A Room With a View at the Zoo

Organizers of this year's Festival of Pan-African Music (FESPAM) in the Republic of Congo drew criticism from human rights activists after housing a group of Baka pygmy performers in tents at the Brazzaville Zoo. While national Forestry Ministry officials claimed that the 20 musicians, including 10 women and a baby, were placed in the high profile and rustic accomodations so that they would not be removed from their "natural environment," human rights activists blame the maltreatment on a long-held perception of pygmies being less than human. Zoo patrons reportedly found it a noteworthy spectacle, video-recording the musicians as they collected firewood on the park grounds.

According to Roy Richard Grinker's In the Arms of Africa, the attention is not all negative, as "The Pygmies have long been called the premiers citoyens (first citizens) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a title that not only assumes their primordial existence in the forest but also accords them the privilege of not paying taxes."

Nonetheless, the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor has denounced the Congolese government for permitting pygmies to be "excluded from employment opportunities, social programs, and the political process, in part due to their isolation in remote forested areas of the country, their culture, and their stigmatization by the majority Bantu population."

Also, in a 2002 United Nations inquiry, rebels of the Congolese Liberation Movement were found to have "killed, raped, and robbed civilians, sprayed livestock with automatic fire, raided fresh graves to look for treasure, and eaten human flesh." Victims of these crimes were primarily Ituri pygmies who were accused of being forest scouts for rival forces. Although the accusations of the rebels' cannibalism were eventually rescinded, the inhumane treatment of pygmies was again brought to light and even the most atrocious stories are believable.

You can find the BBC story on FESPAM here.

Good Wine Turns Gunpoint Robbery to Group Hug

The calmative powers of a good wine cannot be overstated.

An impromptu wine-tasting broke out at a dinner party in Washington DC (not far from the old haunts of two Mafé Tiga contributors) when a robber slipped into the outdoor soirée and held guests up at gunpoint.

Disaster was averted when a quick-thinking attendee offered the excited man a taste of a Chateau Malescot St Exupery. One sip of the rouge so calmed the rogue's troubled heart, the corsair could only exclaim, "I think I must've come to the wrong house." Holstering his his weapon, he asked for another glass.

Soon after, what began as a robbery at gunpoint ended with apologies and a group hug—and a memorable quote from the erstwhile brigand before he let himself out: "Damn, that's really good wine."

Read all about it here.

And, in a related story, Google really can help with anything.

Last Train to Nowhere

Mauritania is renowned for its extreme heat, sprawling geography of sand, and utter desolation. The three qualities are at their most inescapable as you ride atop the iron ore train that rumbles from the depths of the country's interior to the coastal town of Nouadhibou.

The train is a modern-day version of a Saharan caravan; at each stop, its ore-filled cars are assaulted by travelers too poor to afford the cost of more sensible forms of transport. No one pays them any mind as they leap aboard, tucking themselves into corners of the cars with their baggage and livestock, braving hours beneath the sun and extreme desert temperatures in order to peddle their wears on the coast. The train is only another example of how a project ostensibly dedicated to the extraction of natural resources simultaneously sustains a small shadow economy of merchants and their families.

I'll never forget the night my friends and I spent on top of the train, riding it fourteen hours to the coast. Huddled beneath a UNHCR blanket, pressed tight to each other for warmth. I passed the hours tracking the constellations moving in a slow arc across the sky. The Saharan winds incessantly tousled the frayed edges of my turban, and I was forever readjusting it. The chunks of iron ore dug into my back while the train tossed and buckled under its heavy load; at any moment, it seemed, the cars would overturn, the train derail, and that would be the end of our Saharan adventure. Of course it didn't.

Why the sudden nostalgia more than a year later? Ton Oncle clued me in to a New York Times article about the iron ore train, its perilous voyage, and the unique assortment of characters that rely on this unlikely lifeline. The article is short, but certainly worth reading. Check it out here.

Watch the train passing in all its glory (it's purportedly the longest in the world):

"Who's Now?" What's Next?

I'm taking a break from our usual all-Africa programming for a special, if unimportant, comment:

I cannot make it through more than thirty seconds of SportCenter's new segment "Who's Now?"

ESPN wastes enough time nowadays as it is with non-sports "entertainment," but tonight, as I'm wading through the hackneyed catchphrases of ESPN's on-air "talent" for my fifteen seconds of Twins' highlights, I was forced to watch Stuart "Bojangles" Scott and three stooges knock heads as they "debate" the merits of who's more now: Steve Nash or Serena Williams.

And how does one go about establishing who's now? You'd imagine some complex statistical metrics behind that one, right? Not quite. Here are some highlights from tonight's Nash/Williams "debate" before I had to turn the TV off: plentiful generalizations ("he's flashy on the floor!"); who's dating whom ("she's been seen with LeBron!"); and non-existent insight ("not a lot people know him off the court..."). And the point of these four men's twittering? To establish which athlete generates the most buzz (a poor excuse for a word)...in other words, ESPN presents: A popularity contest. And it's like a month long.

While Scott and cronies sat around in a sleek, dark blue studio discussing their picks, I couldn't help but imagine a more appropriate setting would be a Jr. High girl's bedroom, where these four supposed men could lay on their paisley bedspreads beneath posters of unicorns while circling faces in their yearbooks and giggling about who should ask Belulah Lamprey to homecoming.

O! ESPN, to what depths can you sink?

I suppose the only real competition for most asinine excuse for sports entertainment with "Who's Now" is that other ESPN show I caught last year where their football "analysts" spent, like, eight hours previewing imaginary playoff match-ups from a season yet-to-be played in August. That particular idea was so bereft of value I recall the on-air talent couldn't even hide their shame (or laughter) as they broke down a fictional Superbowl between the Patriots and the Seahawks. And to imagine people watched this! And to imagine who they could be!

I guess sports journalists weren't held in low enough regards already, now they will actually sniff athletes' jocks and vote on whose smells best.

In other words:

Gaddafi Calls for a "U.S." of Africa

"For 40 years all the [African] summits have failed[...]Our micro-states have no future," proclaimed Muammar Gaddafi, the president/dictator of Libya, during his stop in Conakry last week. Gaddafi, longtime enemy of American presidents, recently embarked on an overland trip across sub-Saharan Africa drumming up support for the idea of a United States of Africa. Sleeping each night in a tent and holding rallies in the capitals during the day, Gaddafi is pushing the idea of a United Africa as an economic and military counterweight to the United States and European Union.

The Libyan president is a longtime proponent of forming disparate African countries into a cohesive political and economic force that would push back for fairer trade agreements with western countries and integrate globalization to Africa on African terms. He even calls for the creation of a two-million man African army that would protect any African nation threatened by external invasion. He cites as an analogy Luxembourg's participation in the EU, saying that under its protection "not even China can invade."

The idea of a United States of Africa is not a new one. In 1958, a newly independent Guinea under Sékou Touré briefly took part of the first incarnation of an African United States. It was the brainchild of Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana. Touré went so far as to declare Nkrumah "co-president" of Guinea, though there's no evidence this was any more than a mi casa, su casa rhetorical flourish on the part of Touré. The union extended to eventually include Modibo Keïta of Mali, until he was disposed of in a coup. When Nkrumah was summarily removed in a similar fashion a few years later, all talk of African unity came to an end with very little in the way of actual results.

As this entertainingly written journal kept by a BBC reporter who traveled with Gaddafi reveals, the issue of African Unity this go around is one of "hares" and "tortoises." Gaddafi (who considers himself a hare), wants a United States of Africa now; unfortunately, Gaddafi's arrival in Accra, Ghana, as part of a three-day African Unity summit illustrates he is outnumbered by so-called "tortoises" to integration, such as Gambian president, Yahya Jammeh, who failed to even show up to the event, and Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, who slept through a large portion of the summit's opening ceremonies.

While Gaddafi has been well received by crowds and officials at every stop so far during his cross-country tour, there is little evidence of actual accords taking place between African governments to put any of his proposals into action, even on a small scale. This opinion piece by Nkrumah's son, Gamal Nkrumah, suggests that while the dream of a United States of Africa lives on, African leaders have yet to confront and reconcile their staggering differences that would make such a dream a reality.

The Trouble with Africa(n Aid)

African Update has posted an interview with author, Robert Calderisi, who spent three decades working on international development, most of it with the World Bank where he held several senior positions. (Read his critical opinion of former World Bank president, Paul Wolfowitz here.) He is the author of The Trouble with Africa.

Check it out here.

Precarious Prefets

Guinean Prime Minister, Lansana Kouyaté, fulfilled one of his long-promised governmental reforms yesterday with the nominations of seven new governors and 30 new prefets for Guinea (out of a possible 33). The decree, signed by President Lansana Conté, effectively reverses almost all his previous governor and prefet appointments to date.

Aminata.com has a more detailed report available to read (in French) here.

Two initial observations on my part:

1. The president's acquiescence is a positive sign that perhaps a smooth transition to democracy will be possible in Guinea, and that Kouyaté's government is, in fact, legitimate.
2. While only one of the new governors and three of the 30 prefets nominated are women, this should be considered an improvement from the previous total of zero.

So, what does a prefet do, anyway? For those of you not familiar with the byzantine layers of complexity of French bureaucracy (which has been painstakingly maintained in Guinea even after its independence), he essentially functions as an administrator of an area comprising 100,000–500,000 people, coordinating various functions at a local level, as well as effecting policy edicts from Conakry. To the ordinary Guinean, however, a prefet is most recognized as the patron ("boss") in flowing boubous who lives in a mansion and swoops in and out of town in a shiny new SUV

Since independence, but especially during the reign of Conté, prefets have become known in Guinea as some of the largest perpetrators of the corruption and graft that has earned Guinea's ranking as most corrupt country in Africa. They often earned their positions through their connections to Conté or to the party.

During my time in the préfecture of Tougué, I got to know two prefets (who also happened to be my next door neighbors). The first, Mouctar Banti Diallo, was so embroiled in any number of scandals involving the re-routing of money destined to fund projects in my préfecture, that it became something of a town joke to cite him as the prime suspect in every theft, from missing cows to missing chalk. He eventually was sent to Pita (where he was run out of town for similar shenanigans during the January riots).

Banti's replacement, Boubacar Baldé, wasn't much better, getting the plum appointment after heading up Conté's reelection efforts (you know, the one where he got nearly 100% of the vote). He spent only a scant few months in Tougué before falling terminally ill and spending the next year in Dakar and dying back in August of last year. Incredibly, Conté hadn't named a successor until yesterday's decree.

The fact Kouyaté has, in one fell swoop, replaced almost every single one of these corrupt do-nothings, suggests that he, too, recognizes the inherent corruption at all levels of Conté's government, and understands the need for fresh blood and capable administration on a local level—to regain the confidence of the Guinean people, if nothing else.