Africa

I have been, over the past year or so, making a slow conversion to free software. It started when I interviewed Richard Stallman and tried to get ZNet moving in the direction of free software, along with some help from my friend Tarek. It's been a long process and I don't want to minimize the difficulties, but I have decided to aim for full conversion once Windows Vista replaces Windows XP to the point that XP is no longer supported (I'm typing this from an XP machine).

Stephen Lewis did the Massey Lectures this year. Previous Massey lecturers (that I've read and loved) include Noam Chomsky, Thomas King, and (that I've read and found interesting) Richard Lewontin and John Ralston Saul.

For those who don't know who Stephen Lewis is, he's the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. He's also been a politician in Canada, a very important activist for Canada's social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP).

The Darfur conflict, much-hyped in the media, really began to take off *after* the Sudanese regime had signed a peace agreement with the strongest rebel group, the SPLA, in the south. The peace agreement with the SPLA, in which the long-time rebel leader, John Garang, became part of the government (Vice-President) brought the longest and most brutal part of the Sudanese civil war to a halt. The side effect was that it freed up the regime's hands to intensify the counterinsurgency in Darfur, leading to the Darfur crisis.

The living standards of the Zimbabweans have plummeted as the country’s gross domestic product has shrunk by more than 40 percent in the past five years, so the mainstream media tells us.

My name is Mandisi Majavu, am joining up forces with with Justin Podur. I’m based in South Africa, Durban; and predictably my blog will focus mainly on African politics. As a philosophy student, I like to practise my philosophical skills from time to time, and so tend to ramble about nothing. So please bear with me.

I watched Hotel Rwanda last night.

It was a good movie on multiple levels.

Nick Nolte played the person who was supposed to be Romeo Dallaire, and he played the helpless hapless general's role well. At one point he's explaining to the main character how the world won't intervene because the West thinks Africans are dirt. Such a raw acknowledgement of racism is rare.

Sorry for returning to Christmas musings so soon, but I have been hearing that Live Aid/Band Aid song far too often recently. You know the one with George Michael, Boy George, Bono, etc., from the 1980s? Bono's line in it is: "Well, tonight thank god it's them, instead of you..."

I don't know the whole story of this Band Aid effort but I know that it went on during the famine in Ethiopia. I also know that the singers were motivated by decent intentions, as people like Bono have been since.

And yet, there is something wrong with that song, isn't there?

George Monbiot has an important article - it seems the horrific Congo War has restarted, with Rwanda re-invading the Congo and ending the fragile peace process.

I wrote a background piece on the Congo conflict some time ago -- ZNet Africa Watch has a number of good pieces.

The fabulous magazine Left Turn invited me to update my September essay on Sudan, so I totally revamped it in light of the recent peace accords. Below is an early draft. For the final version, get Left Turn!

I have appreciated David Peterson's blogging about the 'humanitarians' and their 'interventions' about Sudan. So when I read his latest, referring to my own recent piece on the subject (a piece which made good use of his own previous blogging), I thought it a good time to blog on the topic myself.