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Chinua Achebe funeral celebrates revered Nigerian author

Monica Mark — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:37:10 GMT

Pomp-filled ceremony betrays Things Fall Apart author's dislike of grandeur, but fails to override national outpouring of love

The red carpet was rolled out, the dignitaries arrived in a whirlwind of helicopters and armed guards, and the obituaries poured in as Nigeria buried the revered writer Chinua Achebe on Thursday.

There were dancing troupes, a choir, red-bow-tied trumpeters, keyboard players and people darting around filming on their tablets. At one point, keen not to miss any opportunity, the grieving audience was counselled to buy a documentary on the celebrated author, whose terse prose did perhaps more than any other writer's to project African realities into the minds of westerners.

It was exactly the sort of pomp the literary titan hated, and often ripped apart with the witty, acerbic tip of his pen.

Achebe died on 21 March, aged 82. If he avoided a state funeral, it wasn't for lack of trying from the government. Despite rebuffing national honours twice over his distrust at an oil-fed elite who left the country a "bankrupt and lawless fiefdom", the administration of Goodluck Jonathan tried to hold a state funeral, before capitulating to the three hour-long service in the white-washed St Philips Anglican church in Achebe's hometown of Ogidi.

The writer was no stranger to such irony. His first manuscript was nearly lost to history when publishers in London thought the handwritten pages from Africa were a joke. Fifty years later, Things Fall Apart, an anti-colonialist anthem with a title borrowed from a Yeates poem, is still the biggest-selling novel from Africa of all time. It tells the story of his Igbo tribe's disastrous first experience of European colonialism.

Despite his success, Achebe turned down all offers to teach creative writing courses, saying: "I don't know how it's done."

In 2004, he declined a national award. He refused again a second time, in 2011, saying: "The reasons for rejecting the offer when it was first made have not been addressed, let alone solved."

But this time the author was in no position to resist the state honours being conferred on him. President Jonathan reminded funeral attendees of the author's criticisms of politicians and corruption. After the singing, the long speeches and prayers, this was a moment about which many had been holding their breath.

"For those of you that read The Trouble with Nigeria, Achebe told us that there is nothing wrong with Nigeria. The problem is the political leadership," he said, waving a copy of the novel.

A toe-curling pause followed and Achebe's family looked on with unreadable expressions.

Jonathan went on to read a passage that highlighted the political corruption and manipulation that had afflicted the African oil giant since independence. "That was in Chinua's last book," the former professor said. "All of us must work hard to change this country."

The audience applauded cautiously.

Ghana's president, John Mahama, seated beside Jonathan, waved as his own name was read out among a long list of political dignitaries.

"During a recent discussion about Achebe, a political contemporary asked me if I felt as though I had somehow become part of the system that we so bitterly decried in our youth," Mahama wrote in a recent tribute. "'No,' I replied without hesitation. 'I entered politics because I wanted to be a part of changing that system.'"

Whether people across Africa agree or whether, once again, Achebe may have slyly exposed a ruling elite is a question for history.

Still, only the most hardened cynic could fail to have been moved by some of the celebrations of Achebe's life. For days, young people have marched in the sweltering heat with banners commemorating the author. As they sang lilting hymns at the funeral, some of the red-gowned choir members put their arms around each other.

Three women held photos of a smiling Achebe as they sang an operatic re-enactment of traditional theatre. At one point, one knelt in front of the gleaming coffin topped with white roses.

Behind all the gloss, what was left for many was a simple celebration of a deeply admired man.

"I have never seen so many people, even white people, dancing to our [Igbo] music. I cannot tell the number of people, but they are more than 10 villages put together," said 52-year-old farmer Ike Dimelu. "The world is in our village today because of Chinua Achebe.

"I may never see a lot of people like this in one place again. I've danced and I still want to dance," he said over the noise of drumming and honking cars.

Like hundreds of others, he wore one of the blue prints emblazoned with a serene-looking Achebe, red cap atop his head, bearing the message: "The literary icon lives on."

Monica Mark

Suicide attacks rock Niger

Afua Hirsch — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:17:30 GMT

Blasts at military and mining targets, killing at least 17 soldiers, spark fears of spread of al-Qaida-linked violence in region

Suicide bombers have launched simultaneous attacks on military and mining targets in Niger, prompting renewed fears that attacks by al-Qaida-linked jihadists could spill across borders in West Africa's Sahara desert.

Cars packed with explosives were detonated at the same time almost 100 miles apart, killing at least 17 soldiers at a military barracks in Agadez, and injuring dozens at a plant owned by French nuclear firm Areva in Arlit.

Niger's defence minister said the attacks were carried out by terrorist groups believed to have links with neighbouring Mali and Libya. "We suspect armed groups linked to al-Qaida, maybe operating in Mali but who have come through southern Libya," said Mahamadou Karidjo. "The situation is under control and the search for the other attackers is under way."

The Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) – one of the groups that triggered a war in Mali after seizing control of the country's north – has claimed responsibility for the attack.

"Thanks to Allah, we carried out two operations against the enemies of Islam in Niger," MUJAO spokesman Abu Walid Saharoui told AFP. "We attacked France, and Niger because of its co-operation with France in the war against the Sahara."

The attacks are the latest to heighten concerns about the effects of the war on Mali on neighbouring countries in the sparsely populated Sahara region, which has seen a burgeoning growth in jihadist activity supported by kidnappings and the trade in drugs and other smuggled goods over its porous desert borders.

In January Algeria was drawn deeper into the crisis in Mali when a group led by former al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar crossed from Mali into Algeria and took more than 800 people hostage at an oil plant at In Aménas, killing 39.

Claims that Thursday's attack involved militants travelling from southern Libya come after the Guardian reported last month that southern Libya is becoming an important route for militants being pushed out of Mali and taking advantage of instability since the fall of Col Gaddafi to plan further attacks.

Witnesses say the attacks happened as residents of Agadez and Arlit prepared for morning prayers around 5am. A security expert in Niger's capital Niamey told the Guardian that one of the attackers was still armed with explosives and is holding a soldier hostage.

"We are hearing that four of the five of the attackers were killed by their own explosives, but that the last is continuing the attack and is holding a soldier hostage," said Moussa Akfar.

Areva, the world's second largest uranium producer, said that its mine was "badly damaged" forcing it to stop production.

Although Areva has been attacked by AQIM in the past – with five French workers taken hostage at the site in 2010 – the latest attacks are the first of their kind in Niger. Niger has been singled out as a target for its role in the military intervention in Mali, for its relationship with France – which obtains 20% of its uranium from Niger – and with the US, which

signed an agreement this year to establish a new military base in the country.

This week Nigeria, which borders Niger to the south, asked Niger for help fighting its militant Islamist group Boko Haram, members of whom are reported to be operating in southern Niger. Last month Niger's military participated in a raid against Boko Haram fighters in the Nigerian town of Baga, near the border with Chad.

"These attacks are an inevitable consequence of the decisions our government has taken," said Akfar. "But our intervention in Mali was not a mistake – we share borders with Mali, and if we had not intervened, the crisis there would have affected us anyway.

"We are a poor country, but now we are going to have to find the means of heightening our security, or else face further attacks."

Afua Hirsch

South Africa: Clash of Booker titans

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:57:00 GMT

With freedom of expression under threat in South Africa again, Anton Harber recalls an electric confrontation between two Booker prize winners, JM Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer, about the censorship of a third – Salman Rushdie

It started on a Thursday midday, when the organiser of the Weekly Mail Book Week put the phone down, walked across the newsroom and interrupted me and my co-editor. "I think we might have a problem," she said. It was October 1988 and the "problem" was Salman Rushdie, due to arrive a week later to headline the event. "He says his book has been banned in India, he is getting death threats," she said. "I asked him what he wrote about and he said, 'I ripped into the Qur'an'."

Ours was a small, anti-apartheid newspaper, the Weekly Mail. Gail Berhmann was an artist who was organising our annual literary event, with Rushdie billed as this year's star guest.

We had other problems too. A few months earlier, we had received a five-page letter from the government warning that we would be closed down under State of Emergency regulations if we continued to muster support for revolutionary organisations and foment feelings of hatred for the security forces. Shortly after that they closed another "alternative" newspaper, the New Nation, for 13 weeks, and we thumbed our noses at them by running articles New Nation had intended to publish under the front page headline "What New Nation Would Have Said".

We were young and cheeky and enjoying a time of rebellion and defiance of what was still a formidable apartheid machinery. Two weeks later, a special Government Gazette was published giving us a formal warning to desist or face closure.

Another warning arrived in April and the government closed another paper, South. There was little doubt that we were next. The only question was for how long they would shut us down. We could survive a couple of months without any income, but after that we would have to find jobs. We threw everything we had into a campaign to get the government to limit the closure, if not to stop it.

We had every Fleet Street editor sign a letter to the South African government. We visited three embassies a day in Pretoria to urge them to protest. The formidable British Ambassador, Sir Robin Renwick, organised a European Community démarche. US Ambassador Edward Perkins issued an unusual statement of support. Stephen Spender of Index on Censorship organised an advert which appeared across the country with the names of 500 journalists and prominent figures protesting against the threat.

We were consumed with this campaign, tapping the power of local and international solidarity. At the same time, we were putting out our weekly newspaper with a small and nervous staff trying to cover the popular uprising that was spreading across the country at that time. And the Book Week was upon us.

The festival was themed "Censorship under the State of Emergency" and the programme headlined the Heinrich Heine quote, "Wherever they burn books, they will also in the end burn people." It was apposite to our situation, and it would certainly become appropriate to Rushdie's. Also, we had been through months of difficult negotiations to secure agreement from the broad anti-apartheid movement to allow for Rushdie's visit, and did not want to relinquish the breakthrough this represented.

For two decades there had been a sport, arms, cultural and growing economic boycott of apartheid South Africa, and at the Weekly Mail we broadly backed it (within the limitations of a law which prevented active support). But there had been long debate about contradictions in the cultural boycott and the fact that, because conservatives easily flouted it, it sometimes affected anti-apartheid organisations more than others. The previous year, Oliver Tambo, the leader of the exiled ANC, which championed the sanctions, had cautiously and tentatively announced that they would try a selective boycott: they would allow progressive artists, writers and academics to be hosted by non-racial, anti-apartheid organisations, under the right circumstances.

Approval came just a few weeks before the event, and with the anti-apartheid writers' union, Cosaw, we sent a joint invitation to Rushdie. We announced the event in our paper, with Booker Prize Winners Speak, which would bring Rushdie together with Gordimer and JM Coetzee, as a highlight. You could not hope for a better combination of literary stars and it sold out quickly. In Johannesburg, Rushdie would deliver a keynote on censorship, read from his latest work and take part in a panel discussion.

I was particularly thrilled. I had consumed and loved Rushdie's two early masterpieces, Midnight's Children and Shame. There could be no better candidate to speak about colonialism, literature, censorship and freedom. Besides, the Booker Prize was being announced a few days before our event, and the Whitbread while he was here, and his latest book was tipped for both.

Then came the Thursday call which alerted us to "a problem".

I got hold of a copy of the book and gave it to a Muslim friend, Ghaleb Cachalia, asking him to read it and tell me how serious the problem was. He opened it up, read a few lines and gasped; read a few more and frowned. It seemed to be critical of the Qur'an on almost every page, he said. He took it home and called in the morning to say he had been up all night reading it, and it was brilliant and provocative. It was bound to cause trouble.

On the Friday, as the mosques emptied, we began to receive angry calls and threats of violence, at the office and at some of our homes. The Africa Muslim Agency called for the book to be banned, the invitation withdrawn and apologies offered. The Islamic Missionary Society said that "there was every likelihood that he [Rushdie] would be assaulted and that blood will flow. There are secret Muslim hit squads who have vowed to avenge the honour of the Holy Prophet Muhammed." The Islamic Council said Rushdie had to face the "justifiable wrath and anger" of hundreds of millions of Muslims. "His presence in South Africa is most unwelcome and it will only aggravate the injury has inflicted on the Muslims. Those who associate with him in South Africa will be judged accordingly."

We issued a statement: "We are most perturbed to learn that Mr Rushdie's book has caused religious controversy. We had no intention of offending anybody's religious sensibility. However, we have invited him to highlight the issue of censorship and the situation in this country – and that need remains stronger than ever."

Then Rushdie phoned to say he had a cold and was pulling out. He had just returned from an abortive trip to Toronto where he faced massive protests. "I fell ill. I began to doubt the wisdom of going halfway across the world to have a fight I was already having at home," he wrote later.

I called him and said in no uncertain terms that many people had stuck their necks out for him and he could not let us down. He agreed to come. A delegation of about a dozen Muslim leaders came to our offices to try and hammer out a solution, along with Gordimer and Cosaw representatives. Among them were prominent Muslims who were sympathetic to our plight, but fearful of what would happen if Rushdie came. They were eager to find a compromise, but were outnumbered by the militants.

The meeting went on for six hours. Gordimer later said that there was understanding that their faith had been offended; but so had ours: "Freedom of speech was as much an article of faith for us as Islam was for you," she said. It was an unexpected challenge: could we hold up a secular article of faith against a mainstream religious one? Was our allegiance to free expression one of "faith"?

I was called out early on because a sheriff of the court had arrived with a letter from the minister: "The production and publishing, during the period from the date of publishing of this order up to and including 28 November 1988, of all further issues of the periodical Weekly Mail is hereby totally prohibited." It was the blow we had feared, but it was also a victory. The ban was for only a month, and we knew we could survive that.

Meanwhile, the meeting with the Muslim leadership broke up without a resolution. The next day Cosaw withdrew their support for Rushdie's visit "with regret".

Gordimer phoned London to convey the view that, to avoid violence and division within the liberation movement, he should not come. We issued a statement: "This decision will bring shame and disrepute upon the progressive movement in this country, and we condemn it in the strongest terms. It is a victory for intolerance." It was quite a moment to criticise our friends, but we were angry and upset.

There was a suggestion that Rushdie address the Cape Town book week via telephone, but the publishers and bookstores which backed the event opposed it, fearing the repercussions. Mongane Wally Serote, one of our best-known writers in exile and head of the ANC cultural desk, did so instead. Again, a small victory in the face of defeat: getting a banned exile's voice was some compensation for Rushdie's absence, a lesser but not insignificant show of anti-censorship defiance.

But there was a deep sense of discomfort, and it was the inscrutable and unpredictable JM Coetzee, in his quiet, soft voice, who provided the fireworks which ignited one of the most electric encounters in literary South Africa. "We have been overtaken by the politics of writing in an ugly, violent and unexpected form," he told the Cape Town gathering. The "disinviting" of Rushdie left the Weekly Mail organisers "more than a little embarrassed" and "the South African intellectual community, among which I count myself, comes out of the affair looking pretty stupid", he said. He asked how we had ever got ourselves into the position where the writers' union had a veto over our event.

"I believe and will continue to believe until I am otherwise convinced that some kind of trade-off took place in the smoke-filled room, some kind of calling-in of debts, some kind of compromise or bargain or settlement in which the Rushdie visit was given up for the sake of the unity of the anti-apartheid alliance and for the sake of not making life too difficult for Muslims in the alliance," he said.

With the freedom of a non-aligned writer unlikely to have ever joined a body like Cosaw, sitting alongside the firmly-aligned Gordimer, he lambasted everyone involved: the Weekly Mail, "which stands by the principal of free speech, but finds that it can live with the fact of free speech for selected persons only"; the booksellers who opposed the telephone link with Rushdie; Cosaw "which is dedicated to freedom of expression, as long as it does not threaten the unity of the struggle"; and by implication Gordimer.

Why, he asked, did he still involve himself in this "sorry spectacle"? It was to register his protests against the silencing of Rushdie, and to say certain things about fundamentalism.

What followed started quite plainly and mildly but gathered pace into what must be one of the most eloquent and devastating denunciations in literary record: "Islamic fundamentalism in its activist manifestation is bad news. Religious fundamentalism in general is bad news. We know about religious fundamentalism in South Africa. Calvinist fundamentalism has been an unmitigated force of benightedness in our history.

"Lebanon, Israel, Ireland, South Africa, wherever there is a bleeding sore on the body of the world, the same hard-eyed narrow-minded fanatics are busy, indifferent to life, in love with death. Behind them always come the mullahs, the rabbis, the predikante (ministers), giving their blessings."

And then he turned on the writers' union, represented that evening by Gordimer, who was looking shell-shocked. "These words are addressed particularly to Cosaw. Don't get involved with such people, don't get into alliances to them. There is nothing more inimical to writing than the spirit of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism abhors the play of signs, the endlessness of writing. Fundamentalism means nothing more or less than going back to an origin and staying there. It stands for one founding book and thereafter no more books.

"As the various books of the various fundamentalisms, each claiming to be the one true book, fantasise themselves to be signed in fire or engraved in stone, so they aspire to strike dead every rival book, petrifying the sinuous, protean, forward-gliding life of the letters on their pages, turning them into physical objects to be anathematised, things of horror not to be touched, not to be looked upon. This is what Rushdie wrote about in Satanic Verses and why the fundamentalists of Islam want him dead. Rushdie presents the prophet not as prophet but as writer.

"Cosaw ought to decide where it stands on the central question: on the right of Mr Rushdie to write against authority, and ought then to act according to its decision."

He ended with a powerful questioning of the values of the liberation struggle, one which resonates powerfully today when – 25 years later, living in democracy and freedom – the ANC government threatens freedom of expression. "I am here with my tail between my legs like the rest of the participants, like the organisers too. That loose and fragile alliance of people, those who believe in freedom of expression and those who believe in freedom of expression for some people, we have suffered a crushing defeat.

"There are smiles in the mosques, there are chuckles in the corridors of Pretoria, where they issued Rushdie with an entry visa and then watched as we proceeded to self-destruct. We are so demoralised, afraid to pick up a phone and dial Mr Rushdie's London number for fear someone will throw a bomb at us, that we have no sense of whether the Rushdie affair will in a year's time will have vanished from peoples' memories or in a year's time will go down in history as the moment after which people simply got tired of pretending there was any place for the liberal shibboleths like freedom of expression in the anti-apartheid struggle."

There was long and extended applause. Gordimer's small frame and hard-bitten face was frozen solid.

She took the microphone and said she was "surprised, shocked and distressed" that, having come to speak out about the treatment of Rushdie, she now needed to defend Cosaw. "I think that it is very surprising to me that my friend and colleague John Coetzee, without really discussing it with me or anyone in Cosaw, has sprung this public attack upon us. But that is a democratic right and that is what we are here to defend."

She said that his and the audiences views were based on incomplete facts, partly as a result of the Weekly Mail being banned and unable to relay the details of what happened. She described how Cosaw had stood firm in the meeting with the Muslim leadership and sought a compromise which did not prevent Rushdie's from coming; how they had attempted to at least get assurances that he would not be harmed. But the threats were real and the violence imminent. "What would you have done?" she asked. "Do you think Cosaw has the right to bring a man here to risk his life and safety for our principles?

"We did not think so and neither did the majority of people in the Weekly Mail." She was speaking for us, though we had distanced ourselves from the rude dis-invitation. In any case, our presence at the meeting had been disrupted by the simultaneous state attack on us.

She challenged Coetzee's argument that the final question of whether to risk the violence should have been left with Rushdie, rather than to actively disinvite him. "What a copout? How was he to judge? He had not met these people, he had not seen the threats, the dangerous harassments, the notes under the door ... We could not agree to thrust the decision upon him and go out of it with clean hands."

Gordimer's applause was more polite and respectful than enthusiastic. It was, after all, an elite, largely white, Cape Town literary audience. Here were two of the world's most eminent and engaged writers, both passionately anti-apartheid, both with impeccable anti-censorship records, one who lived and practiced aloofly, who was uncomfortable in public activities and was decidedly not a joiner, the other who was active in protest circles and was now embroiled in liberation movement realpolitik, having to explain an organisational decision she did not seem wholly comfortable with.

Coetzee had kept his hands clean in a dirty situation, Gordimer had been prepared to grubby herself in the messy world of struggle politics. Both spoke and wrote from positions of relative privilege, protected by their white skins and international standing, but dealt with it – and used it – in different ways. The debate about the role of the writer, which we might have hoped Rushdie to lead, was brought to life: it could not be more visible, even tangible, in the tension between these two powerful and very different personalities. If we wanted rich and memorable debate about the complications of writing under apartheid, we certainly got it.

Gordimer then read a statement from Rushdie in which he explained and defended his book. We were surprised that he had nothing to say about our country in its State of Emergency, or our silenced newspaper which was using up some of its support and goodwill in his defence, but we could understand why he should be tied up with his own situation.

It was Behrmann who found the way to carve a victory out of this. Frustrated by not being able to pipe in Rushdie's voice in Cape Town, she was not going to let anyone stop her when the Book Week moved to Joburg. She set it all up, researched the right technical solutions, deceived the state-owned telephone company into providing the necessary equipment for what they thought was a theatre production (it was happening in the Market Theatre), secured Rushdie's agreement, and then told us and the publishers about it when it was too late to pull back.

We had told other media that the event was off and had no newspaper of our own, so we could only spread it by word of mouth over two days. We were astounded when about 500 people crowded into the room to stare at a near-empty stage while Afrikaans writer Ampie Coetzee, sitting in a large armchair, conversed with an absent Rushdie, who voice boomed through speakers and filled the room: "I'm very pleased to be with you, if only in this rather ghostly way." The atmosphere was magical: in the gloom of a state of emergency, in the horrors of the last few weeks, it was another small triumph against those trying to silence Rushdie and ourselves. We had no newspaper, but we were doing what we always tried to do: find imaginative ways to get around censorship, and share those ideas most challenging to authority.

Again, Rushdie had nothing to say about his hosts, the newspaper that was now closed down but still taking risks to give him a voice in far-away Johannesburg. But then his own life was at risk, perhaps more than ours.

Twenty-five years later, Rushdie records this series of events briefly in his memoir, Joseph Anton. When I heard that I was the other Anton in the book, I read it nervously, having been made aware of how he had berated all those who had not stood by his side as firmly as he expected. He writes that he was "saddened to hear that he had precipitated a quarrel between South Africa's two greatest writers". But, after Gordimer had told him not to come, "a solution of sorts was found" for what he calls "the South African problem".

It was the telephone link from London. In his odd third-person style, Rushdie writes: "His voice went to South Africa, his ideas were heard in a Johannesburg hall, but he stayed at home. It wasn't satisfying, but it felt better than nothing."

He still had nothing to say about his hosts, about the closure of our newspaper, about our censorship. This is a man who commands solidarity from anti-censorship activists around the world, condemns those who hesitate in giving it, but is slow to offer it himself.

Three decades later, South Africa confronts the issue of free speech again. We have enjoyed it, in fact reveled in it's abundance since Nelson Mandela's release in 1994, protected by a strong constitution and a constitutional court which has stood firm on the issue. But we have a government, dominated by the ANC, which finds the print media to be hostile and intrusive and which now threatens media freedom. They complain of intrusions into privacy and a lack of respect for dignity – a particularly sore point in a country still healing the sores of apartheid. More substantially, they decry what they see as a cynicism towards the "transformation project", the bid to break the racial patterns inherited from the country's troubled history. They feel under siege from a highly critical media, which in many cases has moved into an oppositional role in the absence of a strong parliamentary challenge to the ANC.

It is not uncommon for a former liberation movement now battling with the challenges of government to be sensitive to criticism and to feel under siege from a hostile world. Indeed, some of the newspapers are relentless watchdogs, offering a constant flow of investigations into corruption which haunt the ANC government. This is a triumph of open democracy, but for the government it feels like fodder for racists who wish to see them fail.

The ANC have proposed a statutory Media Appeals Tribunal to adjudicate on complaints against the press, and passed a Protection of State Information Bill, known as the "Secrecy Bill", to clamp down on leaks and whistleblowing and threaten investigative journalists with hefty sentences for a wide range of "state security" offences. The first draft of the Bill was draconian, but, in the face of formidable public and media opposition, it was delayed for two years. Once again, we had to take to the streets and corridors of power to fight measures to restrict free media. Once again, we plot ways to get around potential censorship. The final version approved last week was considerably improved, but still threatened 25-year sentences for those who leaked information that might endanger "state security", loosely defined.

At the forefront of the fight to prevent this clampdown, again, is Gordimer, as engaged and vocal and firm as ever. She wrote a lengthy condemnation in the NY Review of Books and led a posse of prominent writers in a call for these measures to be scrapped.

Coetzee now lives in Australia, having put in place a physical distance from these fights which matches the emotional one he always had. But it is his ringing words of 1988 that leave us wondering: when the writers' union backed off from the Salman Rushdie invitation in 1988 under threat from religious extremists, was this the moment when freedom of expression was downgraded in liberation movement priorities? Or was it when we allowed for a selective boycott that gave the movement the capacity to decide which culture exchanges were acceptable, and which not? Has this come back to haunt us now?

Is there still a place for "the liberal shibboleths like freedom of expression" in the post-apartheid struggle?

Anton Harber is now Caxton professor of journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. The Weekly Mail is now the Mail & Guardian. Salman Rushdie is still Salman Rushdie

*With thanks for material from You Have Been Warned, the First Ten Years of the M&G, by Irwin Manoim (Viking, 1996)

Celebrity pastor under fire after worshippers die in rush for 'holy water'

Afua Hirsch — Thu, 23 May 2013 11:33:00 GMT

TB Joshua promises to pay medical expenses from fatal stampede at Synagogue Church of All Nations in Ghana

It's the middle of a working day, in the middle of the week, but the trickle of worshippers at the Synagogue Church of All Nations is quickly becoming a flood. Around 1,000 people sit silently on plastic chairs cooled by dozens of floor fans at the church – a building reminiscent of an aircraft hangar just off Accra's industrial Spintex Road – watching its founder delivering a sermon on his own dedicated 24 hour TV channel, Emmanuel TV.

Temitope Balogun Joshua, popularly known as TB Johsua, founder of the Synagogue Church empire, is one of the biggest celebrities west Africa. His regular Sunday services in Nigeria boasts attendance rates of around 15,000 and the Nigerian government has reported that the number of worshippers travelling to the church in Lagos have significantly boosted tourism to Nigeria.

But he is an increasingly controversial figure in Ghana, after a deadly stampede at the Synagogue Church last Sunday left four people dead and at least 30 injured.

The worshippers were hoping to obtain holy "new anointing water", which Emmanuel TV had announced would be distributed for free. "The anointing water usually costs 80 cedis, but we learned that on Sunday it would be given out for free," said Joseph Adanvor, 52, who witnessed the fatal stampede. "I have never seen anything like it before. People had come from Togo, Benin, even from Kenya. They tried to close the church but people were climbing over the walls and breaking in. The police and army were there but they couldn't control the crowds."

The police, who are investigating the deaths, said that they had not anticipated the number of people who would attend the church, with worshippers arriving from as early as 2am. "All of us were caught by surprise," police spokesman Freeman Tetteh told the BBC world service. " No one knew the crowd will be so huge."

The church declined to comment to the Guardian but earlier announced that it would pay the medical expenses for those injured in the incident. Reverend Sam Mc-Caanan told journalists that the church was "devastated". "We have to do a thorough work around this to make sure it doesn't happen again," he said.

The stampede came two weeks after Nigeria-based Joshua made a rare personal appearance Ghana, prompting tens of thousands of people to travel to the 1,500 capacity church to catch a glimpse of the self-styled "prophet". The event created a crisis for the security services, bringing large parts of the capital Accra to a standstill.

Joshua is one of the most prominent pastors in Africa with a growing number of followers around the world. The church has branches in London and Athens, as well as Accra, and Ghana's late president John Atta Mills, who died last year, was a prominent follower, whilst a host of other public figures and celebrities claim to have been healed by the pastor. But he has attracted controversy for his significant wealth – with American magazine Forbes estimating that the pastor was worth up to $15 million, and for the sale of products including anointing water and car stickers to people hoping to free themselves from poverty. "I personally believe there is a level of exploitation going on here, with churches selling things like anointing water and car stickers," said Apostle Samuel Yaw Antwi, General Secretary of the Ghana Charismatic and Pentecostal Council. "Jesus Christ never sold any of these things."

Belief in the healing powers of pastors and special oils and waters which they claim to have blessed is widespread in Ghana, with products often sold for a profit. "I myself have bought the anointing water, and I have seen the miracles it performs," said Adanvor. "My father was suffering from pain in his leg. When I sprayed the water, and after praying, the pain went away."

"It's like in Jesus' time," Adanvor added. "He did a lot of miracles so a lot of people followed him. Now we see that God can manifest again. When people come to the church, if they pray and they believe, they are healed."

In addition to purchasing anointing water and other products, members of the church tithe by contributing 10% of their monthly income, and also give offerings at church services. However, worshippers say that the church is popular because it does not demand payment for healing – a practice common among other churches in the region.

"The problem we have in this country is the type of Christianity people are practicing whereby, instead of seeking to know God through his work and a relationship with the holy spirit which is assured to every Christian, are running after signs of miracles," said Apostle Samuel Yaw Antwi, General Secretary of the Ghana Charismatic and Pentecostal Council.

"People want instant solutions to their problems, just like they want instant coffee. If anybody comes along offering instant answers to financial or health challenges, people want to go for it. But the Bible warns Christians about that."

Afua Hirsch

Addressing land rights can make social change possible

Karol Boudreaux — Thu, 23 May 2013 10:14:01 GMT

Through partnerships, development professionals can help improve land governance and ensure more enforceable land rights

What elephant lives in your development space? Last week in Cape Town at Grow Africa's Investment Forum, Rwanda's minister of agriculture and animal resources, Agnes Kalibata, called out the elephant she sees in discussions of African agriculture: land rights.

If you work on food security, climate change, women's empowerment, conflict or economic growth, chances are that you've also encountered the land elephant – the big, complex, disruptive element that frustrates so many development efforts.

Precisely because land is a complex and controversial issue – one that can be expensive to address in addition to being politically and culturally charged – many development professionals have shied away from it. But this is changing.

Greater willingness on the part of governments, donors, civil society, and the private sector to work together and invest to improve land governance means that people around the world have real hope of stronger, clearer, and enforceable rights to land and other resources.

One of the most encouraging developments has been the unanimous adoption by 96 countries of the voluntary guidelines on the responsible governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests in the national context of food security last year. The VGs are a critical achievement: they underscore the importance of formalising customary tenure rights by strengthening women's land and resource rights and the tenure rights of indigenous people. The VGs enshrine principles of transparency and accountability in land governance and provide guidance on issues as diverse as market-based investments, taxation and valuation, and post-conflict land concerns.

This year, under the leadership of the UK, the G8 is likely to continue the push for improved transparency in the land sector. This is good news for the 70% of the world's people who live without formal, documented rights to land. But of course, there is much more to be done.

The challenge is to expand people's opportunity to improve their lives by securing their property rights.

These foundational issues are being tackled by a growing number of organisations, many of which are supported by the Omidyar Network. In partnership with governments and donors, development groups are using innovative and scalable approaches to secure women's rights to land, to formalise and register land rights, and to protect and transform critical ecosystems.

In Kenya, the rural development institute Landesa has worked with USAid and the Kenyan government to educate elders and community members on new constitutional provisions that give women equal rights to land. Elders took part in interactive sessions that explored the many ways women contribute to families and the broader community and how the entire community would benefit from securing their right to land.

School curriculums were reframed to address the new rights women have, and women themselves were educated about their rights. Elders responded by creating a new katiba (constitution) that holds them accountable for enforcing the rights of their wives and daughters to land. They went so far as to elect women as elders to sit alongside them and make decisions about how to allocate the community's valuable resource: its land. This hands-on, participatory model is scalable across Kenya.

In Bolivia, a Mercy Corps project called Red Tierras uses low-cost property registration software and SMS messaging to reduce the expense and dramatically speed up the process of formally registering rights to rural land. The project has helped thousands of local people cut years off the wait time for obtaining formal documentation to their lands. Now more Bolivians have a parcel they can confidently call their own. This project also has the potential to move into other countries and help thousands more people.

In India, many commons have been degraded as a result of the insecure rights local people have over these resources. Forests have been cut, watersheds harmed and, as a result, communities struggle to grow the food they need. The Foundation for Ecological Security is working with nearly 4,200 villages and eight state governments in India to secure community rights to over half a million acres of these valuable resources. FES helps communities as they develop holistic land use plans designed to revitalise watersheds and, in turn, improve livelihoods and food security.

The successes of the organisations mentioned mean that their work can be replicated and scaled up to expand opportunity for millions of people by advocating for and enabling more secure rights to land and other resources.

While the land elephant may be a difficult and frustrating beast to work with, through creative, sustained engagement with communities and governments, positive social change is possible and, importantly, scalable.

Karol Boudreaux is director of investments at the Omidyar Network

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Karol Boudreaux

Niger bomb attacks target army base and French uranium plant

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:03:45 GMT

Officials say it was lucky no one was killed as finger pointed at Mali extremists over simultaneous car-bomb explosions

Attackers in Niger detonated two car bombs on Thursday, one in the city of Agadez where a military barracks was targeted and one in Arlit, where a French company operates a uranium mine, injuring more than a dozen people.

Paris-based nuclear giant Areva said in a statement that 13 employees were hurt in the attack in Arlit, in the northern part of Niger where in 2010 al-Qaida's branch in Africa kidnapped five French citizens working for the mining company.

Witnesses said the vehicle carrying the explosives in Agadez blew up in front of a military barracks.

"We heard a strong detonation that woke the whole neighbourhood, it was so powerful," said Abdoulaye Harouna, a resident of Agadez. "The whole town is now surrounded by soldiers looking for the attackers."

In 2010, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb kidnapped seven foreigners, including five French nationals, from a residential compound near Arlit. They worked for Areva or contracting companies.

In February 2011, three of the hostages including one Frenchwoman were freed. The cell is still holding the other four and has repeatedly threatened to kill them in retaliation for the French-led assault in Mali.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for Thursday's attack, but because Niger shares a border with Mali, whose north was occupied for nearly a year by a trio of al-Qaida-linked groups, residents and government officials assume the attackers were Islamic extremists, possibly from the Movement of Oneness and Jihad in west Africa, which has led repeated suicide attacks.

The militants vowed to hit any country that helped France, which launched a military offensive in Mali on 11 January to flush out the jihadists.

Niger, like most nations in the region, has sent battalions of soldiers to try to stabilise Mali. If the attack was carried out by one of the Mali-based groups, it would be the single largest attack they have carried out.

In recent weeks they attempted to carry out a similar style assault, with kamikaze fighters detonating themselves in the Malian towns of Gossi and Menaka, but the attackers killed only themselves.

All South African public servants may have to retrain

Helen Crane — Thu, 23 May 2013 08:59:09 GMT

Public service minister Lindiwe Sisulu wants to unify national, provincial and local government with a bill affecting 1.6 million staff

Every public servant in South Africa will have to be retrained if a bill to align national, provincial and local government in the country is passed.

According to an article on South Africa's Business Day Live, public service minister Lindiwe Sisulu has said the country's 1.6 million public servants would all need training if the Public Administration Bill were to be passed. Directors-general would also have to sit a compulsory exam, the minister reportedly said earlier this week.

The bill is part of a wider programme of reform which aims to cut corruption and create a more unified civil service, satisfying the preconditions of South Africa's National Development Plan.

Sisulu plans to set up a school of government to train and develop government employees by October, which will form the basis of this training should the bill be passed. She claimed this will "entrench professionalism" in public services, and has previously said that new government employees would not qualify for promotion or pay rises without this training. Public sector unions in the country have already agreed to compulsory induction courses for new public servants.

However, the public service spokesman of South Africa's opposition party the Democratic Alliance, Kobus Marais, has questioned where the budget for the new school of government would come from. He added that "nothing that we have seen so far" has suggested that unifying the three departments would offer better value for money.

At present, 1.3 million public servants are employed in 45 national and 207 provincial departments in South Africa, and a further 300,000 staff in 270 local municipalities.

According to Business Day Live, the bill is due to be tabled in parliament this week.

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Helen Crane

After 50 years, unity is still an African dream | Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Ngugi wa Thiong'o — Thu, 23 May 2013 07:00:13 GMT

The African Union may be a shadow of the original post-colonial vision. But its potential to inspire remains

If one were to ask people in the streets of any African capital to name a union of states that readily comes to mind, they are likely to mention the United Nations, the United States of America and possibly the European Union. And the African Union? Oh yes, yes, I have heard of it, a few might say. And yet the Organisation of African Unity – as the African Union was called in 1963 when it was set up in Addis Ababa with 30 signatories – now includes virtually all the African states, and is 50 years old come Saturday.

This should mean something, shouldn't it? Africa is a huge continent: Europe, the US, China and India can be contained within it. This means that Africa has the most natural resources – including land for agriculture, and mines for almost every conceivable mineral. These, including her human resources, have played a central role in the evolution of capitalism from its mercantile through its industrial to its current global finance dominance – all to the advantage of the west and the disadvantage of the people of Africa.

The OAU, and the independence it so ably championed through its liberation committee, was meant to reverse that historical trend – and find its own version of the old US anti-colonialist Monroe doctrine and manifest destiny: Africa for Africans at home and abroad.

It was founded on a dream, its roots in the pan-Africanism of WEB Dubois – an African-American scholar, author of Souls of Black Folk, and founding president of the still running National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He was the most consistent presence in the early Pan-African Congresses held in the capitals of Europe, including London, Paris and Brussels. He was also the prime mover in drawing in continental African participants, such as Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta.

Contributing to the idea, though not as a member of the Pan-African Congresses, was Marcus Garvey – the Jamaican founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1914 that, between the wars, blossomed into the biggest organised mass movement of black people in history. His publication, Negro World, was hunted down by a terrified colonial officialdom, from the French to the British, because of its clarion call of Africa for Africans.

In its origins, the pan-African idea was Caribbean and black American before it became continental African. Embodying the Garveyite vision of the unity of Africans and all people of African descent, pan-Africanism gripped the imagination of the anti-colonial activists, reaching its pinnacle in the 1945 Manchester-based fifth Pan-African Congress that led to many exiles returning home to lead anti-colonial nationalism. Among these was Kenyatta, who returned to Kenya only to be imprisoned by the British as the leader of Mau Mau; and Nkrumah, who led Ghana to independence in 1957, and declared that this independence was not complete without the rest of the continent. He saw Ghana as the nucleus of a future political federation of African states strong enough to safeguard its natural resources, and flex its muscles to project the African personality in world affairs.

The OAU was a vastly watered down version of that vision. The AU became a watered version of OAU, reduced to a talking shop rather than a fighting club. It has become invisible within Africa, and in the world. It cannot safeguard the continent from the traditional marauders of the west. Has one ever heard of African-owned corporations in the west? African-owned oil companies drilling in the west? And yet western-owned corporations proliferate in the continent.

Has one ever heard of an African army invading Europe or America, or even stationing its troops and bases in any part of the two regions, or its ships patrolling European and American waters? The west has troops in nearly all African countries, with an American-controlled Africa command. When Nato forces planned the invasion of Libya, they brushed aside the concerns of the AU, which became a helpless bystander. In short: despite the AU, Africa continues to be the west's playground.

In a strange way both African and western governments fear a strong, united, democratic Africa. For the west such unity would mean it could no longer do whatever it wants with Africa's resources. It would no longer be the sole determinant of the prices for exports to, and imports from, the continent. Its oil and mining companies would no longer continue to be the sole, invisible masters of Africa's vast oil and mineral resources.

For African governments, unity would mean ceding some of their powers to a federal authority. And to realise even this minimum, they would have to make sure that the union was a people's union, and not a union of African heads of state. But I have a feeling that most of these leaders would rather remain tin gods than have a God who can make tins. The days when Kwame Nkrumah could link the sovereignty of Ghana to that of the continent – or Julius Nyerere offer to delay the independence of Tanzania if such a move would lead to an East African Union – are a distant 50 years ago.

Does that mean the AU is not necessary? It is better to have a skeleton of a union than no union at all. The skeleton brings memories of a breath of life, but also dreams of a resurrection. For the sake of the people of Africa a strong, democratic African Union is needed today as much as it was 50 years ago. Despite its failures and weaknesses, the AU keeps the dream alive. And as Victor Hugo once put it: there is nothing like a dream to create the future.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Kenyan president accused of backing post-election violence that killed 1,000

Wed, 22 May 2013 17:55:27 GMT

Uhuru Kenyatta and deputy named in report that condemns his family, predecessors and state agencies over human rights

Kenya's president has received a long-awaited report that names him and his deputy as being among those suspected of planning and financing the country's 2007-08 post-election violence, in which more than 1,000 people died.

Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto already face trial at the international criminal court (ICC) for crimes against humanity on charges related to the election violence, in which 600,000 were evicted from their homes, but local attempts to prosecute the two have never taken off.

The Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission report did not recommend prosecution for the two, as they already faced the action at the ICC.

Kenyatta's family members – especially his father, the founding president, Jomo Kenyatta – are named in the report as having presided over a government responsible for numerous human rights violations and illegal allocation of land.

The government-funded report, which was years in the making, finds that Kenya's second and third presidents, Daniel Arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki, headed governments that were responsible for massacres, economic crimes and grand corruption, among other violations.

Kenya's state security agencies, particularly the police and army, have been the main perpetrators of human rights violations including massacres, enforced disappearances, torture and sexual violence, the report says.

The commission said that during the period it was mandated to investigate, from 12 December 1963 to February 2008, the state adopted economic and other policies that resulted in the economic marginalisation of five key regions in the country.

Women, girls and minority groups have been the subject of state-sanctioned, systematic discrimination in all spheres of their life, according to the commission; and despite the special status accorded to children in Kenyan society, they have been subjected to atrocities including killings, physical assault and sexual violence.

The report recommended that parliament set up a legal infrastructure to help victims of historical injustices get reparations, including financial compensation, public apologies and commemoration.

The Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission was formed from a wider effort to establish the truth behind historical violations that are partly blamed for the 2007-08 violence. That was sparked by a dispute over who had won the December 2007 presidential election.

A 2008 government commission found historical injustices such as unequal land distribution partly responsible for the violence. The new report reinforced those findings, saying historical grievances over land are the single most important driver of conflicts and ethnic tension in Kenya.

The issue of land in Kenya remains divisive. Commissioners were split about changes made in the land chapter of the report before it was presented to the president.

Ronald Slye, a University of Seattle professor and one of three international commissioners working for the Kenyan commission, said he had declined to sign the chapter because he disapproved of the changes. Judge Gertrude Chawatama, from Zambia, another international commissioner, also left the chapter on land unsigned.

Kenyan media reported that the commission had been under pressure from powerful individuals in and out of government to edit out sections of the report implicating certain people in illegal land allocations.

The report said between 1964 and 1966 one-sixth of European settlers' land that had been intended for settlement of landless and land-scarce Kenyans had been sold cheaply to Jomo Kenyatta and his wife, Ngina, his children and others. Jomo Kenyatta himself appears to have benefited immensely from irregular allocations of land that should have gone to those who had lost land to Arab and British colonisers, the report said.

"President Kenyatta's direct engagement in irregular land allocations compromised his position to prevent or remedy similar cases of land-grabbing by his close associates," the report said.

In 2011, Forbes magazine listed Uhuru Kenyatta, 51, as the wealthiest Kenyan, worth at least $500m (£332m), although he was dropped from a later list because his personal wealth was hard to separate from his family's wealth.

The report said the elder Kenyatta, who held office from 1963 to 1978, had run a government that failed to remove the repressive state structures established by the British colonial government, and which used those laws to perpetrate human rights violations.

Human rights had been further violated by the creation of the one-party state by the Moi administration, resulting in severe repression of political dissent, intimidation and control of the media, it said. The commission report also blamed the media for allowing violations to occur with little public scrutiny.

Kibaki is accused of presiding over a regime that oversaw killings.

Kenyatta, who received the report late on Tuesday, said the government would take the recommendations seriously. He said addressing the causes and effects of past injustices would contribute to national unity, reconciliation and healing, and would enable Kenyans to move forward with a renewed sense of nationhood.

The commission, formed in August 2009, was supposed to have taken two years to complete its work. It said that, despite challenges, it had managed to collect more than 40,000 statements, more than any other truth commission in the world.

Wendy Woods obituary

Peter Hain — Wed, 22 May 2013 17:03:20 GMT

"Who do you think you are, Donald Woods?" his wife, Wendy – played by Penelope Wilton in Richard Attenborough's brilliant film Cry Freedom – exclaims at the news that she and their five young children will have to be uprooted suddenly from their beloved South Africa for a dramatic escape into exile late in 1977. Donald's transformation from respected editor of the Daily Dispatch in East London, in the Eastern Cape, into subversive friend of militant activist Steve Biko had turned the family upside down.

Wendy, who has died aged 73, was in fact stoical and selfless, qualities that enabled the Woods family to get through the many trials of harassment and, eventually, exile.

Born in Mthatha, Eastern Cape, Wendy excelled at school and became a music teacher. She married Donald in 1962 and, over the following decade, was active in the white women's group, Black Sash, campaigning against the imprisonment of political detainees. But by the 1970s, Donald's anti-apartheid stance brought increased security police intimidation, including death threats.

On one occasion, two local workers ran into their house, and Wendy hid them in an upstairs bathroom with her. When the security police knocked on the door, Wendy replied: "I'm in here," and the two policemen immediately withdrew, unable to imagine that a white woman could possibly be in a bathroom with two black men.

The security police wired the Woods' house with surveillance microphones and recorded all telephone calls. Twice its officers fired bullets into the home.

Following Biko's murder by the security police, and with Donald now banned, Wendy arranged to attend the 13-day Biko inquest in Pretoria. While she was away, their five-year old daughter, Mary, was sent a T-shirt which the security police had laced with acid-powder, burning her face and arms. Now there was no alternative but painful exile.

While living under apartheid brought constant challenges and fear, after Biko was killed Wendy's outlook moved past fear and turned into defiance and anger. Exile was especially traumatic for her. With Donald caught up in high-profile campaigning across the world, she looked after their children, who were also finding it difficult to adjust to cold, grey England. She still managed to work for the International Broadcasting Trust, as well as providing film script analysis for Marble Arch Productions, and as a journalist, not least for the Guardian. In addition, she collected thousands of books for the University of Fort Hare, where Nelson Mandela had been a student.

Wendy worked in charities, notably as trustee and director of the Lincoln Charitable Trust. She was chair of Age Concern, Kingston, and of Amnesty International, Esher. From 2003, she was founder and chair of the Donald Woods Foundation, doing vital work in the poverty-stricken Transkei region of the Eastern Cape – Mandela's homeland.

A decent, kind and selfless person, who showed great courage and sacrificed much, Wendy never fully recognised herself as the quietly inspirational figure she was to many people.

Donald died in 2001. Wendy is survived by her children, Jane, Dillon, Duncan, Gavin and Mary, and nine grandchildren. Her son Lindsay died in infancy.

Peter Hain

Rapid drop in Lake Malawi's water levels drives down fish stocks

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:43:15 GMT

1.5m people depend on lake for food – including popular Chambo fish – and Malawians are alarmed at decline in stocks

Lloyd Phiri, a fisherman from Senga Bay on Lake Malawi's shores in Malawi's central region, knows that the lake's water levels are dropping. He can see it in his catch, which has shrunk by more than 80%.

Years ago, it was the norm to catch about 5,000 fish a day, Phiri says. But now, if he is lucky, he brings in one-fifth of that. And if he is not, he catches a mere 300 fish a day. "My fish catch has gone down in recent years and this has affected my earnings. I now have problems paying school fees for my children," Phiri tells IPS.

The rapid drop in Lake Malawi's water levels, driven by population growth, climate change and deforestation, is threatening its floral and fauna species with extinction, says Malawi's ministry of environment and climate change management. And included among the wildlife threatened are the fish that Phiri depends on for a livelihood.

"Over the last three decades some water balance models have been done on the lake and have shown that the water levels have dropped from 477 metres above sea level in the 1980s to around 474.88m," says Yanira Mtupanyama, principal secretary in the ministry, of the 29,600 sq km lake that straddles the borders of Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania.

"It's a big deal because studies are showing that the water levels in the lake will keep on dropping in coming years because there are signs that show [there will be] less rainfall and increased evaporation," she says.

An estimated 1,000 fish species rely on the fresh waters of Africa's third-largest lake for their survival, which also provides 60% of this southern African nation's protein requirement. The mbuna cichlids species and the famous tilapia fish, locally known as chambo, are facing extinction. Chambo is Malawi's most popular fish.

The country's department of fisheries says fish stocks in the lake have dwindled by 90% over the past 20 years. It is a huge concern as, according to authorities, about 1.5 million Malawians depend on the lake for food, transportation and other needs.

Of even greater concern are Malawian government reports that the water mass may hold oil and gas reserves. Environmentalist Raphael Mwenenguwe fears that, if oil and gas mining starts on the lake, it could lead to further biodiversity losses.

"The fish stocks have declined in the last two decades from about 30,000 metric tonnes per year to 2,000 per year because of a drop in water levels, overfishing and rapid population growth. But this may get worse if oil is discovered on the lake," Mwenenguwe tells IPS.

Williman Chadza, executive director of the Centre for Environmental Policy and Advocacy, a local NGO that promotes activism on environmental issues, shares Mwenenguwe's fears. "Oil is a resource of paramount importance to a country like Malawi, which is seeking revenue alternatives for its socio-economic development. But its discovery may deepen the country's biodiversity loss and impact badly on water sources," says Chadza.

Mining also poses a threat. A uranium mine in Karonga, a town near Lake Malawi in the north of the country, is one example. The mine, owned and operated by Australian mining giant Paladin (Africa) for the past four years, is regarded as a pollution threat.

"Uranium is a highly radioactive material and therefore there are still threats of polluting the freshwater in Lake Malawi," says Udule Mwakasungura, a human rights activist.

The need to arrest the loss of biodiversity is particularly important in Malawi, where people depend on biological resources to a greater extent than they do in other parts of the world. The 18,000 families of Nguwo fishing village in Senga Bay are an example of this dependency.

"We know that the fish stock has depleted because of unsustainable fishing practices and non-compliance with fishing regulations … we also know that cutting trees unsustainably is ultimately affecting the quality of the water we drink," says village headman Radson Mdalamkwanda.

Mdalamkwanda says fishermen in the village have been working with local authorities to address the threats and challenges facing the conservation of Lake Malawi. He says anyone not following the rules or bylaws is banned from fishing on the lake during October and November, when the fish spawn.

For the past five years, the village development committee has been going to local gatherings to educate residents about the bylaws and the need to protect the lake. "Apart from protecting the fish, we also want to safeguard the water so that it's safe for drinking. We do that by creating awareness at gatherings like weddings and funerals," says Ibrahim Kachinga, the chair of the village committee.

Their efforts complement the Malawi government's attempts to address the challenges to conserving the lake's flora and fauna. "There has been a ban for the last few years on the use of high-yield fishing gear in Lake Malawi between October and November, when the fish are spawning," Mtupanyama says.

Mtupanyama adds that in 2003 the government launched a 10-year strategic plan, which largely seeks to restore the lake's fish stocks. "For the last 10 years we have been restocking the lake with fish by breeding juveniles outside the lake and then reintroducing them. We haven't done badly," she says.

Mtupanyama could not say if this had significantly increased the lake's fish stock, however.

Regardless of what may come of this restocking project, the Nguwo village committee understands that the future of the lake is important. They are educating those who can do something about it – future generations. Kachinga says: "With the help of government, we are also encouraging teachers in nursery and primary schools to teach our children about how to protect the lake."

Japhet Koech: from Kenya's Rift Valley to the Edinburgh marathon

Adharanand Finn — Wed, 22 May 2013 09:08:39 GMT

Japhet Koech was like hundreds of other Kenyan runners, training in the vain hope of a race abroad. Then he struck lucky

As you enter the small town of Iten, up in Kenya's Rift Valley, a sign over the road reads proudly: Home of Champions. This is no understatement. Among those living and running here are David Rudisha (the current 800m world record holder and Olympic champion), Wilson Kipsang (the second fastest marathon runner in history), Saif Saaeed Shaheen (world record holder in the steeplechase), Mary Keitany (twice London marathon winner) … the list goes on.

But there are hundreds of other runners, too. If you get up at 6am on virtually any day, the dirt roads that criss-cross the countryside around Iten will be full of runners, passing each other like commuters in any other city.

Almost all of them live and train as full-time athletes. They don't have jobs. Running is their job. They get up at 5:30am to train. They come back. Eat, sleep and then run again. This is their lives. In Iten, this is normal.

Yet, for most of them it brings no financial reward. They live on the hope of success. They have seen many before them – neighbours, friends, family – travel abroad to race, and then return home with enough money to buy a small house, or a car. So why not them too?

Mostly, they're fast enough. Two hundred and seventy-eight Kenyan men ran the Olympic qualifying time for the marathon last year. Only two Britons managed the same feat. But their problem is that they are Kenyan. The competition for places is so tough that men and women who would be lauded as stars in other countries for their running talents are left far down the pecking order, living in small, tumbledown shacks, supported by the kindness of family members or neighbours.

One of those runners is Japhet Koech. He was my neighbour when I lived in Iten for six months in 2011. We often ran together and we became good friends. He has a best half-marathon time of 66 minutes, run at high altitude in Nairobi. That's fast. Yet in Kenya it's ordinary. By the time I left Kenya he had been training daily for five years without earning a single penny.

Kenya's success at long-distance running is partly a numbers game. To have so many dedicated, focused athletes training to this high level means that more brilliant runners will inevitably emerge at the top. Without the likes of Koech, plugging fruitlessly away, the champions would not be so numerous.

Yet Koech has struck lucky. After I wrote about him in my book, Running with the Kenyans, he was invited to run the Utrecht marathon in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, his inexperience and the cold, windy conditions meant he didn't run well. "I have never felt cold like that," he told me afterwards. He finished fifth in 2hr 21min.

Now he has another chance, at the Edinburgh marathon on 26 May. To help him get to the race I set up a Crowdfunder page and raised £1,500 in eight days – such is the enthusiasm from readers to see him given his chance to shine.

So can he do better this time? He'll need to. The Edinburgh race has a strong elite field, with other Kenyans and Ethiopians chasing the same pot of prizemoney, all with the same hope of justifying all those years of training. There are also time bonuses if he can run under 2hr 16min – which is five minutes faster than his best. It's a big ask. Let's just hope it's not so cold this time.

I'll report back after the race to let you know how he got on, but whatever happens, his friends and family back in Kapshow, our old neighbourhood in Iten, will be proud of him for having got this far. And the idea that running is a pathway to adventure and riches will be spread a little further, generating more hope, and inspiring more runners from Kenya's Home of Champions.

• Japhet and Adharanand will be signing books at the Run 4 It running shop in Edinburgh at 3pm on Saturday 25 May.

• New Balance has kindly sponsored Japhet with kit and shoes for the Edinburgh race.

Adharanand Finn

US identifies terrorists who attacked its Benghazi consulate in 2012

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:12:26 GMT

Administration weighing its options as intercepts reveal identity and whereabouts of suspects in attack that left four dead

Officials in the US say they have identified five men who might be responsible for the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 and there is enough evidence to justify seizing them by military force as suspected terrorists or killing them with a drone strike. However, there is not enough proof to try them in a US civilian court as the Obama administration prefers.

The men remain at large while the FBI gathers evidence. The investigation has been slowed by the reduced US intelligence presence in the region since the 11 September 2012 attacks and the limited ability to assist by Libya's post-revolutionary law enforcement and intelligence agencies, which are still in their infancy since the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime.

The decision not to seize the men militarily underscores Washington's desire to move away from hunting terrorists as enemy combatants and holding them at the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The preference is towards a process in which most are apprehended and tried by the countries where they are living or arrested by the US with the host country's co-operation, and tried in the US criminal justice system.

A senior Obama administration official, speaking to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said the FBI had identified a number of individuals it believed could have information or may have been involved and was considering options to apprehend them. But taking action in remote eastern Libya would be difficult and America's relationship with Libya had to be considered.

The Libyan embassy did not respond to multiple requests for comment, the AP said.

The FBI and other US intelligence agencies identified the men through contacts in Libya and by monitoring their communications, officials said. They are thought to be members of Ansar al-Shariah, the Libyan militia group whose fighters were seen near the US diplomatic facility prior to the attack.

US officials say FBI surveillance has gathered proof that the five men were either at the scene of the first attack or somehow involved. In intercepts at least one of them bragged about taking part. Some of the men had also been in contact with a network of well-known regional jihadists, including al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the officials said.

The attack on the US diplomatic mission killed the ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans weeks before president Barack Obama's re-election. Since then, Republicans in congress have condemned the administration's handling of the situation, criticising the level of embassy security, questioning the talking points provided to UN ambassador Susan Rice for her public appearances to explain the attack and suggesting the White House tried to play down the incident to minimise its effect on the president's campaign.

The FBI released photos of three of the five suspects earlier this month. The images were captured by security cameras at the US diplomatic post during the attack, but it took weeks for the FBI to see and study them. It took the agency three weeks to get to Libya because of security problems.

Syria crisis: Iranian troops join battle for Qusair

Matthew Weaver, Guardian readers — Wed, 22 May 2013 07:57:16 GMT

Citing 'multiple' rebel commanders, the US claims Iranian troops are fighting alongside Hezbollah and Syrian government forces in the battle for Qusair

Matthew Weaver

Guardian readers

South Sudan initiative aims to keep young girls in primary school | Mark Tran

Mark Tran — Wed, 22 May 2013 06:00:02 GMT

A UK-backed project in Western Equatoria state seeks to ensure domestic and social factors don't deny girls an education

Bridget Nagomoro used to get up at five in the morning to fetch water from the stream, cook breakfast for the family, then walk the five miles to school. In the evening, she would eat at 10pm having cooked dinner, done the household chores and completed her homework.

It's a familiar routine for girls in South Sudan, but Nagomoro was a trailblazer. She was the first girl from Ibba county – a community of 90,000 people – in landlocked Western Equatoria state to finish primary school. Being the only girl at her school was hard.

"Some of the boys used to threaten me because I got better results than them," said Nagomoro last week during a visit to Britain. Now a local government commissioner in Ibba county, she wants to make it easier for girls to get an education by setting up a boarding school for girls aged 10 and above – the point at which most drop out because of the competing pressures from family, household chores, childcare and early pregnancy.

Nagomoro has donated a large plot of land for the school and enlisted the support of local chiefs and elders. She has sought assistance from contacts in the UK, including Professor John Benington of Warwick University Business School, whom she met when he held workshops in South Sudan.

Nagomoro was in the UK with Pia Philip Michael, the state minister of education for Western Equatoria, to report to British supporters who are helping to raise money for the school through the Friends of Ibba Girls School, a UK-based charity. Also on the agenda was the enormous challenge to girls' education after decades of civil war, continuing unrest and a refugee influx from the north.

South Sudan, which became independent from Sudan in 2011, has one of the world's worst indicators for education. A Unesco report from that year said there were more than 1.3 million primary school-age children out of school in the country, which is second-to-bottom in the world ranking for net enrolment in primary education and bottom of the world league table for enrolment in secondary education.

The situation for girls is particularly dire. They are less likely to start school and more likely to drop out. A young girl in South Sudan is three times likelier to die in pregnancy or childbirth than to finish primary school, said the Unesco report. The shortage of teachers is acute; the ratio of pupils to qualified teachers averages 100:1, but is double that in some states. Only 12% of teachers are women, another factor discouraging girls from attending school.

Another challenge is the lack of facilities. "80% of our schools are under trees and it rains nine months of the year," said Pia. This poses problems for protecting textbooks, provided for primary schools by Britain's Department for International Development (DfID) for the first time this year.

Part of DfID's aid programme is to support 2 million children in primary education by providing textbooks, building classrooms and offering education to children who drop out or start school late. Support for education is one thing, changing attitudes towards girls' education another.

Pia spoke of a major campaign in Western Equatoria involving officials moving from village to village to spread the national message on educating girls. "We are engaging village chiefs on our education policies for girls," he said. "We say to them, 'Don't leave girls behind.'"

It is against this backdrop that Nagomoro is pursuing what she calls her dream of creating a boarding school for girls that will, to some extent, insulate them from the pressures that force girls to drop out. Enough funding has been raised from UK supporters to clear and fence the site for the school, and to instal two solar-powered water boreholes, one for the village and one for the school. Building the first classrooms, toilets, kitchen and dining space is now under way; the plan is to open in February, with 40 10-year-olds.

Nagomoro was fortunate that her parents believed strongly in the value of education, both for her and her four brothers. She went on to secondary school and served as a nun before studying for a degree in education and returning home. She still remembers what her father used to tell her: "A pen and a hoe, that is the future."

Mark Tran

World news : Africa roundup | guardian.co.uk

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