by Luso on May 15th, 2012
Arms deal experts Andrew Feinstein (Shadow World) and Raenette Taljaard (Up in Arms) will join Guy Lamb and Noel Kututwa on Tuesday 15 May in an Amnesty International panel discussion on the global arms trade.
The discussion, entitled “South Africa and the Regulation of the International Arms Trade”, will be held at the University of Cape Town (Lecture Theatre 2A. Leslie Social Sciences Building) from 8 to 10 PM. Don’t miss it!
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by Lindsay on May 7th, 2012
Greg Mills, a prolific public intellectual and advisor to governments, and Terence McNamee, formerly of the The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, will be talking to David Smith, The Guardian‘s Africa Correspondent, about their book On the Fault Line, at the Troyeville Hotel tomorrow evening.
On the Fault Line is a fascinating collection of essays on the management of fragile states’ many fault lines including chapters on South Africa, Iran, Congo and Canada.
The event forms part of the Troyeville Hotel’s dinner-booze-and-book club and costs R179 per person (including dinner).
See you there!
Event Details
- Date: Tuesday, 08 May 2012
- Time: 7:00 PM for 7:30 PM
- Venue: The Troyeville Hotel,
25 Bezuidenhout Street,
Troyeville,
Johannesburg | Map
- Guest Speaker: David Smith
- Cost: R179 (includes dinner, excludes drinks)
- Bookings: Essential – laurence@troyevillehotel.co.za, 011 402 7709
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by Sophy on May 7th, 2012
By Terry Crawford-Browne for the Sunday Times:
My second book Eye on the Diamonds takes its title from a BAE Systems front company, Red Diamond Trading Company, which paid some of the bribes for South Africa’s arms deal to ANC “black diamonds”.
In Eye on the Money I recorded that ANC intelligence operatives back in 1999 informed me that “the arms deal was just the tip of the iceberg that concerned oil deals, the taxi recapitalisation process, tollroads, drivers’ licences, Cell C, the Coega development, diamond and drug smuggling, weapons trafficking and money laundering”. The common denominator, they added, was “kickbacks to the ANC in return for political protection”.
South Africa has since suffered several “oilgate” scandals. The e-tolling scandal is with us. Now, I focus on diamonds.
Lord Randolph Churchill (Sir Winston Churchill’s father), when visiting Kimberley’s Big Hole in 1891, commented in astonishment: “All this for the vanity of women.”
A quick-witted woman bystander replied: “And the depravity of men.”
That woman was correct. Diamonds have long been linked with wars, greed and human misery. The famous Koh-ni-noor diamond dates back about 4000 years but, as bounty after the Sikh wars, it represents the British imperial conquest of India. Similarly, the Cullinan diamond found in 1905 represents British conquest of South Africa.
The foremost myth around diamonds is that they are rare and valuable, indeed “priceless”. British royalty and Hollywood film stars are employed to promote the notion that “diamonds are forever”.
Sex, diamonds, oil, war and money are an explosive combination. Diamonds around the world are symbols of marital commitment and of national security. As James Bond confirmed, diamonds are also an essential commodity for the war business.
During the 1994/1995 Cameron Commission of Inquiry into Armscor, it was reported that De Beers was annually buying about $500-million worth of Angolan diamonds to fund Unita’s purchases of weapons from South Africa. Unsuccessfully, I asked the commission to intervene.
The issue of “blood diamonds” in Sierra Leone ignited public concerns a few years later. A consequence was the Kimberley Process in 2000 to certify that retailed diamonds can be euphemistically described as “conflict-free”.
By 2009 it was evident, primarily because of the Marange diamond field in Zimbabwe, that the process is a farce. NGOs have withdrawn in disgust. Given slave conditions in which diamonds are mined before being cut and polished by Indian child labour, it is increasingly questioned what young bride wants “blood on her finger”.
Diamonds were the rocks upon which South Africa’s economy and the apartheid system were founded. The migrant labour system originated in Kimberley and was then adopted by the gold mines.
In canny recognition that the diamond era has passed, the Oppenheimer family in November sold its 40% shareholding in De Beers for “only” US$5.1-billion. De Beers, which once controlled 95% of the diamond market, simply cannot keep up with all the new discoveries in Botswana, Russia, Australia, Canada, Angola, Zimbabwe and other countries.
Israelis now dominate the industry. Uncut diamonds provide the ultimate in money-laundering opportunities, hence the involvement of the mafia, al-Qaeda and Russian-Israeli gangsters who migrated to Israel after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Israeli footprint in Africa is heavy. The DRC supplies 75% of “industrial diamonds” and, against mining concessions, President Joseph Kabila relies on Israeli security companies to stay in power.
Israeli diamond operators are also financing the Marange diamond field, thus funding President Robert Mugabe.
Cheap boart is essential for machine tools and high-energy laser technology for modern-generation surveillance equipment and the drones in which the Israeli armaments industry now excels.
In air-conditioned comfort thousands of kilometres away, a computer technician presses a button and an entire community is obliterated. The war business has degenerated into a PlayStation mentality in which organised crime operates under the guise of “national security”. Diamonds are now an essential element in cyberwarfare.
As an American graffiti artist last month controversially illustrated on the wall around Jewel City in Johannesburg, “diamonds are a woman’s best friend, and a man’s worst enemy”.
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by Luso on May 4th, 2012
Verdict: carrots
For hundreds of years, outsiders have been divided sharply between Afro-pessimists who believe that Africa is permanently programmed to fail and Afro-optimists who see it as a cornucopia that could produce unimaginable wealth. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the slave trade made Europe rich, and Timbuktu was believed to be paved with gold. But then Africa became the “Dark Continent.” In the 1960s, it was the rising giant while Asia was seen as a basket case. By 2000, the Economist was calling Africa the “Hopeless Continent.”
Just now, most African countries have enjoyed more than a decade of economic growth at rates we in the West can only dream about. At the same time Congo, the massive heart of the continent, has suffered the most murderous conflict since World War II. Next door in Uganda, the capital Kampala has boomed while less than 200 miles to the north Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army has abducted children and committed appalling atrocities. Africa is so big and so diverse that it contains both horrendous disasters and extraordinary successes.
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by Luso on Apr 26th, 2012
Verdict: carrot
Thirteen years ago the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, most urban Zimbabweans and the international media were shrill in their condemnation when peasants and war veterans, soldiers, public servants and elites invaded white-owned commercial farms. The Western media was hysterical in its criticism of Robert Mugabe’s “land grab” that had transformed Zimbabwe from a “bread basket” into a “basket case”.
It was in these charged and uncertain times that my father, a man who had somehow managed to remain apolitical and indifferent, sat me down and said words along the lines of: “My child, Mugabe might be a dictator. In fact, I do not care whether he stays or goes, but as far as the land issue is concerned, I think he has a point. I was already a young boy when the Rhodesian government moved us from our fertile ancestral land to this rocky wilderness. What Mugabe is doing is right. It is called justice.”
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- Zimbabwe’s Land Reform: Myths and Realities by Ian Scoones, Nelson Marongwe, Blasio Mavedzenge, Jacob Mahenehene, Felix Murimbarimba and Chrispen Sukume
EAN: 9781770099852
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by Sophy on Apr 19th, 2012
Earlier this week, James Ibori, former governor of Nigeria’s Delta state, was sentenced to 13-years in prison by London’s Southwark Crown Court.
Ibori, an ex-convict consider to be one of the country’s most influential politicians, pleaded guilty to charges of corruption and fraud after the extent of his embezzlement was revealed. In an article for The Guardian, Nigeria’s Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, author of I Do Not Come to You by Chance, comments on the sentencing of Ibori in the context of the pervasive corruption among Nigeria’s political elite.
According to Nwaubani, many Nigerian leaders are guilty of the belief that they are “Somebodys” who are “born to own” and control. While many celebrate Ibori’s sentencing, Nwaubani believes that it changes little as there is “a multitude of latent Iboris temporarily keeping themselves occupied with noisy calls for reform”.
This week, former Nigerian state governor James Ibori was sentenced by a British judge to 13 years in prison. He is guilty on two counts. One is corruption – a crime of which many other Nigerian leaders are guilty. But the second is his belief that some people are “somebodys” who are born to own, control and enjoy while others are “nobodys” whose lot is to serve, toil and endure – a mindset shared by most Nigerians, at every stratum of our society.
Here, the politician can’t accept that “nobodys” like his driver and cobbler are expected to appoint him to the throne. Instead, he seeks the anointing of powerful godfathers, and then arranges to rig the elections. The nurse takes home the bedding donated by charity to the government hospital wards; she knows that the wretched patients are used to sleeping on sheet-less beds in their homes anyway. The newspaper editor would rather make a lead story of the minister’s mother-in-law’s 80th birthday ceremony than of the fact that 400 children died of lead poisoning in Zamfara state. The wealthy madam doesn’t bother that the nannies accompanying her prim children are dressed in rags; she can afford to clothe them nicely, but then, she can also afford to cast pearls on swine. The dead body lies in the street until it bloats and bursts, because no person of worth has reported a missing relative.
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Photo courtesy The Guardian
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by Carolyn on Apr 19th, 2012
Verdict: carrot
‘State failure does not mean country failure.”
These are the words of Mary Harper, who believes that Somalia is a failed state but argues eloquently that it is not a failed country.
The reality is that the Somalia most of us know is a place of lawlessness, terrorists, pirates, kidnapping and ransom payments. But in Getting Somalia Wrong Harper does what few others do — she delves deep beneath the surface of the usual stories and presents us with a complex picture of a country that can make sense only if there is some understanding of its history.
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by Luso on Apr 18th, 2012
Verdict: carrot
John Kaiser’s body was found in a ditch near Naivasha, Kenya, in August 2000. A former United States paratrooper, he had served for many years as a missionary priest in Kisii and Masai areas, building churches and serving congregations. The joint Kenya Police and FBI investigation, in an exercise in political expediency, settled on suicide, citing Kaiser’s assumed history of manic depression and his rift with the church authorities.
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Verdict: stick
Apr
