.

streetetiquette:

[ Travel Etiquette Luanda, Angola ]

Additional photos from our trip.

Check out the full coverage including four videos and more photos

Thanks for the support.

(via dynamicafrica)

The Mozambican economy continues to “expand at a rapid rate,” bucking the global trend and may soon become one of the most dynamic in the world, even outperforming rates of growth in China, according to Portuguese bank BPI.

Mozambique, the bank said in its latest report on the country, “is resisting a slowdown in world economic activity, maintaining a high rate of expansion as a result of the recent development of the mining sector and increasing influxes of foreign investment into the country.”

“Despite starting from a reduced basis, the country may soon become one of the countries with biggest economic growth, able to exceed rates of growth recorded in China,” it said.

In its latest assessment of the Mozambican economy, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) raised its forecast for economic growth to 7.5 percent in 2012 and 8.4 percent in 2013.

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) recently raise its projection for growth in Mozambique to 7.4 percent, or 0.2 percentage points higher than its previous projection of 7.2 percent.

Exports are driving growth. Forty percent of current exports are aluminium but with coal, which began to be exported in 2011, accounting for an increasingly significant share.

Mozambique “may emerge as the world’s main coal exporter due to its large reserves,” despite constraints related to a weak logistics base to carry the coal to ports on the Indian Ocean.

However, the document said, political instability in South Africa, a great economic partner that has seen its growth projections lowered, “may negatively affect Mozambique’s international trade over the next few months.”

Sandra Cordeiro - Luandense

dynamicafrica:

Come Dine with Me SA is far more than bad TV — it’s a fascinating look into the state of race relations

Watching the show becomes an exercise in judging citizens of the new South Africa as they try to impress each another and viewers with their gastric fixes. In the Pretoria mopani worm episode, I found myself ultimately disliking all four contestants — perhaps my misanthropy is beyond repair.

The accounts that each candidate  presents of themselves don’t help; people rarely get themselves right. Or it could be that the unnatural exposure fails to do justice to the poor, no doubt complicated, suckers.

And suck on food they certainly do, mostly on fairly plain dishes given foreign, exotic names in European languages — French has been the most prominent, as one would expect of upwardly mobile globalisers. Durban’s Millie serves up a chicken pie Frenchified as a vol-au-vent, although she seemed quite likeable in other respects.

(read more)

When the Rains Come

French illustrator, Malika Favre was commissioned by MUM’S to illustrate this colourful and educational children’s book titled When the Rains Come. The book showcases the daily life and the challenges facing Malawians, particularly mothers, nurses and women of Malawi. The illustrations come with writings by author Tom Pow and is aimed at raising funds

LUANDA, Nov 27 2012 (IPS) - “In Luanda there are no matches.” This was the first line of a report written by Nobel Literature laureate Gabriel García Márquez in the Angolan capital in 1977.

Soap, milk, salt and aspirin were other products that were hard to come by in a city that, he wrote, “surprised” visitors with “its modern, shining beauty,” although it was actually “a dazzling empty shell.”

The emphasis that the Colombian writer put on the shortages suffered by the war-torn country injured the pride of the Angolans who read his report. But he effectively described the chaos inherited from Portuguese colonialism and the war of independence, a year and a half after Angola became independent.

Today, 35 years later, it is the excesses and glaring contrasts that shock the visitor to this city in southwestern Africa. Shiny new cars on brand-new roads and highways lined by thousands of still-empty or half-built office buildings, apartment blocks and residential towers stand in sharp contrast to the sprawling slums around the city.

Signs on construction sites written in Chinese clearly reflect the Asian giant’s high level of participation in the construction of today’s new Angola.

The most ambitious project carried out by companies from China is the Nova Cidade de Kilamba (Kilamba New City), a huge development designed to house half a million people, 20 km south of downtown Luanda.

When it is completed, the new neighbourhood will have more than 80,000 apartments built for large families – the norm in Angola – in buildings five to 13 storeys high. The development is also to be fitted out with dozens of schools, child care centres, health clinics and shops.

Nearly one-quarter of the buildings have been completed. But almost all of them are empty, even though more than 3,000 apartments were already available when the development was inaugurated in July 2011.

Also involved in building the new city are Brazilian firms, especially construction giant Odebrecht, which is in charge of key projects like electricity and water grids and the construction of roads.

The foreign presence in the massive new developments “is not something to be admired, because it shows that there are no national companies with the capacity to build them,” said one of Angola’s most prominent writers, Artur Pestana, better known as Pepetela, who is also a professor of sociology