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When the poor become powerful beyond of state control

by S’bu Zikode
 
 
The power of the poor becomes evident when the poor are able to organise – a moment of great promise, but also danger, S’bu Zikode told an audience in the United States recently.


The power of the poor starts when we as the poor recognise our own humanity – when we recognise that in fact we are created in the image of God and are therefore equal to all other human beings. But the recognition of our humanity without action to defend our humanity is meaningless. It is very important that we as the poor begin to define ourselves before someone else from somewhere else begins to define us. It is very important for the poor to say, this is who we are, this is where we are and this is what we want. In our movement, as in many movements around the world, we say that we are the poor, those who do not count. We say that we are the excluded and the disrespected. We say that we want our full humanity, that we want justice, that we want dignity and full participation in the planning of our communities.

The more of us that stand together the more our humanity is fulfilled. The power of the poor becomes evident when the poor are able to organise ourselves for ourselves. When we begin to achieve this it is always a moment of great promise and great danger. Frederick Douglass, the great hero of one of the greatest American struggles, the struggle against slavery, said: ‘Power concedes nothing without a demand.’ This is why a collective demand, a demand backed by organisation, determination and courage is a moment of great promise. But it is also a moment of great danger because the power of the rich and the politicians always takes the legitimate demands of the oppressed to be criminal and illegitimate. This is one reason why we need to stand together across the sea. We can only redeem the promise of our struggle if we can survive its dangers and none of us can do that on our own. I have been sent here by Abahlali baseMjondolo to build a living solidarity with the movements in America. We want to look for ways in which we can support each other to realise the promise of our struggles.

There is also a real danger for the organised poor if we do not define ourselves. If we allow others to define us and to define our struggle we risk being defined as people who are not able to struggle for ourselves – as people who need leaders and not comrades, as people who must be spoken for and not to. But when we succeed in defining ourselves, and in escaping the danger of not defining ourselves, we have to face a new danger. There is another kind of danger for the organised poor when we do define ourselves. Our movement is going through a tough time after successfully defining itself. We are under attack from the state, the rich and even a few individual leftists who are all divided in their economics but united in their politics – in their belief that it is their duty, the duty of elites, to speak for and to represent the poor.

Part of a presentation to the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative delivered to various part of the United States of America.
S’bu Zikode is the president of Abahlali baseMjondolo.

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Polygamy no fun, Ethiopian polygamist warns

An Ethiopian man with 11 wives and 77 children is urging people not to follow his example and is giving advice on family planning and contraception.
After seeing his fortune disappear under the competing demands of his enormous family, Ayattu Nure, 56, even urges people not to get married.
"I want my children to be farmers but I have no land, I want them to go to school but I have no money," he says.
But his eldest son has not heeded Mr Ayattu's advice and he has three wives

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Seven of Mr Ayattu's wives live in huts around his compound, which are in urgent need of renovation.
Another four live in huts on the other side of the valley in Giwe Abossa village, 300km from the capital, Addis Ababa in Arsi region.
He says he cannot remember all his children's names but tries to work out who they are from their mothers and which huts they live in.
Mr Ayattu says he used to be rich and wanted to share his wealth around, which is why he took so many wives.
But now he struggles to feed them all.
"I feel like killing myself when I see my hungry children whom I cannot help," Mr Ayattu says.
His wives have given birth to more than 100 children but 23
have died.
School photos
However, he blames Ethiopia's government for not doing more to help him look after all his children.
"I know I have done wrong by marrying many wives and begetting many children but I think I deserve help from the government."
But his biggest complaint at the moment is with the authorities of the local school which 40 of his children now attend.
They want photographs for each of his children's files, which will further deplete his meagre resources.
He says that he tries to share his time evenly between his wives and children, adding that although quarrels and squabbles are common, they try to solve their problems amicably.
"People see me as a funny man, but there is no fun in my condition. I am a desperate man struggling to survive," he says.
Although Mr Ayattu's eldest son, Dagne Ayattu, does not have a job, at the age of 33, he has seven children and is about to marry his fourth wife.
But he says he will not have as many children or wives as his father.

By Mohammed Adow
BBC, Ethiopia
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African intellectuals building other nations

(Reuters)
African graduate leaving the continent for greener pastures
 
Africa's contribution to the global body of scientific research is very small and does little to benefit its own populations, according to a report from Thomson Reuters released on Monday.
 
Like India and China, Africa suffers from a "hemorrhage of talent," the report said, with many of its best brains leaving to study abroad and failing to return.
 "The African diaspora provides powerful intellectual input to the research achievements of other countries, but returns less benefit to the countries of birth,"  Jonathan Adams, director of research evaluation at Thomson Reuters, said in a statement as the report was published.
More information about the report is available here
Adams and colleagues, who use a Thomson Reuters database to track scientific publications, found that three nations dominate Africa's research output — with South Africa leading by a long way, ahead of Egypt in second place and then Nigeria.
 
"Africa's overall volume of activity remains small, much smaller than is desirable if the potential contribution of its researchers is to be realized for the benefit of its populations," said Adams.
 
The report found that part of the problem was down to a "chronic lack of investment in facilities for research and teaching" — a deficit the authors said must be remedied.
 
Adams said the reason behind this was not simply money: "The resources available in some African countries are substantial, but they are not being invested in the research base."
In fields of research relevant to natural resources, however, the study found a relatively high representation of African research as a share of world publications.
 
South Africa's 1.55 percent share of research in plant and animal science is the continent's biggest share in any field, it said, with this output surpassing Russia's 1.17 percent but well behind China's 5.42 percent share in the same field.
The report pointed to a few examples of countries which, despite low output, produced much higher quality research than larger neighbors.
 
Malawi, for example, with one-tenth the annual research output of Nigeria, produces research of a quality that exceeds the world average benchmark while Nigeria hovers at around half that impact level, the report said.
 
"The challenges that the continent faces are enormous and indigenous research could help provide both effective and focused responses," it added.
The study is part of a series showing the changing landscape and dynamics of scientific research around the world.
 
Previous studies found that China had more than doubled its output of scientific papers to rank second only to the United States in terms of volume, while Russia's influence in science and scientific industries was rapidly shrinking.
(Editing by Michael Roddy)
 
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African Fossils Suggest Complex Life Arose Early

By Gwyneth Dickey (Science News)
Researchers have found what may be the earliest evidence of multicellular life on Earth. Large fossils uncovered in 2.1 billion-year-old rock from Gabon, in western Africa, appear to be incipient examples of macroscopic life in what was then a sea of single-celled microbes.
A three dimensional X-ray image of the outer (left) and inner (right) body of a fossil from the Gabonese site. Scientists believe that multicellular life really took off much later, in the great expansion of animal body plans known as the Cambrian explosion 545 million years ago.
“The discovery is fantastic because it shows the existence of multicellular fauna 1.5 billion years earlier than what we know,” says team leader Abderrazak El Albani, a sedimentologist and paleobiologist at the University of Poitiers in France. “This is important to understand the evolution of life on Earth.”
Some researchers have suggested multicellular organisms arose as early as 1.6 billion years ago, but the evidence is controversial. El Albani and his colleagues were thus surprised to find large fossils in the newly excavated ancient Gabonese rocks. So far, the team has collected over 250 specimens that range in size from 1 to 12 centimeters.
Using detailed X-ray imaging called microtomography, the team created three-dimensional images of the fossils inside and out. The organisms had flat, round, soft bodies, with slits around the edges and complex, patterned folds inside. The creatures belong to new species that have never been described, the team reports in the July 1 Nature.
Other researchers agree that the large size, thickness, and three-dimensionality of the organisms suggest that they were, indeed, multicellular. “There does seem to be something more than just a clonal colony of bacteria,” says paleobiologist Philip Donoghue of the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.
El Albani and his team believe the complex patterns and folding mean that cells must have coordinated their growth through chemical signaling, like all multicellular organisms do. The fossils could even be the first examples of eukaryotes, cells with membrane-bound nuclei, according to the team.
But since actual cells were long gone from the sediments, the team had to prove these fossils were not simply mineral formations that looked like animals.
Pyrite, a sulfur-containing mineral also known as fool’s gold, filled the fossils, providing evidence that sulfate-breathing bacteria had eaten away at living tissue. Carbon and sulfur isotopes also confirmed the fossils’ organic origins.
Further analysis showed that the fossils couldn’t have been more recent organisms that burrowed deep into sediments, because the surrounding rock was the same inside and outside the organisms’ folds.
Rock chemistry indicates the organisms lived about 30 to 40 meters deep in sea water. They likely breathed oxygen, which by that time had been building up in the oceans and atmosphere for 350 million years. Donoghue says it’s exciting that scientists are “edging back” the fossil record toward this so-called “great oxidation event” 2.5 billion years ago.
The research team plans to do more experiments to determine how these organisms lived and how to further categorize them
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In Ghanaian Village, American Woman Reigns As King

An american woman installed King in a ghanaian village
It was two years ago, at 4 a.m. at her apartment in Maryland, that Peggielene Bartels got the news from West Africa. A relative called from Ghana to say that her uncle, the king of the fishing village of Otuam, had died.
The news didn’t end there. She was also informed that she had been anointed his successor: King Peggy.
“He said, ‘No, no, no, no, Nana, don’t hang up,'” Bartels recalls. “‘We chose so many names, male and everybody, and somebody suggested that we choose your name, also. And when we poured libation and did the rituals, as soon as we mentioned your name, it started vaporing and we were surprised. So we did it three times. So that’s when we got to know that you are the king.'”
Nana Amuah-Afenyi VI is Bartels’ new title, but she is better known as King Peggy. This straight-talking, 57-year-old is the first woman in her fishing community of 7,000 people in Ghana’s Central Region to be anointed a king, or “nana.”
She now juggles two lives — from the palace in Otuam and from a modest condo outside Washington, D.C. Since the 1970s, Bartels, a naturalized U.S. citizen, has been a secretary at Ghana’s Embassy in Washington where she still spends most of her time, running royal affairs back home in Otuam over the phone and on trips to Ghana.
“So, when they told me, I was a little bit reluctant to accept it, because it comes with responsibilities. And here is a secretary in the United States, I have my own obligations, bills and stuff and becoming a king, you have to be really rich,” she says.
“And then, as if someone was talking to me, a voice said, ‘Accept it, it is your destiny and you will be helped to help your people.'”
With help from her friends and scraping together her own savings, King Peggy says she is determined to help her people in Ghana to progress.
On a sweltering day in Ghana, Peggy is overseeing her uncle’s funeral. A slight breeze is blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean and the freshly painted blue and white royal residence gleams. In the sandy courtyard, drums are beating while a man in a trance performs a frenzied dance before a sea of red and black — mourners dressed for a royal burial.
The former king died in 2008, but his body was kept in a mortuary until King Peggy could save up enough money to give him a proper send-off. She’s dressed like a king — albeit with a touch of lipstick — wrapped toga-style in regal red traditional fabric and seated upon a royal stool.
Dignitaries attending the funeral include another royal, Nana Boakye Asafo Adjei, the Sanahane, or ruler, of Asamankese Traditional Area in eastern Ghana.
He said he had nothing but respect for King Peggy.
“I’ve been really surprised by what she has done because I thought being a woman, she can’t,” he said. “But she has competed with the men, so I give her congratulations. She is now a king, so she has a lot to handle.”
Bartels says most people are willing to work with a woman as their traditional ruler.
“The women are so happy for me, they are really on my side,” she says. “But it’s only a few elderly men — because they are used to bossing females around. And I don’t give them the chance. They are the people resisting me.”
She adds that during meetings, if they feel she is coming on too strong, they say: “‘Listen you’re a woman, so you listen to us.’ Then I also say, ‘I’m in the States, I’m a woman and, in the rituals with the ancestors, you chose me in the name of God, so shut up and sit down.’ And they will sit.”
Back in the U.S., King Peggy is on the lecture circuit, talking about Ghana, its traditions and her fishing community. While she’s in Otuam, she presides over fisherfolk and has confronted many hurdles, including, she says, tackling graft and dishonesty within the royal circle.
“At first when I started, it was a tough challenge because they were just collecting our family fishing fees and they were misusing the funds. But I came on so strong,” she says. “So I had a tough time straightening that out.”
Dressed in customary black and red funeral clothing, villagers from the Otuam fishing community carry the casket of their late ruler Nana Amuah-Afenyi V, who died two years ago. He is succeeded by his niece, King Peggy, a secretary at the Ghanaian embassy in Washington, who says she had to save up to give her uncle a fitting send-offKing Peggy insisted future proceeds go directly into an account in a rural bank they opened in her village. She rejuvenated her royal council to include people she trusted, and has turned her attention to improving the lives of her community.
The next project is to build a high school for students who have finished ninth grade, she says.
A villager, carrying a large basin upon her head, gives King Peggy high marks for her rule. Aba Nyame Bekyere, 51, a former fishmonger, says she’s pleased with what she hears Bartels is doing for Otuam, especially for women and children.
“Those of us who didn’t go to school, particularly the women, we’d like to learn,” she says through a translator. “And we need a high school here, so that our kids don’t have to go so far away to study.”
King Peggy is getting help from donors in the U.S., including the Shiloh Baptist Church in Landover, Md. Pastor Be Louis Colleton and his congregation heard about Bartels, met her and committed to helping her fishing community.
Colleton and more than a dozen other Americans accompanied her from Maryland to Ghana this fall and traveled to palm tree-lined Otuam, along the shores of what used to be part of West Africa’s Atlantic slave coast.
“We have covenant with Nana, the king — we as a church — to help her to better her community of people to bring fresh water,” he says. “Now we’re moving toward the possibility of establishing a school.”
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Green Revolution Gathers Steam in Kenya

The pressure on the environment from cooking is being blamed for a range of problems, from deforestation to creating gases contributing to global warming. And then there is people’s health: many die in the developing world from the fumes of indoor cooking. Entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists have launched many initiatives around the world to develop fuel-efficient and cleaner burning stoves. But they all share the same challenge: how can they meet local needs and tastes and keep the price of a stove affordable? Here is one example from Kenya of a successful stove and oven business that has become a regional success story.
A Kenyan entrepreneur has cooked up a fuel-efficient stove and oven that uses less of a precious national resource: wood from trees.
Renewable energy solution in Kenya
Most African households using fuel-burning stoves either cannot afford clean-burning fuels like natural gas or electric stoves, or do not have access to them. They are stuck having to burn wood or other materials like animal dung – collectively called biomass – on open fires.
As well as using up wood and contributing to deforestation, there is another downside to these stoves. The use of polluting fuel-burning stoves by half the world’s population – including 80 percent of rural households – is a documented contributor to a host of health problems. Poor households not only have to contend with the ill health effects of dirty water and poor sanitation, the fumes from burning dung, wood, coal or crop leftovers lead to the global deaths of more than 1.6 million people a year from breathing toxic indoor air (WHO).
Two solutions in Kenya are helping people to cook more efficiently (meaning less time wasted on gathering material to burn, and less fuel used) and reducing cooking time by using heat more effectively.
Invented by Dr Maxwell Kinyanjui, the Kinyanjui Jiko is a fuel-efficient charcoal oven that comes in small, medium and large industrial sizes. Made entirely in Kenya, the ovens are custom designed for a variety of environments, from domestic household use and on-the-go safari models to high-capacity models for micro-enterprises and large institutions. Cooks can use the ovens to bake, toast, steam or boil. And they are 40 percent cheaper than cooking with electricity and between 15 and 20 percent cheaper than gas.
Kinyanjui’s Musaki Enterprises Ltd.(www.reskqu.blogspot.com/2009/01/arboretum-project.html) has developed a reputation for pioneering work in developing fuel-efficient stoves and ovens. Its most popular success to date has been the Kenya Ceramic Jiko (jiko is Swahili for cooker), or KCJ, a cheap, simple and effective stove. The company was set up in 1992, but has been involved in international aid-funded research and development efforts since the 1980s.
“My dad was on a very good team of highly motivated individuals in the early 80s who developed the stove through pragmatism, logic and good old-fashioned ingenuity,” said his son, Teddy Kinyanjui. “He then set up the independent Musaki Enterprises.”
The KCJ uses a ceramic liner placed inside a metal container. The metal is usually recycled, often taken from 55 gallon steel drums. The ceramic liner stops the heat energy from simply escaping into the environment and helps to focus the heat on cooking. Simply adding the ceramic liner reduces the stove’s fuel consumption by between 25 and 40 percent. The charcoal or wood sits in the ceramic basin and the burnt ash falls through holes in the bottom of the liner.
The stove design was a result of international and Kenyan cooperation, and has become popular in many African countries, including Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Senegal and Sudan. It is used in 50 percent of urban homes in Kenya and 16 percent of rural homes.
Musaki Enterprises say the KCJ stoves on average save between 1 and 1.5 tons of CO2 per stove per year compared to other models. In supermarkets, the KCJs retail for around US $5 and the Kinyanjui Jiko ovens start at around US $100.
The deployment of the KCJ stoves has helped in slowing the deforestation of the country, but has not been able to bring it to a halt because of population growth and poor re-forestation efforts, says Teddy Kinyanjui.
“The lack of forward planning in tree planting is making firewood and charcoal harder and harder to obtain,” he said. “Fossil fuels are unavailable or unaffordable. Tree planting must begin now on a huge scale for people to continue cooking.”
Teddy won’t reveal how profitable the KCJ stoves have been, but says, “I wouldn’t have gone to school if they didn’t sell well.”
“Well, more and more people keep buying the damn things as fast as we can make them, so I think our customers like them,” he said. “They really all seem to like that the stoves cook really well for really cheap and are very high quality.”
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Sex Workers In Ghana Protest Against Nigerian Invasion

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sex workers in ghana protest against younger nigerian girls
Ghanaian girls who offer sex for money at Adum, a suburb of Kumasi in the Ashanti region, have expressed anger over some Nigerians importing younger and prettier girls who are gradually taking over the sex business.

If not for the intervention of the assembly member for the area, Albert Osei-Banahene, the enraged sex workers would have hit the streets in their nakedness and marched from one office building to another, just to get the authorities to come to their aide.

“It is not that they are better than us in bed but as you know, most men prefer younger girls and these Nigerian girls are younger. Some are still in their teens and their agents protect them but we do not have agents who make things easier for us so the conditions of work are not fair.

“We would start attacking any underage ashawo from Nigeria because they are spoiling the market,” one of them noted. Interestingly, though both groups are prostituting, the Ghanaian girls say they are commercial sex workers while the Nigerians are ‘ashawos.’

According to the Ghanaian sex workers, the arrival of sexier girls from Nigeria is making business very competitive and compelling them to lower their rates or lose customers. Not pleased about the development, the disillusioned sex workers have declared their preparedness to hit the streets, should authorities fail to respond to their call and put in place appropriate measures to arrest the worrying situation.

In an interview with NEWS-ONE, the stationed sex workers revealed that some Nigerians living in Kumasi have made it their business of bringing in very pretty sex workers from the oil-rich country to practice their trade in the Ghana.

“Having realized the potential in the business, some Nigerians living in the city have decided to make it their business by bringing sex workers from their country to come and work here,” one of the disgruntled sex workers observed.

“When they bring them, they initially put them in hotels, before hiring rooms for them to practice their trade but we do not have agents or promoters so we are losing the market even in our own country,” another dissatisfied sex worker noted.

According to them, they would do everything within their means to ensure that the practice was stopped, because they believe that as Ghanaians, they have exclusive right to the trade. “We cannot allow

Nigeria to take over everything in the country including the sex trade,” the sex workers emphasized.

The assembly member for the area, Hon Albert Osei-Banahene, who has being appealing to the sex workers to remain calm, appealed to the government to take up the matter and ensure that it is resolved amicably. He noted that it was important for the government to come in strongly because of the ages of the girls who are purported to have been sent into the city for sex trade.

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