NO PRIMEIRO ANIVERSARIO DA SUA MORTE: UMA HOMENAGEM A JOSEPH KI-ZERBO (Recidivus)*

A minha decisao de ‘re-postar’ este tributo a Joseph Ki-zerbo decorre de algumas afirmacoes feitas por um ou dois participantes nesta conversa de café…
Aconselharia a esses senhores uma pequena tentativa de se informarem um pouco melhor sobre a Cultura Bantu e a tradicao oral em Africa. A este proposito devo dizer-lhes, por exemplo, que as primeiras licoes que tive sobre a Historia do Reino do Kongo recebi-as da minha avo materna, que dele descendia. Algumas das estorias que ela me contou, fui-as encontrar mais tarde, com poucas ou nenhumas variacoes, por exmplo nos livros de Pelissier e na Monumenta Missionaria Africana do Padre Antonio Brazio…

Do mesmo modo, algumas das narrativas – algumas delas ainda por escrever – sobre o nacionalismo urbano angolano foram-me contadas pelo meu pai: aquele que espirrava sangue nas masmorras da PIDE quando eu nasci; o mesmo sangue que corria nas veias do homem que icou pela primeira vez a bandeira da RPA…
Nao sei quantos dos participantes daquela conversa poderao dizer que conhecem pelo menos 12 provincias do seu pais… ou pelo menos 14 paises Africanos… Eu posso-o.

Nao sei quantos dos mesmos participantes poderao dizer que viveram, desde que nasceram, imersos na cultura Africana – nao apenas que viveram ou vivem em Africa – isto e’, que foram nados e criados no seio de uma familia Africana, rindo seus risos, chorando suas lagrimas, comendo suas comidas, bebendo suas bebidas, ouvindo, cantando e dancando suas musicas durante toda a sua vida, mesmo quando temporariamente ausentes dos seus paises de origem… Eu vivo-o.

Nao me proponho, portanto, matricular-me em nenhuma ‘academia’ de um qualquer ‘parque jurassico’ para receber licoes de farmaceuticos radicados em Paris e de seus ajudantes de laboratorio radicados onde quer que seja, sobre os elementos mais rudimentares da Cultura e Historia de Africa. Nao precisaria sequer de invocar para tal o meu titulo de Mestre de Ciencia em Historia Economica e Economia do Desenvolvimento, com o grau de Merito, pelo departamento universitario mais credenciado em todo o mundo nessa area…

E porque, apesar de tudo isso, nao me proponho “re-escrever” a Historia de Africa, recomendo-lhes vivamente a leitura da obra de Joseph Ki-zerbo publicada sob a chancela da UNESCO, ficando-me apenas por esta referencia para nao os sobrecarregar com uma completa bibliografia obrigatoria.

Votos de boa leitura!

*****


COLÓQUIO HISTÓRIA E HISTORIADORES DA ÁFRICA

"Estranhamentos e intolerâncias têm sido a tônica nos encontros/confrontos do Velho com o Novo Mundo. Nesse processo, têm ficado à margem memórias, saberes, falares, viveres, códigos de escrita e de comunicação de povos de tradições ancestrais de oralidade – entre os quais contam-se ameríndios, africanos, filhos da diáspora e outros povos e culturas escravizados nas diversas fases da expansão das relações de mercado na modernidade européia.

A partir de resistências culturais limítrofes , visões de mundo, cosmogonias, relações entre cultura e natureza, expressões artísticas, concepções de corpo, estéticas, sensibilidades e religiosidades vêm rompendo barreiras, ainda que tenham sido historicamente ignoradas ou desconsideradas nos índices hierarquizadores de “raças” que pautam os cânones letrados e científicos ocidentais, que se pretenderam iluministas, racionais e progressistas. Vozes, sons, gestos e performances, inicialmente locais e fragmentários como expressões que são de “entre-lugares deslizantes” , não só renovaram e oxigenaram o estoque cultural dominante, como produziram identidades múltiplas, adensando suas reivindicações por autonomia, liberdades e reconhecimento de suas raízes e matrizes culturais, em lutas que reverberam no direito à memória e à história.

Pioneiro no empreendimento vital pelo direito à história dos povos e culturas subjugadas e silenciadas no universo do conhecimento eurocêntrico, Joseph Ki-Zerbo empenhou-se em invocar, demonstrar e lançar bases para a produção continuada e constantemente atualizada de uma História da África Negra."

(Continue a ler aqui)

*(Publicado inicialmente a 12/10/07)

A minha decisao de ‘re-postar’ este tributo a Joseph Ki-zerbo decorre de algumas afirmacoes feitas por um ou dois participantes nesta conversa de café…
Aconselharia a esses senhores uma pequena tentativa de se informarem um pouco melhor sobre a Cultura Bantu e a tradicao oral em Africa. A este proposito devo dizer-lhes, por exemplo, que as primeiras licoes que tive sobre a Historia do Reino do Kongo recebi-as da minha avo materna, que dele descendia. Algumas das estorias que ela me contou, fui-as encontrar mais tarde, com poucas ou nenhumas variacoes, por exmplo nos livros de Pelissier e na Monumenta Missionaria Africana do Padre Antonio Brazio…

Do mesmo modo, algumas das narrativas – algumas delas ainda por escrever – sobre o nacionalismo urbano angolano foram-me contadas pelo meu pai: aquele que espirrava sangue nas masmorras da PIDE quando eu nasci; o mesmo sangue que corria nas veias do homem que icou pela primeira vez a bandeira da RPA…
Nao sei quantos dos participantes daquela conversa poderao dizer que conhecem pelo menos 12 provincias do seu pais… ou pelo menos 14 paises Africanos… Eu posso-o.

Nao sei quantos dos mesmos participantes poderao dizer que viveram, desde que nasceram, imersos na cultura Africana – nao apenas que viveram ou vivem em Africa – isto e’, que foram nados e criados no seio de uma familia Africana, rindo seus risos, chorando suas lagrimas, comendo suas comidas, bebendo suas bebidas, ouvindo, cantando e dancando suas musicas durante toda a sua vida, mesmo quando temporariamente ausentes dos seus paises de origem… Eu vivo-o.

Nao me proponho, portanto, matricular-me em nenhuma ‘academia’ de um qualquer ‘parque jurassico’ para receber licoes de farmaceuticos radicados em Paris e de seus ajudantes de laboratorio radicados onde quer que seja, sobre os elementos mais rudimentares da Cultura e Historia de Africa. Nao precisaria sequer de invocar para tal o meu titulo de Mestre de Ciencia em Historia Economica e Economia do Desenvolvimento, com o grau de Merito, pelo departamento universitario mais credenciado em todo o mundo nessa area…

E porque, apesar de tudo isso, nao me proponho “re-escrever” a Historia de Africa, recomendo-lhes vivamente a leitura da obra de Joseph Ki-zerbo publicada sob a chancela da UNESCO, ficando-me apenas por esta referencia para nao os sobrecarregar com uma completa bibliografia obrigatoria.

Votos de boa leitura!

*****


COLÓQUIO HISTÓRIA E HISTORIADORES DA ÁFRICA

"Estranhamentos e intolerâncias têm sido a tônica nos encontros/confrontos do Velho com o Novo Mundo. Nesse processo, têm ficado à margem memórias, saberes, falares, viveres, códigos de escrita e de comunicação de povos de tradições ancestrais de oralidade – entre os quais contam-se ameríndios, africanos, filhos da diáspora e outros povos e culturas escravizados nas diversas fases da expansão das relações de mercado na modernidade européia.

A partir de resistências culturais limítrofes , visões de mundo, cosmogonias, relações entre cultura e natureza, expressões artísticas, concepções de corpo, estéticas, sensibilidades e religiosidades vêm rompendo barreiras, ainda que tenham sido historicamente ignoradas ou desconsideradas nos índices hierarquizadores de “raças” que pautam os cânones letrados e científicos ocidentais, que se pretenderam iluministas, racionais e progressistas. Vozes, sons, gestos e performances, inicialmente locais e fragmentários como expressões que são de “entre-lugares deslizantes” , não só renovaram e oxigenaram o estoque cultural dominante, como produziram identidades múltiplas, adensando suas reivindicações por autonomia, liberdades e reconhecimento de suas raízes e matrizes culturais, em lutas que reverberam no direito à memória e à história.

Pioneiro no empreendimento vital pelo direito à história dos povos e culturas subjugadas e silenciadas no universo do conhecimento eurocêntrico, Joseph Ki-Zerbo empenhou-se em invocar, demonstrar e lançar bases para a produção continuada e constantemente atualizada de uma História da África Negra."

(Continue a ler aqui)

*(Publicado inicialmente a 12/10/07)

REVISITING 'AMERICA BEHIND THE COLOR LINE'

Bellow are extracts from a reflection by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on his acclaimed book America Behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans, where he unveils, through in-depth interviews with a wide range of personalities, the Black America which emerged from the silent and pacific revolution wrought during the past four decades in the US by the Civil Rights movement and some of its offspring such as ‘affirmative action’ and ‘black economic empowerment’.

Written in 2004, it does not account, of course, for the twists and turns the public lives of some of his interviewees went through since then, most notably those of Colin Powell or Vernon Jordan, or for what some have already termed “the hurricane Obama” currently sweeping the American political landscape, or the alliance between ‘black money’ and ‘black political skill’ symbolised by Ophra Winfrey’s open support to Obama’s presidential campaign, thus moving Black America closer to reclaiming Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream – to use the subtitle to Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”. Yet, it is still worth a ‘revisitation’.

*****

Since 1963, we've had seventy-five black congressmen and congresswomen, two U.S. senators, a whole slew of mayors, and two Supreme Court justices, but only in the last few years have we penetrated the heart of executive political power in Washington. Just a generation ago, the idea of a black president was a joke we'd tell in barbershops. We figured that a black man could be king of England before he'd be elected president of the United States!

When I was growing up in the fifties, I could never have imagined that one of Harvard's most respected departments would be a Department of Afro-American Studies and that twenty professors would be teaching here at the turn of the century. Our experience at Harvard is just one instance of a much larger phenomenon. Since the death of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968, individual African Americans have earned positions higher within white society than any person black or white could have dreamed possible in the segregated 1950s. And this is true in national and local government, in the military and in business, in medicine and education, on TV and in film. Virtually anywhere you look in America today, you'll find black people.
Not enough black people, but who can deny that progress has been made?

In fact, since 1968, the black middle class has tripled, as measured by the percentage of families earning $50,000 or more. At the same time-and this is the kicker-the percentage of black children who live at or below the poverty line is almost 35 percent, just about what it was on the day that Dr. King was killed. Since 1968, then, two distinct classes have emerged within Black America: a black middle class with "white money," as my mother used to say, and what some would argue is a self-perpetuating, static black underclass. Is this what the Civil Rights Movement was all about? Can we ever bridge this black class divide? What does the success of this expanding middle class mean for the progress of our people? Is this economic ascent the ultimate realization of Dr. King's "dream" of integration?.

How do we continue to expand the size of the middle class? And most scary of all, is this class divide permanent, a way of life that will never be altered? Writing in the New York Times on May 31, 2003, Jack Bass, author of Unlikely Heroes: Southern Federal Judges and Civil Rights, quoted from an interview with John Minor Wisdom, "the legendary jurist and scholar," which Bass had conducted just four months before the judge's death at the age of ninety-three in 1999: "He told me he was uncertain which was more important," Bass wrote: "how far blacks have come in overcoming discrimination, or 'how far they still have to go.'" This question arose in another form in an amusing, signifying interplay between the titles of William Julius Wilson's The Declining Significance of Race (1978) and Cornel West's best-selling Race Matters (1993).

There can be no doubt that "race" is far less important as a factor affecting economic success for our generation than it was for any previous generation of African Americans in this country. Still, there can be little doubt that the fact of one's blackness remains the hallmark of our various identities in a country whose wealth, to a large extent, was constructed on race-based slavery, followed by a full century of de jure segregation and discrimination in every major aspect of a black citizen's social, economic, and political existence. I decided to talk with some of the most remarkably successful African Americans of our generation who-because of opportunities created to one degree or another by affirmative action-have been enabled to excel in positions of authority that our antecedents could scarcely have dreamed of occupying, or even aspiring to hold. Had they become the Putney Swopes of our generation?


{Read some of the interviews here}

Bellow are extracts from a reflection by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on his acclaimed book America Behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans, where he unveils, through in-depth interviews with a wide range of personalities, the Black America which emerged from the silent and pacific revolution wrought during the past four decades in the US by the Civil Rights movement and some of its offspring such as ‘affirmative action’ and ‘black economic empowerment’.

Written in 2004, it does not account, of course, for the twists and turns the public lives of some of his interviewees went through since then, most notably those of Colin Powell or Vernon Jordan, or for what some have already termed “the hurricane Obama” currently sweeping the American political landscape, or the alliance between ‘black money’ and ‘black political skill’ symbolised by Ophra Winfrey’s open support to Obama’s presidential campaign, thus moving Black America closer to reclaiming Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream – to use the subtitle to Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”. Yet, it is still worth a ‘revisitation’.

*****

Since 1963, we've had seventy-five black congressmen and congresswomen, two U.S. senators, a whole slew of mayors, and two Supreme Court justices, but only in the last few years have we penetrated the heart of executive political power in Washington. Just a generation ago, the idea of a black president was a joke we'd tell in barbershops. We figured that a black man could be king of England before he'd be elected president of the United States!

When I was growing up in the fifties, I could never have imagined that one of Harvard's most respected departments would be a Department of Afro-American Studies and that twenty professors would be teaching here at the turn of the century. Our experience at Harvard is just one instance of a much larger phenomenon. Since the death of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968, individual African Americans have earned positions higher within white society than any person black or white could have dreamed possible in the segregated 1950s. And this is true in national and local government, in the military and in business, in medicine and education, on TV and in film. Virtually anywhere you look in America today, you'll find black people.
Not enough black people, but who can deny that progress has been made?

In fact, since 1968, the black middle class has tripled, as measured by the percentage of families earning $50,000 or more. At the same time-and this is the kicker-the percentage of black children who live at or below the poverty line is almost 35 percent, just about what it was on the day that Dr. King was killed. Since 1968, then, two distinct classes have emerged within Black America: a black middle class with "white money," as my mother used to say, and what some would argue is a self-perpetuating, static black underclass. Is this what the Civil Rights Movement was all about? Can we ever bridge this black class divide? What does the success of this expanding middle class mean for the progress of our people? Is this economic ascent the ultimate realization of Dr. King's "dream" of integration?.

How do we continue to expand the size of the middle class? And most scary of all, is this class divide permanent, a way of life that will never be altered? Writing in the New York Times on May 31, 2003, Jack Bass, author of Unlikely Heroes: Southern Federal Judges and Civil Rights, quoted from an interview with John Minor Wisdom, "the legendary jurist and scholar," which Bass had conducted just four months before the judge's death at the age of ninety-three in 1999: "He told me he was uncertain which was more important," Bass wrote: "how far blacks have come in overcoming discrimination, or 'how far they still have to go.'" This question arose in another form in an amusing, signifying interplay between the titles of William Julius Wilson's The Declining Significance of Race (1978) and Cornel West's best-selling Race Matters (1993).

There can be no doubt that "race" is far less important as a factor affecting economic success for our generation than it was for any previous generation of African Americans in this country. Still, there can be little doubt that the fact of one's blackness remains the hallmark of our various identities in a country whose wealth, to a large extent, was constructed on race-based slavery, followed by a full century of de jure segregation and discrimination in every major aspect of a black citizen's social, economic, and political existence. I decided to talk with some of the most remarkably successful African Americans of our generation who-because of opportunities created to one degree or another by affirmative action-have been enabled to excel in positions of authority that our antecedents could scarcely have dreamed of occupying, or even aspiring to hold. Had they become the Putney Swopes of our generation?


{Read some of the interviews here}

BARACK OBAMA'S KENYA (II)*

Kenyatta International Airport was almost empty. Officials sipped at their morning tea as they checked over passports; in the baggage area, a creaky conveyor belt slowly disgorged luggage. Auma was nowhere in sight, so I took a seat on my carry-on bag and lit a cigarette. After a few minutes, a security guard with a wooden club started to walk toward me. I looked around for an ashtray, thinking I must be in a no-smoking area, but instead of scolding me, the guard smiled and asked if I had another cigarette to spare.

“This is your first trip to Kenya, yes?” he asked as I gave him a light. “That’s right.”
“I see.” He squatted down beside me. “You are from America. You know my brother’s son, perhaps. Samson Otieno. He is studying engineering in Texas.” I told him that I’d never been to Texas and so hadn’t had the opportunity to meet his nephew. This seemed to disappoint him, and he took several puffs from his cigarette in quick succession. By this time, the last of the other passengers on my flight had left the terminal. I asked the guard if any more bags were coming. He shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t think so,” he said, “but if you will just wait here, I will find someone who can help you.”

He disappeared around a narrow corridor, and I stood up to stretch my back. The rush of anticipation had drained away, and I smiled with the memory of the homecoming I had once imagined for myself. clouds lifting, old demons fleeing, the earth trembling as ancestors rose up in celebration. Instead I felt tired and abandoned. I was about to search for a telephone when the security guard reappeared with a strikingly beautiful woman, dark, slender, close to six feet tall, dressed in a British Airways uniform. She introduced herself as Miss Omoro and explained that my bag had probably been sent on to Johannesburg by mistake. “I’m awfully sorry about the inconvenience,” she said. “If you will just fill out this form, we can call Johannesburg and have it delivered to you as soon as the next flight comes in.”

I completed the form and Miss Omoro gave it the once-over before looking back at me. “You wouldn’t be related to Dr. Obama, by any chance?” she asked. “Well, yes – he was my father.” Miss Omoro smiled sympathetically. “I’m very sorry about his passing. Your father was a close friend of my family’s. He would often come to our house when I was a child.” We began to talk about my visit, and she told me of her studies in London, as well as her interest in traveling to the States. I found myself trying to prolong the conversation, encouraged less by Miss Omoro’s beauty – she had mentioned a fiance’ – than by the fact that she’d recognized my name.

That had never happened before, I realized; not in Hawaii, not in Indonesia, not in L.A. or New York or Chicago. For the first time in my life, I felt the comfort, the firmness of identity that a name might provide, how it could carry an entire history in other people’s memories, so that they might nod and say knowingly, “Oh, you are so and so’s son.” No one here in Kenya would ask how to spell my name, or mangle it with an unfamiliar tongue. My name belonged and so I belonged, drawn into a web of relationships, alliances, and grudges that I did not understand.

“Barack!” I turned to see Auma jumping up and down behind another guard, who wasn’t letting her pass into the baggage area. I excused myself and rushed over to her, and we laughed and hugged, as silly as the first time we’d met. A tall, brown-skinned woman was smiling beside us, and Auma turned and said, “Barack, this is our Auntie Zeituni. Our father’s sister.” “Welcome home,” Zeituni said, kissing me in both cheeks. I told them about my bag and said that there was someone here who had known the Old Man. But when I looked back to where I’d been standing, Miss Omoro was nowhere in sight. I asked the security guard where she had gone. He shrugged and said that she must have left for the day.

{Keep Reading Here}

*Extracts from "Dreams from My Father - A Story of Race and Inheritance", Copyright © 1995, 2004 by Barack Obama

Kenyatta International Airport was almost empty. Officials sipped at their morning tea as they checked over passports; in the baggage area, a creaky conveyor belt slowly disgorged luggage. Auma was nowhere in sight, so I took a seat on my carry-on bag and lit a cigarette. After a few minutes, a security guard with a wooden club started to walk toward me. I looked around for an ashtray, thinking I must be in a no-smoking area, but instead of scolding me, the guard smiled and asked if I had another cigarette to spare.

“This is your first trip to Kenya, yes?” he asked as I gave him a light. “That’s right.”
“I see.” He squatted down beside me. “You are from America. You know my brother’s son, perhaps. Samson Otieno. He is studying engineering in Texas.” I told him that I’d never been to Texas and so hadn’t had the opportunity to meet his nephew. This seemed to disappoint him, and he took several puffs from his cigarette in quick succession. By this time, the last of the other passengers on my flight had left the terminal. I asked the guard if any more bags were coming. He shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t think so,” he said, “but if you will just wait here, I will find someone who can help you.”

He disappeared around a narrow corridor, and I stood up to stretch my back. The rush of anticipation had drained away, and I smiled with the memory of the homecoming I had once imagined for myself. clouds lifting, old demons fleeing, the earth trembling as ancestors rose up in celebration. Instead I felt tired and abandoned. I was about to search for a telephone when the security guard reappeared with a strikingly beautiful woman, dark, slender, close to six feet tall, dressed in a British Airways uniform. She introduced herself as Miss Omoro and explained that my bag had probably been sent on to Johannesburg by mistake. “I’m awfully sorry about the inconvenience,” she said. “If you will just fill out this form, we can call Johannesburg and have it delivered to you as soon as the next flight comes in.”

I completed the form and Miss Omoro gave it the once-over before looking back at me. “You wouldn’t be related to Dr. Obama, by any chance?” she asked. “Well, yes – he was my father.” Miss Omoro smiled sympathetically. “I’m very sorry about his passing. Your father was a close friend of my family’s. He would often come to our house when I was a child.” We began to talk about my visit, and she told me of her studies in London, as well as her interest in traveling to the States. I found myself trying to prolong the conversation, encouraged less by Miss Omoro’s beauty – she had mentioned a fiance’ – than by the fact that she’d recognized my name.

That had never happened before, I realized; not in Hawaii, not in Indonesia, not in L.A. or New York or Chicago. For the first time in my life, I felt the comfort, the firmness of identity that a name might provide, how it could carry an entire history in other people’s memories, so that they might nod and say knowingly, “Oh, you are so and so’s son.” No one here in Kenya would ask how to spell my name, or mangle it with an unfamiliar tongue. My name belonged and so I belonged, drawn into a web of relationships, alliances, and grudges that I did not understand.

“Barack!” I turned to see Auma jumping up and down behind another guard, who wasn’t letting her pass into the baggage area. I excused myself and rushed over to her, and we laughed and hugged, as silly as the first time we’d met. A tall, brown-skinned woman was smiling beside us, and Auma turned and said, “Barack, this is our Auntie Zeituni. Our father’s sister.” “Welcome home,” Zeituni said, kissing me in both cheeks. I told them about my bag and said that there was someone here who had known the Old Man. But when I looked back to where I’d been standing, Miss Omoro was nowhere in sight. I asked the security guard where she had gone. He shrugged and said that she must have left for the day.

{Keep Reading Here}

*Extracts from "Dreams from My Father - A Story of Race and Inheritance", Copyright © 1995, 2004 by Barack Obama

OBAMA VS. CLINTON: THE MOTHER OF ALL BATTLES? (Take 5)*

"NOW WE'RE TALKING!"

Iowa... New Hampshire....

IS IT IN THE BAG?

{*See previous 'takes' here}

"NOW WE'RE TALKING!"

Iowa... New Hampshire....

IS IT IN THE BAG?

{*See previous 'takes' here}

O “FURACÃO OBAMA” E O DESAFIO DOS NEGROS BRASILEIROS EM 2008

O ano de 2008 começou sob o impacto do “furacão Barack Obama” que, surpreendendo os que ainda duvidavam de seu carisma e poder de mobilização, venceu com folga, as prévias no Estado de Iowa, as primeiras das primárias que decidirão quem será o candidato do Partido Democrata, depois da devastação da Era Bush, nas eleições americanas de novembro.
O senador pelo Estado de Illinois deixou para trás, num distante terceiro lugar, a ex-primeira dama Hillary Clinton, que ainda aparece como favorita na disputa no âmbito nacional, apesar do crescimento de Obama. “Nós estamos escolhendo a esperança em vez do medo. Estamos escolhendo a unidade, não a divisão, e enviando uma poderosa mensagem de que a mudança está chegando para os Estados Unidos”, disse ao celebrar a vitória.
A vitória de Obama na primeira prévia americana, com o voto majoritário dos jovens e das mulheres, em um Estado cuja população é 93% branca, é emblemática. Não é o fim da disputa para ver quem será o candidato do Partido Democrata, mas apenas o começo. O Estado tem apenas 57 dos 2.500 que indicarão o vencedor na Convenção Nacional do Partido Democrata, em agosto. É inegável, no entanto, que pode representar uma tendência para os negros em todo o mundo, inclusive no Brasil, onde, este ano, também teremos eleições.
O “furacão Obama” nos diz que é possível e necessário – respeitadas as nossas naturais divergências, seja de que tipo forem – construir pontos de unidade em favor do combate sem trégua à desigualdade racial, que permeia o nosso país de cima abaixo e explica o oceano da desigualdade social em que estamos afundados.

[Continue a ler aqui]

O ano de 2008 começou sob o impacto do “furacão Barack Obama” que, surpreendendo os que ainda duvidavam de seu carisma e poder de mobilização, venceu com folga, as prévias no Estado de Iowa, as primeiras das primárias que decidirão quem será o candidato do Partido Democrata, depois da devastação da Era Bush, nas eleições americanas de novembro.
O senador pelo Estado de Illinois deixou para trás, num distante terceiro lugar, a ex-primeira dama Hillary Clinton, que ainda aparece como favorita na disputa no âmbito nacional, apesar do crescimento de Obama. “Nós estamos escolhendo a esperança em vez do medo. Estamos escolhendo a unidade, não a divisão, e enviando uma poderosa mensagem de que a mudança está chegando para os Estados Unidos”, disse ao celebrar a vitória.
A vitória de Obama na primeira prévia americana, com o voto majoritário dos jovens e das mulheres, em um Estado cuja população é 93% branca, é emblemática. Não é o fim da disputa para ver quem será o candidato do Partido Democrata, mas apenas o começo. O Estado tem apenas 57 dos 2.500 que indicarão o vencedor na Convenção Nacional do Partido Democrata, em agosto. É inegável, no entanto, que pode representar uma tendência para os negros em todo o mundo, inclusive no Brasil, onde, este ano, também teremos eleições.
O “furacão Obama” nos diz que é possível e necessário – respeitadas as nossas naturais divergências, seja de que tipo forem – construir pontos de unidade em favor do combate sem trégua à desigualdade racial, que permeia o nosso país de cima abaixo e explica o oceano da desigualdade social em que estamos afundados.

[Continue a ler aqui]

BARACK OBAMA’S KENYA* (I)

I flew out of Heathrow Airport under stormy skies. A group of young British men dressed in ill-fitting blazers filled the back of the plane, and one of them – a pale, gangly youth, still troubled with acne – took the seat beside me. He read over the emergency instructions twice with great concentration, and once we were airborne, he turned to ask where I was headed. I told him I was traveling to Nairobi to visit my family.

“Nairobi’s a beautiful place, I hear. Wouldn’t mind stopping off there one of these days. Going to Johannesburg, I am.” He explained that as part of a degree program in geology, the British government had arranged for him and his classmates to work with South African mining companies for a year. “Seems like they have a shortage of trained people there, so if we’re luck they’ll take us on for a permanent spot. Best chance we have for a decent wage, I reckon – unless you’re willing to freeze out on some bleeding North Sea oil rig. Not for me, thank you.” I mentioned that if given the chance, a lot of South Africans might be interested in getting such training.

“Well, I’d imagine you’re right about that,” he said. “Don’t much agree with the race policy there. A shame, that.” He thought for a moment. “But then the rest of Africa’s falling apart now, isn’t it? Least from what I can tell. The blacks in South Africa aren’t starving to death like they do in some of these Godforsaken countries. Don’t envy them, mind you, but compared to some poor bugger in Ethiopia – “

A stewardess came down the aisle with headphones for rent, and the young man pulled out his wallet. “’Course, I try and stay out of politics, you know. Figure it’s none of my business. Same thing back home – everybody on the dole, the old men in Parliament talking the same old rubbish. Best thing to do is mind your own little corner of the world, that’s what I say.” He found the outlet for the headphones and slipped them over his ears. “Wake me up when they bring the food, will you,” he said before reclining his seat for a nap.

I pulled out a book from my carry-on bag and tried to read. It was a portrait of several African countries written by a Western journalist who’d spent a decade in Africa; an old Africa hand, he would be called, someone who apparently prided himself on the balanced assessment. The book’s first few chapters discussed the history of colonialism at some length: the manipulation of tribal hatreds and the caprice of colonial boundaries, the displacements, the detentions, the indignities large and small. The early heroism of independence figures like Kenyatta and Nkrumah was duly noted, their later drift toward despotism attributed at least in part to various Cold War machinations.

But by the book’s third chapter, images from the present had begun to outstrip the past. Famine, disease, the coups and countercoups led by illiterate young men wielding AK-47s like shepherd sticks – if Africa had a history, the writer seemed to say, the scale of current suffering had rendered such history meaningless. Poor buggers. Godforsaken countries.

I set the book down, feeling a familiar anger flush through me, an anger all the more maddening for its lack of clear target. Beside me the young Brit was snoring softly now, his glasses askew on his finshaped nose. Was I angry at him? I wondered. Was it his fault that, for all my education, all the theories in my possession, I had had no ready answers to the questions he’d posed? How much could I blame him for wanting to better his lot? Maybe I was just angry because of his easy familiarity with me, his assumption that I, as an American, even a black American, might naturally share in his dim view of Africa; an assumption that in his world at least marked a progress of sorts, but that for me only underscored my own uneasy status: a Westerner not entirely at home in the West, an African on his way to a land full of strangers.

[Keep Reading Here]

*Extracts from "Dreams from My Father - A Story of Race and Inheritance", Copyright © 1995, 2004 by Barack Obama

(Thanks A. for bringing me this book all the way from Washington DC as a gift)

I flew out of Heathrow Airport under stormy skies. A group of young British men dressed in ill-fitting blazers filled the back of the plane, and one of them – a pale, gangly youth, still troubled with acne – took the seat beside me. He read over the emergency instructions twice with great concentration, and once we were airborne, he turned to ask where I was headed. I told him I was traveling to Nairobi to visit my family.

“Nairobi’s a beautiful place, I hear. Wouldn’t mind stopping off there one of these days. Going to Johannesburg, I am.” He explained that as part of a degree program in geology, the British government had arranged for him and his classmates to work with South African mining companies for a year. “Seems like they have a shortage of trained people there, so if we’re luck they’ll take us on for a permanent spot. Best chance we have for a decent wage, I reckon – unless you’re willing to freeze out on some bleeding North Sea oil rig. Not for me, thank you.” I mentioned that if given the chance, a lot of South Africans might be interested in getting such training.

“Well, I’d imagine you’re right about that,” he said. “Don’t much agree with the race policy there. A shame, that.” He thought for a moment. “But then the rest of Africa’s falling apart now, isn’t it? Least from what I can tell. The blacks in South Africa aren’t starving to death like they do in some of these Godforsaken countries. Don’t envy them, mind you, but compared to some poor bugger in Ethiopia – “

A stewardess came down the aisle with headphones for rent, and the young man pulled out his wallet. “’Course, I try and stay out of politics, you know. Figure it’s none of my business. Same thing back home – everybody on the dole, the old men in Parliament talking the same old rubbish. Best thing to do is mind your own little corner of the world, that’s what I say.” He found the outlet for the headphones and slipped them over his ears. “Wake me up when they bring the food, will you,” he said before reclining his seat for a nap.

I pulled out a book from my carry-on bag and tried to read. It was a portrait of several African countries written by a Western journalist who’d spent a decade in Africa; an old Africa hand, he would be called, someone who apparently prided himself on the balanced assessment. The book’s first few chapters discussed the history of colonialism at some length: the manipulation of tribal hatreds and the caprice of colonial boundaries, the displacements, the detentions, the indignities large and small. The early heroism of independence figures like Kenyatta and Nkrumah was duly noted, their later drift toward despotism attributed at least in part to various Cold War machinations.

But by the book’s third chapter, images from the present had begun to outstrip the past. Famine, disease, the coups and countercoups led by illiterate young men wielding AK-47s like shepherd sticks – if Africa had a history, the writer seemed to say, the scale of current suffering had rendered such history meaningless. Poor buggers. Godforsaken countries.

I set the book down, feeling a familiar anger flush through me, an anger all the more maddening for its lack of clear target. Beside me the young Brit was snoring softly now, his glasses askew on his finshaped nose. Was I angry at him? I wondered. Was it his fault that, for all my education, all the theories in my possession, I had had no ready answers to the questions he’d posed? How much could I blame him for wanting to better his lot? Maybe I was just angry because of his easy familiarity with me, his assumption that I, as an American, even a black American, might naturally share in his dim view of Africa; an assumption that in his world at least marked a progress of sorts, but that for me only underscored my own uneasy status: a Westerner not entirely at home in the West, an African on his way to a land full of strangers.

[Keep Reading Here]

*Extracts from "Dreams from My Father - A Story of Race and Inheritance", Copyright © 1995, 2004 by Barack Obama

(Thanks A. for bringing me this book all the way from Washington DC as a gift)

LOCAL VOICES OFFLINE (3)

Things someone, somewhere in the world, was talking about but you probably weren’t listening…

I found this speech particularly interesting for what it has to say about the deterioration of the situation in Zimbabwe since its independence.
The speaker, Jeremy Thorpe, addresses the situation in then Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) at the time. He directs his ‘punches’ at the “internal government” then headed by Ian Smith, who once famously said "I don't believe in black majority rule over Rhodesia, not in a thousand years." It should be noted in passing that Smith has recently passed away and has been hailed in some circles of the blogosphere as a “African Hero”.

The talks Thorpe refers to eventually led to the ‘Lancaster House Agreement’ and Zimbabwe’s independence. Retrospectively, it may be said that there was a formal agreement but no implementation of it, in such a way that, paraphrasing his speech, “there was no delivery of the goods agreed to at Lancaster House and the life of the average African has only altered for the worse”…

Taking this speech somewhat out of context, one might suggest, in relation to the current negotiations on the EU-Africa EPAs, that “they have got now to generate such activity towards genuine partnership they will begin to not only astonish the world but, in particular, they will astonish the African population within Africa itself”…

Thorpe’s Last Stand

JEREMY THORPE was forced to resign the leadership of the Liberal Party in 1976, and survived scandal and a major trial for incitement and conspiracy to murder. He lost his North Devon seat in 1979. This is possibly his last major speech in the Commons, where he once had a reputation as a sparkling wit, well informed and fluent. He spoke in a debate on Rhodesia, which was still in turmoil, as MPs sought ways to end the fighting. (2/8/78)

Things someone, somewhere in the world, was talking about but you probably weren’t listening…

I found this speech particularly interesting for what it has to say about the deterioration of the situation in Zimbabwe since its independence.
The speaker, Jeremy Thorpe, addresses the situation in then Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) at the time. He directs his ‘punches’ at the “internal government” then headed by Ian Smith, who once famously said "I don't believe in black majority rule over Rhodesia, not in a thousand years." It should be noted in passing that Smith has recently passed away and has been hailed in some circles of the blogosphere as a “African Hero”.

The talks Thorpe refers to eventually led to the ‘Lancaster House Agreement’ and Zimbabwe’s independence. Retrospectively, it may be said that there was a formal agreement but no implementation of it, in such a way that, paraphrasing his speech, “there was no delivery of the goods agreed to at Lancaster House and the life of the average African has only altered for the worse”…

Taking this speech somewhat out of context, one might suggest, in relation to the current negotiations on the EU-Africa EPAs, that “they have got now to generate such activity towards genuine partnership they will begin to not only astonish the world but, in particular, they will astonish the African population within Africa itself”…

Thorpe’s Last Stand

JEREMY THORPE was forced to resign the leadership of the Liberal Party in 1976, and survived scandal and a major trial for incitement and conspiracy to murder. He lost his North Devon seat in 1979. This is possibly his last major speech in the Commons, where he once had a reputation as a sparkling wit, well informed and fluent. He spoke in a debate on Rhodesia, which was still in turmoil, as MPs sought ways to end the fighting. (2/8/78)

BLOGOSFERA MOCAMBICANA: UM DEBATE INTERESSANTE

Tem estado a decorrer na blogosfera Mocambicana um debate bastante interessante e pertinente, centrado de forma geral na questao do “papel da/o academica/o na sociedade”.

Como todos os debates sobre questoes sensiveis, este tem tido tambem os seus altos e baixos, mas tem sido inegavelmente rico e esclarecedor - nao estivesse ele a ser protagonizado por alguns dos mais destacados cientistas sociais Mocambicanos…
A blogosfera Mocambicana esta’, portanto, de parabens!

Alguns dos 'posts' a partir dos quais se podem juntar “os fios da meada” podem ser encontrados, entre outros, nestes blogs: Diario de Um Sociologo e Olhar Sociologico.

{Ilustracoes daqui}

Tem estado a decorrer na blogosfera Mocambicana um debate bastante interessante e pertinente, centrado de forma geral na questao do “papel da/o academica/o na sociedade”.

Como todos os debates sobre questoes sensiveis, este tem tido tambem os seus altos e baixos, mas tem sido inegavelmente rico e esclarecedor - nao estivesse ele a ser protagonizado por alguns dos mais destacados cientistas sociais Mocambicanos…
A blogosfera Mocambicana esta’, portanto, de parabens!

Alguns dos 'posts' a partir dos quais se podem juntar “os fios da meada” podem ser encontrados, entre outros, nestes blogs: Diario de Um Sociologo e Olhar Sociologico.

{Ilustracoes daqui}

COISAS DO ARCO DA VELHA…

O periodo de ferias de fim de ano presta-se sempre a arrumacoes e ‘limpezas de teias de armario’ que, invariavelmente, dao em ‘descobertas’ como esta: eu e o meu filho, separadamente, fomos ‘desencantar’ artigos de jornal onde aparecem estampadas as nossas xipalas… O mais engracado e’ que nenhum dos dois tinha antes visto o do outro e, mais interessante ainda, ambos foram publicados no mesmo fim de semana – um em Londres (no London Informer de 23/06/06), o outro no dia seguinte em Luanda (no Semanario Angolense de 24/06/06). Enfim, creio ser a este tipo de coincidencias que se referem as “coisas do arco (neste caso talvez seja melhor dito ‘da arca’) da velha”…

{CLICK NAS IMAGENS PARA LER OS ARTIGOS}

O periodo de ferias de fim de ano presta-se sempre a arrumacoes e ‘limpezas de teias de armario’ que, invariavelmente, dao em ‘descobertas’ como esta: eu e o meu filho, separadamente, fomos ‘desencantar’ artigos de jornal onde aparecem estampadas as nossas xipalas… O mais engracado e’ que nenhum dos dois tinha antes visto o do outro e, mais interessante ainda, ambos foram publicados no mesmo fim de semana – um em Londres (no London Informer de 23/06/06), o outro no dia seguinte em Luanda (no Semanario Angolense de 24/06/06). Enfim, creio ser a este tipo de coincidencias que se referem as “coisas do arco (neste caso talvez seja melhor dito ‘da arca’) da velha”…

{CLICK NAS IMAGENS PARA LER OS ARTIGOS}

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION

KEEP GOING

COZ LIFE'S COMPLICATED ENOUGH

&

VIDA TEM UM SO' VIDA...

KEEP GOING

COZ LIFE'S COMPLICATED ENOUGH

&

VIDA TEM UM SO' VIDA...

SUNDAY COVER & POETRY (X)

[Get Content Here]





{Poem: A Martian Sends a Postcard Home, by Craig Raine. Raine is founder and editor of the literary magazine Arete'. His poetry collections include The Onion, Memory (1978), A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1979), and History: The Home Movie (1994). His latest book is T.S. Eliot: Image, Text and Context (2007) - in Life Lines 2/Poets for Oxfam/Edited by Todd Swift, 2007}

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

BOAS ENTRADAS!

KANDANDOS!

[Get Content Here]





{Poem: A Martian Sends a Postcard Home, by Craig Raine. Raine is founder and editor of the literary magazine Arete'. His poetry collections include The Onion, Memory (1978), A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1979), and History: The Home Movie (1994). His latest book is T.S. Eliot: Image, Text and Context (2007) - in Life Lines 2/Poets for Oxfam/Edited by Todd Swift, 2007}

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

BOAS ENTRADAS!

KANDANDOS!

2007 PUBLICATIONS ON "LUSOPHONE AFRICA"

SELECTED TITLES

Centro de Estudos Africanos (CEA) da Univ. do Porto
(Coord.), Trabalho Forçado Africano – Articulações com
o poder político. Porto: Campo das Letras 2007

Chissico, Hermínio Paulino. O Racismo: Na sua Perspectiva Sociológica e
Psicológica - Como o Mesmo se Manifesta a Nível Global e em Moçambique.
Maputo: 2007

Fermino, António José - ANGOLA EVOCAÇÕES (Vida
do angolano e suas relações. com os europeus nos
longínquos anos de 1950-70 ). Lisbon: Europress,
2006, 171 p. ilustr. ISBN 978-989-20-0737-3

Francisco, Miguel. Nuvem Negra. O drama de 27 de Maio
de 1977. 199 pp. Lisbon: Clássica Editora 2007.

Ganhão, Carlos. Dembos: A Floresta do Medo: Angola - 1969 a 1971 [Romance].
Lisboa: Terramar [Tudo Ficção], 2007

Marcos, Daniel de Silva Costa. Salazar e de Gaulle: A França e a Questão Colonial Portuguesa (1958-1968). Lisboa: Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros [Biblioteca Diplomática, Série D], 2007

M’Bokolo, Elikia. ÁFRICA NEGRA. História e
Civilizações do Século XIX aos nossos dias. Tome II.
Lisbon: Edições Colibri 2007.

Mondlane, Janet Rae. O Eco da Tua Voz: Cartas Editadas de Eduardo
Mondlane. Volume I (1920-1950). Maputo : IU, 2007

Oliveira, Pedro Aires. Os Despojos da Aliança: A Grã-Bretanha e a Questão Colonial Portuguesa, 1845-1976. Lisboa: Tinta-da-China, 2007

Ribeiro, Margarida Calafate. África Feminino: As Mulheres Portuguesas e a Guerra Colonial. Porto: Afrontamento [Textos 55], 2007

[COMPREHENSIVE LIST]

SELECTED TITLES

Centro de Estudos Africanos (CEA) da Univ. do Porto
(Coord.), Trabalho Forçado Africano – Articulações com
o poder político. Porto: Campo das Letras 2007

Chissico, Hermínio Paulino. O Racismo: Na sua Perspectiva Sociológica e
Psicológica - Como o Mesmo se Manifesta a Nível Global e em Moçambique.
Maputo: 2007

Fermino, António José - ANGOLA EVOCAÇÕES (Vida
do angolano e suas relações. com os europeus nos
longínquos anos de 1950-70 ). Lisbon: Europress,
2006, 171 p. ilustr. ISBN 978-989-20-0737-3

Francisco, Miguel. Nuvem Negra. O drama de 27 de Maio
de 1977. 199 pp. Lisbon: Clássica Editora 2007.

Ganhão, Carlos. Dembos: A Floresta do Medo: Angola - 1969 a 1971 [Romance].
Lisboa: Terramar [Tudo Ficção], 2007

Marcos, Daniel de Silva Costa. Salazar e de Gaulle: A França e a Questão Colonial Portuguesa (1958-1968). Lisboa: Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros [Biblioteca Diplomática, Série D], 2007

M’Bokolo, Elikia. ÁFRICA NEGRA. História e
Civilizações do Século XIX aos nossos dias. Tome II.
Lisbon: Edições Colibri 2007.

Mondlane, Janet Rae. O Eco da Tua Voz: Cartas Editadas de Eduardo
Mondlane. Volume I (1920-1950). Maputo : IU, 2007

Oliveira, Pedro Aires. Os Despojos da Aliança: A Grã-Bretanha e a Questão Colonial Portuguesa, 1845-1976. Lisboa: Tinta-da-China, 2007

Ribeiro, Margarida Calafate. África Feminino: As Mulheres Portuguesas e a Guerra Colonial. Porto: Afrontamento [Textos 55], 2007

[COMPREHENSIVE LIST]

LOCAL VOICES OFFLINE (2)

Things someone, somewhere in the world, was talking about but you probably weren’t listening…

I was about to post this yesterday when the news of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination made me suspend it for at least a day.

“Now We’re Talking” is part of a show on Gabz FM by top Botswana radio DJ and comedian extraordinaire Michael “Dignash” Morapedi (read about him here and here). It consists of a delightful series of pranks he plays on unaware, innocent people he manages to get on the phone… Mimicking an amazingly wide range of personalities, voices, accents and tones, he succeeds at caricaturing some of the most interesting aspects of daily social, economic and political life in Gaborone, Botswana and the wider Southern African region. Truly a ‘must listen’ if you are around…


Intro

To help us unwind and try to rescue the rest of this holiday period from the somberness of yesterday’s news, I selected this ridiculously funny episode ('Don't Touch My Wife') about the absurdity of a situation that leaves a poor man crying… Enjoy!


Don't Touch My Wife

Things someone, somewhere in the world, was talking about but you probably weren’t listening…

I was about to post this yesterday when the news of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination made me suspend it for at least a day.

“Now We’re Talking” is part of a show on Gabz FM by top Botswana radio DJ and comedian extraordinaire Michael “Dignash” Morapedi (read about him here and here). It consists of a delightful series of pranks he plays on unaware, innocent people he manages to get on the phone… Mimicking an amazingly wide range of personalities, voices, accents and tones, he succeeds at caricaturing some of the most interesting aspects of daily social, economic and political life in Gaborone, Botswana and the wider Southern African region. Truly a ‘must listen’ if you are around…


Intro

To help us unwind and try to rescue the rest of this holiday period from the somberness of yesterday’s news, I selected this ridiculously funny episode ('Don't Touch My Wife') about the absurdity of a situation that leaves a poor man crying… Enjoy!


Don't Touch My Wife

BENAZIR BHUTTO (R.I.P.)

With the brutal assassination of Benazir Bhutto today, the small list of female political leaders in the world has gone even shorter.
Shocking as this news came, and independently of her gender and politics, the most pressing question in my mind, particularly at this time of the year when, regardless of faith and religion, humanity is supposed to be vying for world peace, is this:

PAKISTAN: CAN THERE EVER BE PEACE?

With the brutal assassination of Benazir Bhutto today, the small list of female political leaders in the world has gone even shorter.
Shocking as this news came, and independently of her gender and politics, the most pressing question in my mind, particularly at this time of the year when, regardless of faith and religion, humanity is supposed to be vying for world peace, is this:

PAKISTAN: CAN THERE EVER BE PEACE?

SUNDAY COVER & POETRY (IX)

{Click on the picture to get content}

{Poem: Jesus Isn't Just For Christmas , by John Hegley. John Hegley's collections include Glad to Wear Glasses (1990), Can I Come Down Now Dad (1991), and Dog (2000). His latest collection is The Sound of Paint Drying (2003). He has also released his own CD of songs and poetry Saint and Blurry. Musician Keith Moore accompanies John Hegley on his track here - in Life Lines 2/Poets for Oxfam/Edited by Todd Swift, 2007}

MERRY XMAS EVERYONE!

{Click on the picture to get content}

{Poem: Jesus Isn't Just For Christmas , by John Hegley. John Hegley's collections include Glad to Wear Glasses (1990), Can I Come Down Now Dad (1991), and Dog (2000). His latest collection is The Sound of Paint Drying (2003). He has also released his own CD of songs and poetry Saint and Blurry. Musician Keith Moore accompanies John Hegley on his track here - in Life Lines 2/Poets for Oxfam/Edited by Todd Swift, 2007}

MERRY XMAS EVERYONE!

LOCAL VOICES OFFLINE (1)

Things someone, somewhere in the world, was talking about but you probably weren’t listening…


GREAT PARLIAMENTARY SPEECHES

"It took a long time to broadcast the British Parliament. It was one of the last in the Western world to agree to it. And that was after a long series of votes, narrow majorities against, and limited experiments in the Sixties and Seventies.

But it wasn’t for want of trying. Almost as soon as the BBC was founded questions were asked in Parliament. In 1923 the Prime Minister Mr. Bonar Law said that it would be “undesirable” – and that continued to be the official view till well after the Second World War. In the same year, with remarkable prescience, the first issue of the “Radio Times” began on its front page: “When WE broadcast Parliament – and it’s bound to happen this century or the next…”. Even at that time, ‘Popular Wireless’ was making jokes about it. But despite the continuous pressure from Sir John Reith, politicians remained hostile to radio. “The Week in Westminster” was founded in 1929, as an attempt to bring Parliament to the housewife, if microphones were barred in the House.

Throughout the Thirties the BBC was not permitted a permanent representative in the Press Gallery – that only came in 1945, with the start of “Today in Parliament”. Clement Attlee had written a dissenting note to the Ullswater Report of 1935, - which modestly recommended allowing a BBC reporter access to the Gallery to report debates, - on the grounds that he could not be objective. Direct broadcasting of Parliament, said the report, was “impracticable”.

Winston Churchill took a different view. He tried to get microphones installed so that an “electrical recording” could be made of his speech on a Vote of Confidence in January 1942 – he persuaded the War Cabinet, but not the House."

[Keep reading here]

First Day

At the end of Question Time on the first day the Commons was broadcast, the Speaker, GEORGE THOMAS, had a humorous comment in reply to a point of Order from JULIAN RIDSDALE, (Con., Harwich). The first MP to speak on the air, after the Speaker, was John Morris, Welsh Secretary, answering Welsh questions. (3/4/78)

“Turkeys voting for Christmas”

March 28th, 1979 was a fateful day for the Labour government – the Lib-Lab pact had collapsed, the Nationalists had turned on Labour after the failure of its devolution bills, and a few crucial Ulster votes could not be guaranteed. At ten o’clock, the vote (of confidence) was taken, the government lost by one, and the Prime Minister, JAMES CALLAGHAN, was forced to call an election. Labour were out of power throughout the Eighties. Opening the debate, Callaghan derided the Liberals for “spinning like a top” over talks on devolution, and the SNP for destroying their own future. (28/3/79)

Things someone, somewhere in the world, was talking about but you probably weren’t listening…


GREAT PARLIAMENTARY SPEECHES

"It took a long time to broadcast the British Parliament. It was one of the last in the Western world to agree to it. And that was after a long series of votes, narrow majorities against, and limited experiments in the Sixties and Seventies.

But it wasn’t for want of trying. Almost as soon as the BBC was founded questions were asked in Parliament. In 1923 the Prime Minister Mr. Bonar Law said that it would be “undesirable” – and that continued to be the official view till well after the Second World War. In the same year, with remarkable prescience, the first issue of the “Radio Times” began on its front page: “When WE broadcast Parliament – and it’s bound to happen this century or the next…”. Even at that time, ‘Popular Wireless’ was making jokes about it. But despite the continuous pressure from Sir John Reith, politicians remained hostile to radio. “The Week in Westminster” was founded in 1929, as an attempt to bring Parliament to the housewife, if microphones were barred in the House.

Throughout the Thirties the BBC was not permitted a permanent representative in the Press Gallery – that only came in 1945, with the start of “Today in Parliament”. Clement Attlee had written a dissenting note to the Ullswater Report of 1935, - which modestly recommended allowing a BBC reporter access to the Gallery to report debates, - on the grounds that he could not be objective. Direct broadcasting of Parliament, said the report, was “impracticable”.

Winston Churchill took a different view. He tried to get microphones installed so that an “electrical recording” could be made of his speech on a Vote of Confidence in January 1942 – he persuaded the War Cabinet, but not the House."

[Keep reading here]

First Day

At the end of Question Time on the first day the Commons was broadcast, the Speaker, GEORGE THOMAS, had a humorous comment in reply to a point of Order from JULIAN RIDSDALE, (Con., Harwich). The first MP to speak on the air, after the Speaker, was John Morris, Welsh Secretary, answering Welsh questions. (3/4/78)

“Turkeys voting for Christmas”

March 28th, 1979 was a fateful day for the Labour government – the Lib-Lab pact had collapsed, the Nationalists had turned on Labour after the failure of its devolution bills, and a few crucial Ulster votes could not be guaranteed. At ten o’clock, the vote (of confidence) was taken, the government lost by one, and the Prime Minister, JAMES CALLAGHAN, was forced to call an election. Labour were out of power throughout the Eighties. Opening the debate, Callaghan derided the Liberals for “spinning like a top” over talks on devolution, and the SNP for destroying their own future. (28/3/79)

NOTES FROM THE AFRICAN DIASPORA: AN ECONOMIST'S VIEWS ON THE EU-AFRICA SUMMIT IN LISBON

I just came from Jewels In The Jungle, where I was left lost for words by this early Christmas present from BRE (in fact, I suspect it's going to be my best this year and, gosh BRE, how I wish I could find the words to adequately reciprocate... can you possibly do with just this: THANK YOU!)

*

Introduction

The following analysis of the recently concluded EU-Africa Summit in Lisbon is rather lengthy so I will try to keep this introduction short. The editorial was authored by an Angolan economist and economic historian, Ana F. Santana, who lives and works in London. I have admired Ana’s writing online about Africa and African issues for several months and she has just celebrated her 1st anniversary as a certified global blogger & citizen journalist at her personal blog “Koluki”.

Toward the end of November I received a request for an article about the EU-Africa Summit 2007 from Jörg Wolf* in Berlin. I responded to Jörg’s request “that I had just the right person to write that article for his prestigious organization” if she would be willing and had the time to do it. Fortunately Ana accepted the invitation and I had effectively passed a “hot potato” on to someone I felt was better qualified to write about this historic and important meeting of African and European leaders. Jörg was also delighted to have Ana’s contribution, adding a new and different perspective on transcontinental issues in contrast to the predominately European viewpoints on the summit published in the European press and aired on TV and radio news programs.

*Jörg is the co-author of the Atlantic Review blog and Editor-In-Chief for the Atlantic Community, a new “open think tank” focusing on transatlantic issues and dialogues between North America and Europe. Some of my readers may remember Jörg from our collaboration on the very popular March/April 2007 series about Black and African History in Germany and Europe.

Ana’s editorial is the product of what I term “a beautiful mind”, knowledge and opinions from a well-educated, hard-working, young woman interested and engaged in world affairs. Through her writing online Ana is helping to create a better world by freely sharing her knowledge and skills with others around the globe. Ana earned a MSc. degree in Economic History and Development Economics from the prestigious London School of Economics. A short bio with more information about Ana F. Santana can be found at the Atlantic Community and Die Welt Online websites.

It is an honor for me to be able to present Ana’s full editorial at Jewels in the Jungle. A shorter version of the article titled “EU-Africa Summit: Trade Disagreements Hinder Better Partnership” can be found at the Atlantic Community Policy Workshops and in the Debatte section of Die Welt Online, a leading German newspaper and flagship publication of the Axel Springer Verlag.

I just came from Jewels In The Jungle, where I was left lost for words by this early Christmas present from BRE (in fact, I suspect it's going to be my best this year and, gosh BRE, how I wish I could find the words to adequately reciprocate... can you possibly do with just this: THANK YOU!)

*

Introduction

The following analysis of the recently concluded EU-Africa Summit in Lisbon is rather lengthy so I will try to keep this introduction short. The editorial was authored by an Angolan economist and economic historian, Ana F. Santana, who lives and works in London. I have admired Ana’s writing online about Africa and African issues for several months and she has just celebrated her 1st anniversary as a certified global blogger & citizen journalist at her personal blog “Koluki”.

Toward the end of November I received a request for an article about the EU-Africa Summit 2007 from Jörg Wolf* in Berlin. I responded to Jörg’s request “that I had just the right person to write that article for his prestigious organization” if she would be willing and had the time to do it. Fortunately Ana accepted the invitation and I had effectively passed a “hot potato” on to someone I felt was better qualified to write about this historic and important meeting of African and European leaders. Jörg was also delighted to have Ana’s contribution, adding a new and different perspective on transcontinental issues in contrast to the predominately European viewpoints on the summit published in the European press and aired on TV and radio news programs.

*Jörg is the co-author of the Atlantic Review blog and Editor-In-Chief for the Atlantic Community, a new “open think tank” focusing on transatlantic issues and dialogues between North America and Europe. Some of my readers may remember Jörg from our collaboration on the very popular March/April 2007 series about Black and African History in Germany and Europe.

Ana’s editorial is the product of what I term “a beautiful mind”, knowledge and opinions from a well-educated, hard-working, young woman interested and engaged in world affairs. Through her writing online Ana is helping to create a better world by freely sharing her knowledge and skills with others around the globe. Ana earned a MSc. degree in Economic History and Development Economics from the prestigious London School of Economics. A short bio with more information about Ana F. Santana can be found at the Atlantic Community and Die Welt Online websites.

It is an honor for me to be able to present Ana’s full editorial at Jewels in the Jungle. A shorter version of the article titled “EU-Africa Summit: Trade Disagreements Hinder Better Partnership” can be found at the Atlantic Community Policy Workshops and in the Debatte section of Die Welt Online, a leading German newspaper and flagship publication of the Axel Springer Verlag.

SUNDAY COVER & POETRY (VIII)

{GET CONTENT HERE}



{Poem: Sitting On The Pavement Outside The Camden Falcon, August 1987, by Alan Buckley. Alan was brought up in Merseyside and now lives in Oxford. He is currently one of two poets running the Live Literature Programme at HMP Grendon in Buckinghamshire - in Life Lines 2/Poets for Oxfam/Edited by Todd Swift, 2007}

{GET CONTENT HERE}



{Poem: Sitting On The Pavement Outside The Camden Falcon, August 1987, by Alan Buckley. Alan was brought up in Merseyside and now lives in Oxford. He is currently one of two poets running the Live Literature Programme at HMP Grendon in Buckinghamshire - in Life Lines 2/Poets for Oxfam/Edited by Todd Swift, 2007}

REMEMBERING OTIS

It's 40 years this week since the tragic untimely death of Otis Redding. Here's how his widow, friends and extended family at Stax Records remembered him:



MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE: WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1967 was a typically balmy winter’s day. The weather was nearly 65 degrees Fahrenheit at midday – too warm for fur coats, but perfect for sunglasses and sharkskin suits, particularly when you put the top down to cruise into work at three in the afternoon, when the sun was at its highest peak. Stax Records, a movie theatre-cum-recording studio a few miles east of the Mississippi, was poppin’ that month: Carla Thomas and Albert King had released Top 100 hits, while The Charmels’ As Long As I’ve Got You and Jeanne And The Darlings’ Soul Girl were making local waves. But in the hallways at 926 East McLemore Avenue the buzz was all about one artist, Otis Redding, who’d returned to the studio for a marathon three-week session following surgery to remove throat polyps. The mood at Stax was stultifying, until Otis stepped up to the mike sometime after lunch and started laying down more than a dozen tracks, including the potentially career-changing tune (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay, a pop-inspired stylistic departure from his previous gut-bucket soul oeuvre.


‘When Otis had the chance to work that long, my kids and I would come into Memphis and stay with him at the Holiday Inn for three or four days at a time,” says Zelma Redding, who met the Macon, Georgia native in 1960 and married him a year later. “Stax was a family – you could feel the warmth, and how these musicians worked together and hung out together,” she says. “The musicians – Wayne [Jackson, trumpeter] and Andrew [Love, saxophonist], and Isaac [Hayes, then a staff songwriter] worked so hard, but they had so much fun working! It wasn’t about money – it was about doing something they loved to do. Then when Otis came in, it was like God had walked in. It was a great feeling.” That reception was a far cry from Otis’s humble beginnings at Stax, just seven years earlier. “Johnny Jenkins And The Pinetoppers pulled up, and Otis was the guy that carried the food and the cloths,” remembers organist Booker T. Jones. “But what I remember most is the end of the session with Otis singing his demo of This arms Of Mine, that moment of him singing that song. It was one of those moments. You’re not thinking that it’s gonna sell a lot of records. You’re just thinking it’s all heart. Nobody hardly paid any attention to him. It was like, ‘Well, we got to do this. The guy’s been sitting here waiting all day, Let’s see what he sounds like.’”


He had on overalls and a plaid shirt, like he was milking a cow,” adds session bassist Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn, “but he took a song and just kicked your ass with it.” “My hair lifted about three inches – I couldn’t believe this guy’s voice,” says Stax guitarist/producer Steve Cropper, who with Jones, Dunn, and drummer Al Jackson, Jr, formed instrumental group Booker T. And The M.G.’s, the nucleus of the Stax sound. “Back then, we were living in a two-room apartment in Macon, and we barely had money to put food on the table,” recalls Zelma. “Otis said, ‘I’m taking Johnny to Memphis,’ and I probably said goodbye. Otis Redding always believed in Otis Redding – he’d tell me, ‘Don’t worry, I’m gonna make you happy one day,’ and I was like, Lord have mercy, we could starve to death! That’s just how positive he was!”


(Sittin On) The Dock of the Bay

In its soft Southern drawl, Jones says it best: “When Otis came into the picture, life became about more than just sound. We became friends, and because he seemed to be a person with a mission, we sort of picked up that mission and it became our mission. His intent was so strong and so powerful when we were recording, it translated to more than just music. I’d never been with anybody that had that much desire to express emotion. It’s the longing. It translates to the listener and the player and anyone who hears it, and when that happens, millions of people listen.” (…) Otis took the label to another level. He put a spark under Stax, there’s no question about it,” he explains. “With all due respect to the great artists that came to those doors, Otis Redding was the one that everybody in that band looked forward to coming back to town. He had the greatest sense of rhythm and timing of anybody I’ve ever worked with. His feel of what he wanted to hear the horns do was unbelievable. He would come up with riffs, and we’d go, boy, they’ll never be able to play that. And they would be awesome. When he’d go sing and they’d play that lick, it was amazing what he’d pull off. He never ran out of ideas. Try A Little Tenderness – that song had been around since the ‘30s or whatever. It became a new song. It was amazing.”


Try a Little Tenderness

Otis’s dates in early December ’67 were nothing out of the ordinary. He and his backing group, Memphis teenagers The Bar-Kays, flew to Nashville for a gig on Friday, December 8. On Saturday they landed in Cleveland, Ohio, to tape an episode of Upbeat, a local TV music show, before playing at Leo’s Casino. Sunday morning, the band – without bassist James Alexander, who took a commercial flight – boarded Redding’s twin-engine Beechcraft, headed to Madison, Wisconsin for another show. “It was his second plane,” says Zelma. “He worked Thursday through Sunday, and he’d come back to Memphis early on Monday to get The Bar-Kays’ saxophonist Phalon Jones, drummer Carl Cunningham, guitarist Jimmy King, and organist Ronnie Caldwell, all just 18 years old, wouldn’t graduate with the rest of their senior class. On their way to Wisconsin, their plane plunged into in icy Lake Monona along with the 26-year old star.


‘I could see something floating in the water, and I got colder and colder trying to swim toward it,” says Bar-Kays trumpeter Ben Cauley, the only one on-board to survive the crash. “My head was bleeding pretty bad, and the current kept pushing all of us apart. I was in the water for about 25 minutes. I got so cold I could hardly hold on. I gave up, and at that moment, one of the fellas onshore grabbed me. I was thinking, Did they get everybody? By the time we got to shore, the hospital people had showed up. They asked, ‘Who are you?’ I said, Otis Redding and The Bar-Kays, out of Memphis. Is everybody all right? And they said no, everybody but me was dead.” Jon Scott, then a Dj at the FM-100 radio station, was, like most Memphians, devastated by the news. “I remember thinking it couldn’t possibly be true,” he says. “I had met Otis. I’d hung round him at the studio. He was, without question, the most captivating artist I’d ever seen, a true genius, and he died way too soon, way too early. We’d lost Buddy Holly the same way, but Otis was just too close to home.” “The crash happened on a Sunday,” says Cauley, “and I was flying home [later] that same week, so shook up about it that if the plane did a curve, I curved with it. I’d just turned 19, and it hit me like a ton of bricks to have to face reality, but James Alexander and I put the band back together again.”


A few months before the 40th anniversary of Otis Redding’s death, an exhibition, I’ve Got Dreams To Remember, chronicling the singer’s ascent to superstardom, opened at the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in Macon, not far from the bronze statue of Otis on the banks of the Ogeechee River. The Bar-Kays, with Ben Cauley on trumpet, joined Otis’s sons Dexter and Otis Redding III on-stage for a fundraiser for the Big O Youth Educational Dream Foundation, while Zelma Redding eulogised her husband as “an everyday country boy – regular people. Otis was just a down-to-earth, loving person. When he came back home, it wasn’t, ‘I’m different – I’m a star.’ He didn’t live that ego. The average person can really feel like they knew Otis Redding when they listen to him sing, because he sang from the heart. Back when he cut These Arms Of Mine, I never thought he would hold the legacy he holds today, but this is what Otis was born to do.”


These Arms of Mine

{Extracts from MOJO Music Magazine, DEC 07 - JAN 08}

It's 40 years this week since the tragic untimely death of Otis Redding. Here's how his widow, friends and extended family at Stax Records remembered him:



MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE: WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1967 was a typically balmy winter’s day. The weather was nearly 65 degrees Fahrenheit at midday – too warm for fur coats, but perfect for sunglasses and sharkskin suits, particularly when you put the top down to cruise into work at three in the afternoon, when the sun was at its highest peak. Stax Records, a movie theatre-cum-recording studio a few miles east of the Mississippi, was poppin’ that month: Carla Thomas and Albert King had released Top 100 hits, while The Charmels’ As Long As I’ve Got You and Jeanne And The Darlings’ Soul Girl were making local waves. But in the hallways at 926 East McLemore Avenue the buzz was all about one artist, Otis Redding, who’d returned to the studio for a marathon three-week session following surgery to remove throat polyps. The mood at Stax was stultifying, until Otis stepped up to the mike sometime after lunch and started laying down more than a dozen tracks, including the potentially career-changing tune (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay, a pop-inspired stylistic departure from his previous gut-bucket soul oeuvre.


‘When Otis had the chance to work that long, my kids and I would come into Memphis and stay with him at the Holiday Inn for three or four days at a time,” says Zelma Redding, who met the Macon, Georgia native in 1960 and married him a year later. “Stax was a family – you could feel the warmth, and how these musicians worked together and hung out together,” she says. “The musicians – Wayne [Jackson, trumpeter] and Andrew [Love, saxophonist], and Isaac [Hayes, then a staff songwriter] worked so hard, but they had so much fun working! It wasn’t about money – it was about doing something they loved to do. Then when Otis came in, it was like God had walked in. It was a great feeling.” That reception was a far cry from Otis’s humble beginnings at Stax, just seven years earlier. “Johnny Jenkins And The Pinetoppers pulled up, and Otis was the guy that carried the food and the cloths,” remembers organist Booker T. Jones. “But what I remember most is the end of the session with Otis singing his demo of This arms Of Mine, that moment of him singing that song. It was one of those moments. You’re not thinking that it’s gonna sell a lot of records. You’re just thinking it’s all heart. Nobody hardly paid any attention to him. It was like, ‘Well, we got to do this. The guy’s been sitting here waiting all day, Let’s see what he sounds like.’”


He had on overalls and a plaid shirt, like he was milking a cow,” adds session bassist Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn, “but he took a song and just kicked your ass with it.” “My hair lifted about three inches – I couldn’t believe this guy’s voice,” says Stax guitarist/producer Steve Cropper, who with Jones, Dunn, and drummer Al Jackson, Jr, formed instrumental group Booker T. And The M.G.’s, the nucleus of the Stax sound. “Back then, we were living in a two-room apartment in Macon, and we barely had money to put food on the table,” recalls Zelma. “Otis said, ‘I’m taking Johnny to Memphis,’ and I probably said goodbye. Otis Redding always believed in Otis Redding – he’d tell me, ‘Don’t worry, I’m gonna make you happy one day,’ and I was like, Lord have mercy, we could starve to death! That’s just how positive he was!”


(Sittin On) The Dock of the Bay

In its soft Southern drawl, Jones says it best: “When Otis came into the picture, life became about more than just sound. We became friends, and because he seemed to be a person with a mission, we sort of picked up that mission and it became our mission. His intent was so strong and so powerful when we were recording, it translated to more than just music. I’d never been with anybody that had that much desire to express emotion. It’s the longing. It translates to the listener and the player and anyone who hears it, and when that happens, millions of people listen.” (…) Otis took the label to another level. He put a spark under Stax, there’s no question about it,” he explains. “With all due respect to the great artists that came to those doors, Otis Redding was the one that everybody in that band looked forward to coming back to town. He had the greatest sense of rhythm and timing of anybody I’ve ever worked with. His feel of what he wanted to hear the horns do was unbelievable. He would come up with riffs, and we’d go, boy, they’ll never be able to play that. And they would be awesome. When he’d go sing and they’d play that lick, it was amazing what he’d pull off. He never ran out of ideas. Try A Little Tenderness – that song had been around since the ‘30s or whatever. It became a new song. It was amazing.”


Try a Little Tenderness

Otis’s dates in early December ’67 were nothing out of the ordinary. He and his backing group, Memphis teenagers The Bar-Kays, flew to Nashville for a gig on Friday, December 8. On Saturday they landed in Cleveland, Ohio, to tape an episode of Upbeat, a local TV music show, before playing at Leo’s Casino. Sunday morning, the band – without bassist James Alexander, who took a commercial flight – boarded Redding’s twin-engine Beechcraft, headed to Madison, Wisconsin for another show. “It was his second plane,” says Zelma. “He worked Thursday through Sunday, and he’d come back to Memphis early on Monday to get The Bar-Kays’ saxophonist Phalon Jones, drummer Carl Cunningham, guitarist Jimmy King, and organist Ronnie Caldwell, all just 18 years old, wouldn’t graduate with the rest of their senior class. On their way to Wisconsin, their plane plunged into in icy Lake Monona along with the 26-year old star.


‘I could see something floating in the water, and I got colder and colder trying to swim toward it,” says Bar-Kays trumpeter Ben Cauley, the only one on-board to survive the crash. “My head was bleeding pretty bad, and the current kept pushing all of us apart. I was in the water for about 25 minutes. I got so cold I could hardly hold on. I gave up, and at that moment, one of the fellas onshore grabbed me. I was thinking, Did they get everybody? By the time we got to shore, the hospital people had showed up. They asked, ‘Who are you?’ I said, Otis Redding and The Bar-Kays, out of Memphis. Is everybody all right? And they said no, everybody but me was dead.” Jon Scott, then a Dj at the FM-100 radio station, was, like most Memphians, devastated by the news. “I remember thinking it couldn’t possibly be true,” he says. “I had met Otis. I’d hung round him at the studio. He was, without question, the most captivating artist I’d ever seen, a true genius, and he died way too soon, way too early. We’d lost Buddy Holly the same way, but Otis was just too close to home.” “The crash happened on a Sunday,” says Cauley, “and I was flying home [later] that same week, so shook up about it that if the plane did a curve, I curved with it. I’d just turned 19, and it hit me like a ton of bricks to have to face reality, but James Alexander and I put the band back together again.”


A few months before the 40th anniversary of Otis Redding’s death, an exhibition, I’ve Got Dreams To Remember, chronicling the singer’s ascent to superstardom, opened at the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in Macon, not far from the bronze statue of Otis on the banks of the Ogeechee River. The Bar-Kays, with Ben Cauley on trumpet, joined Otis’s sons Dexter and Otis Redding III on-stage for a fundraiser for the Big O Youth Educational Dream Foundation, while Zelma Redding eulogised her husband as “an everyday country boy – regular people. Otis was just a down-to-earth, loving person. When he came back home, it wasn’t, ‘I’m different – I’m a star.’ He didn’t live that ego. The average person can really feel like they knew Otis Redding when they listen to him sing, because he sang from the heart. Back when he cut These Arms Of Mine, I never thought he would hold the legacy he holds today, but this is what Otis was born to do.”


These Arms of Mine

{Extracts from MOJO Music Magazine, DEC 07 - JAN 08}

OUTBLOGGING @ ATLANTIC COMMUNITY

THE EU-AFRICA LISBON SUMMIT AND THE FUTURE OF AFRICA

In spite of the high-pitched controversy surrounding the contentious issues of Zimbabwe and Sudan, the 2nd EU-Africa Summit held in Lisbon over the weekend ended with the signing by the leaders of both continents of an “Africa-EU Strategic Partnership”. Prime Minister of Portugal, Jose Socrates, ended the event on a positive note stating that the two continents have opened a new chapter in their relations, "What is important is that we met each other face to face on an equal setting in a new spirit. I think I can say the idea that has been expressed most often is that this summit represents the turning of a page in history," he said.

However, the apparent fallout over the EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) seems to suggest that, if a page in history was indeed turned it might not have been clearly towards a brighter future for either the EU/Africa relations or the African economies in general. In fact, while Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade is reported to have stormed out of the meeting stating that "It's clear that Africa rejects the EPAs. We are not talking any more about EPAs, we've rejected them", European Commission President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso emphasised that Brussels was not pressurising African countries over trade, but warned that if no more interim deals take place by year end to avoid trade disruption, "the preferential agreement will no more be applicable from Jan. 1, 2008."

Whatever the outcome of the current deadlock, there are at least two sets of constraints both the EU and African States must address if the “Africa-EU Strategic Partnership” adopted by the Lisbon Summit is to be successfully implemented and any mutual benefits are to be reaped from the relationship between the two continents in years to come. These constraints arise, on the one hand, from the EU institutional approach to Africa and, on the other, from the existing fragmentation of economic spaces in the continent.



The graphs above illustrate the issues: the one on the left is extracted from an EC presentation entitled “EU-Africa Partnership: Lisbon and Beyond”, while the one on the right depicts the existing overlapping African Regional Economic Communities (RECs). It would seem that little needs to be added to these graphs to make the point that neither Africa can be treated “as one”, as desirable as this may be as a long-term goal, nor deeper and wider economic integration can take place in Africa for as long as all the existing RECs are not adequately rationalised.

The EPAs negotiations were expected to be essentially about striking the right balance between costs and benefits for Africa so that its long-term development goals, including the MDGs by 2015, are not jeopardised in the process. All these elements seem to be covered by the newly adopted “Africa-EU Strategic Partnership”. So there seems to be no need to ‘look back in anger’. However, in a wider context, Africa is faced with the challenge of simultaneously liberalising its markets in the context of EPAs and pursuing a path towards deeper regional integration as provided for by the Abuja Treaty, against a backdrop of overlapping memberships of RECs by most Member States. The successful meeting of this challenge is a prerequisite for the emergence of a fully operational African Economic Union, which will certainly be a convenient partner for the EU in a “real relationship of equals” capable of “turning a page in history” as purported by some of the final documents and statements issued by the Lisbon Summit.

[A slightly different version of this article, originally written on 09/12/07, can be found at Atlantic Community and also at the Die Welt Debatte]

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

THE EU-AFRICA LISBON SUMMIT AND THE FUTURE OF AFRICA

In spite of the high-pitched controversy surrounding the contentious issues of Zimbabwe and Sudan, the 2nd EU-Africa Summit held in Lisbon over the weekend ended with the signing by the leaders of both continents of an “Africa-EU Strategic Partnership”. Prime Minister of Portugal, Jose Socrates, ended the event on a positive note stating that the two continents have opened a new chapter in their relations, "What is important is that we met each other face to face on an equal setting in a new spirit. I think I can say the idea that has been expressed most often is that this summit represents the turning of a page in history," he said.

However, the apparent fallout over the EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) seems to suggest that, if a page in history was indeed turned it might not have been clearly towards a brighter future for either the EU/Africa relations or the African economies in general. In fact, while Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade is reported to have stormed out of the meeting stating that "It's clear that Africa rejects the EPAs. We are not talking any more about EPAs, we've rejected them", European Commission President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso emphasised that Brussels was not pressurising African countries over trade, but warned that if no more interim deals take place by year end to avoid trade disruption, "the preferential agreement will no more be applicable from Jan. 1, 2008."

Whatever the outcome of the current deadlock, there are at least two sets of constraints both the EU and African States must address if the “Africa-EU Strategic Partnership” adopted by the Lisbon Summit is to be successfully implemented and any mutual benefits are to be reaped from the relationship between the two continents in years to come. These constraints arise, on the one hand, from the EU institutional approach to Africa and, on the other, from the existing fragmentation of economic spaces in the continent.



The graphs above illustrate the issues: the one on the left is extracted from an EC presentation entitled “EU-Africa Partnership: Lisbon and Beyond”, while the one on the right depicts the existing overlapping African Regional Economic Communities (RECs). It would seem that little needs to be added to these graphs to make the point that neither Africa can be treated “as one”, as desirable as this may be as a long-term goal, nor deeper and wider economic integration can take place in Africa for as long as all the existing RECs are not adequately rationalised.

The EPAs negotiations were expected to be essentially about striking the right balance between costs and benefits for Africa so that its long-term development goals, including the MDGs by 2015, are not jeopardised in the process. All these elements seem to be covered by the newly adopted “Africa-EU Strategic Partnership”. So there seems to be no need to ‘look back in anger’. However, in a wider context, Africa is faced with the challenge of simultaneously liberalising its markets in the context of EPAs and pursuing a path towards deeper regional integration as provided for by the Abuja Treaty, against a backdrop of overlapping memberships of RECs by most Member States. The successful meeting of this challenge is a prerequisite for the emergence of a fully operational African Economic Union, which will certainly be a convenient partner for the EU in a “real relationship of equals” capable of “turning a page in history” as purported by some of the final documents and statements issued by the Lisbon Summit.

[A slightly different version of this article, originally written on 09/12/07, can be found at Atlantic Community and also at the Die Welt Debatte]

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE