wfn.org | AANA BULLETIN No. 18/03 May 12, 2003 (c)

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

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AANA BULLETIN No. 18/03  May 12, 2003 (c)

'Africa Should Create Its Own Manna And Part Its Own Seas'

NAIROBI (AANA) May 12 - African institutions, both secular and church, have 
been challenged to avoid depending on financial assistance from the West, 
but to harness resources within for their survival.

This advice was given by renowned Kenyan lawyer, Mr. Patrick Lumumba, who 
was guest of honour at the launch of a Foundation Fund for AACC in Nairobi 
on May 3.

The event, which also marked the beginning of AACC's 40th anniversary 
celebrations, was attended by an estimated 300 guests from several African 
countries.

Mr. Limumba, who is also the Secretary to the Constitution of Kenya Review 
Commission, said gone were the days when African nations looked unto Europe 
for development assistance.

"Africa had built granaries in the hope that Europe would provide," he 
observed, noting that things had changed and the continent now needed to 
"create its own manna, and part its own Red Seas". He explained that gone 
were the days when God would provide manna from heaven and part the Red Sea 
like He did for the Israelites through Moses.

He said Africa's problems were a result of negligence, which "we are all 
guilty of". He did not elaborate.

Earlier, Chairman of AACC's Finance and Personnel Committee, Chief Dr. 
Samuel Adekunle, in welcoming Lumumba, regretted that it was unfortunate 
that at 40 years, the organisation was still depending on external aid.

The AACC Foundation Fund will serve as seed money for future financial 
self-reliance of the organisation.  Currently, AACC depends mostly on 
overseas partners for financial support.

The Fund is expected to raise US$ 5 million in the next five years from 
contributions by AACC members, staff, Africans in the Diaspora, partners, 
and friends.

Meanwhile, at a thanks giving ceremony at St. Mark Coptic Church in 
Nairobi, to signify the climax of the anniversary celebrations on May 4, 
AACC interim general secretary, Mr. Malaku Kifle, appealed to members to 
nurture and own the organisation.  He observed that as an ecumenical unit, 
AACC belonged to the people.

Reported Joseph K'Amolo
  FEATURES SECTION

It's Tension All Over As Rwanda Heads For Elections

Anxiety is building in Rwanda as a referendum on a new constitution and 
presidential elections get closer. The referendum, slated for late this 
month, will pave way for presidential elections in July. Charles 
Bigirimana, gives insight into a complex political landscape that extends 
beyond the borders of Rwanda, and which is feared may complicate elections.

T
hree candidates have already announced their interest in the July 
presidential elections. They include current President, Paul Kagame, who 
will be standing on the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) ticket, a former 
prime minister living in exile in Brussels, Faustin Twagiramungu, and a 
former leader of Social Democratic Party (SDP), Nepomucene Nayinzira, also 
in exile in Europe.
	
Twagiramungu became the first prime minister of post-genocide government, 
dominated by RPF, before fleeing to Europe, claiming the party was 
undemocratic and deprived Rwandans of freedom of association.

He, however, recently announced that he would return home to join the 
presidential race on Republican Democratic Movement (MDR) ticket, on 
condition that his "security is guaranteed".

Twagiramungu's father-in-law, former President Kayibanda, has been accused 
by the RPF of organising massacres of Tutsis in the 60s and early 70s, 
before he was overthrown by the late Juvenal Habyarimana, whose death in 
1994 in a plane crash, marked the beginning of the genocide that year.

Members of Parliament (MPs) recently called for a ban on MDR, after a 
parliamentary report accused its leaders, including current Prime Minister 
Bernard Makuza, of dividing Rwandans on tribal lines.

Some MPs said MDR had not shed off its bad policies of the 1960s, despite 
changing its name from Parmehutu, and that it still pursued sectarian 
policies, which promoted racial discrimination.

The report further accused Makuza, of using government money to fund a 
local non-governmental organisation (NGO) called Itara (lamp), which media 
reports also said was campaigning for MDR.  Makuza denied, saying Itara was 
a development NGO like any other.  Nevertheless, he agreed that the party 
be banned.

The government also fears that the country may experience another cycle of 
killings like in 1994, when close to a million people, mostly from the 
Tutsi ethnic group, were massacred.
	
The grassroots elections conducted in 2001, were termed by Europe-based 
Rwandan Republican Rally (RDR) as RPF's efforts to legitimise its rule, 
since individuals rather than parties were allowed to compete in the 
elections.  Those opposed to the Kigali government poured water on the 
whole electoral process, claiming it had been rigged from the start, 
especially at the cell level, where voting was done through queue system.

"This complex electoral process is designed in reality to ensure that those 
elected at all levels are RPF members or sympathisers, servants of the 
RPF-led government and not servants of the people. It is intended to give 
an appearance of legitimacy to the RPF-led dictatorial regime, while 
leaving intact the RPF's monopoly of power on the Rwandese state 
institutions," an RDR statement said.

Early this year, President Kagame, released thousands of inmates accused of 
involvement in the 1994 genocide against Tutsis, to "decongest 
prisons".  Analysts, however, say the president was campaigning for the 
forthcoming presidential elections.

The release of genocide suspects angered anti-genocide crusaders as well as 
international human rights organisations.  They believed justice would not 
have been done to genocide victims since those who killed victims' 
relatives would be free to threaten them during Gacaca trials.	This, it is 
feared, might hide the truth.

Gacaca courts also known as traditional or village courts, were launched in 
June last year to try more than 100,000 people accused of genocide related 
crimes throughout the country.
	
The presidential elections will also take place against a background of 
increasing tension in the country, caused by disappearances, arrest and 
jailing of prominent politicians opposed to the current regime and, a 
deepening crisis between Rwanda and Uganda.

The government last year arrested former president, Pasteur Bizimungu, and 
his close ally, former public works minister, Charles Ntakarutinka, after 
accusing them of involvement in illegal activities aimed at dividing 
Rwandans on tribal basis.

A former Defence Minister, Colonel Emmanuel Habyarimana, his colleague, 
Lieutenant-Colonel Balthazar Ndengeyinka, who also represented the army in 
parliament, together with another army officer, Lieutenant Ndayambaje, 
recently fled to Uganda, further increasing tension between the two
countries.

Rwanda suspected Uganda was planning to send the two officers to the DRC to 
shore up Rwandan rebels, an allegation the Ugandan government rejected. 
Another officer allied to Brigadier-General Habyarimana, Major Felicien 
Ngirabatware, is under arrest.

In its report, the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, 
recommended among other things "the unconditional release of Pasteur 
Bizimungu, Charles Ntakiruntika, Jean Mbanda, Pierre Gakwandi and all other 
Rwandan political prisoners".

The group also called on the donor community to "refuse to finance the 2003 
elections and the establishment of post-transitional institutions unless 
they are preceded by the liberalisation of political activities and a 
marked improvement in respect for basic freedoms of association and 
expression".

Rwanda also suspects Uganda is planning to attack it before or during the 
elections. The Rwandan government says Uganda has been recruiting and 
training forces with a view to invading its territory.

Uganda has strongly refuted the accusations saying that there were no Hutu 
militiamen under training on its territory. Tension has, however, decreased 
in recent days.

The two countries would have gone to war in the DRC had it not been for 
South Africa and Tanzania, which intervened to stop them from clashing in 
north-eastern part of DRC.  Uganda had its troops already stationed in 
eastern DRC, and Rwandan troops were moving towards an area close to one 
controlled by Uganda.

Rwanda was infuriated by not only the presence of Ugandan troops in Ituri 
region in violation of an agreement that all foreign forces withdraw from 
the DRC, but also by the fact that Ugandan People's Defence Forces (UPDF) 
had expelled from Bunia, the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), a rebel 
group allied to the Rwandan-backed and Goma-based Rally for Congolese 
Democracy (RCD-Goma).

The tension subsided only after Ugandan president announced that he would 
withdraw his troops from eastern by April 24.  This followed a meeting with 
his counterparts of Rwanda, Tanzania and South Africa.

The two leaders last week had a meeting in London, in which they made 
attempts to iron out remaining pockets of tension between them.

The Dilemma Of Kenya's Working Class Children

Whereas it is socially accepted that the role of providing for children 
lies squarely on parents, governments and other relevant institutions, 
social and economic hardships have radically changed the status quo. The 
role of children in society and specifically within the family context has 
changed, reports Isaiah Kipyegon and Fr. Joachim Omolo Ouko.

T
he revelation by International Labour Organisation that more than 1.9 
million Kenyan children are labourers, is not something that can be 
overlooked.

Last year, the country had more than 1.3 million children labourers, 
according to a government report released mid May, 2002.  It is hardly a 
year and this figure has increased to 1.9 million.

Most children are forced to work because their parents cannot cater for them.

The report, prepared by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), under the 
Ministry of Finance and Planning, confirms this.

Kipkoech Ronoh, a class seven pupil at Seguton Primary school in Baringo 
district, in the Rift Valley Province, is one such child.

He is thirteen and has been actively involved in the sole income generating 
activity in his family - a maize mill.

The way Kipkoech is able to juggle his education and his role as one of the 
breadwinners in the family has left many mouths agape in wonder.

His mother, a single mother of five children, was completely maimed in a 
road accident, which made her crippled and unable to work.

For this family, poverty is right at the doorsteps. Someone has to keep it 
out, and that is what the class seven lad is trying to do.

Kipkoech has to operate the grain-grinding machine twice a day, and with 
the fee he charges for this, he pays for the various needs of the family.

For him, this is totally inevitable and he has learnt to live with both 
responsibilities as a pupil and a breadwinner.

According to Facts and Figures on the Rights of the Child, an African Women 
and Child Features Service publication, poverty is one of the major causes 
of child labour.

Societies characterised by poverty and inequality tend to record higher 
levels of child labour, as children work to supplement their parents' income.

Living with her family in rural and arid Baringo, Flora Cherop epitomises 
the predicament of children from families living in poverty.

At dawn, she has to wake up with her mother and sister to go to the stream, 
two kilometres away from home. Their main mission is to fetch water for the 
neighbours who pay them for the precious commodity.

Twelve years old Cherop knows that she has to do this kind of work for her 
family to get food and for her to get money for books and other accessories 
required in school.

"While we fetch the water and sometimes firewood for the neighbours, our 
father and brothers run other errands in the village. They also burn and 
sell charcoal. This way, we are able to earn a living," says Cherop.

At the end of the day, the family pools their daily earnings and draws a 
budget accordingly. Nevertheless, Cherop and her siblings have to be 
motivated by their parents in this venture. Time management has become an 
issue, as they have to work, and do their schoolwork promptly.

"My husband and I know very well that it is not the best thing for our 
children, but we have no choice," says Maria Simba, Cherop's mother.

These parents, however, have committed themselves to encourage their 
children in whatever they do.

Peter Simba, the head of the family, says that he has always reminded his 
children that they do not have a wealthy background, and should therefore 
appreciate the little they get.

This is the inequality that has riddled the lives of many children in this 
situation. They see the lifestyles of their better-off friends, and wish 
they could have a taste of it.

In some cases, like that of Cherop above, the effects of economic 
inequality are adverse. The juxtaposition between their lives and the lives 
of other children is unbearable. Yet for others, it creates and nurtures an 
ambition of future without poverty and lack.

According to Shabaan Juma, a seventeen year-old boy, every poor child hopes 
for a better future, and as such works towards it. Though Shabaan and his 
family live in an urban setting, his predicament is as harsh.

"I have worked all my life with my mother, roasting maize for sale, selling 
vegetables by the road and even hawking peanuts," says Shabaan.

Shabaan has been fighting to save himself and his family from starvation 
and pitiful poverty. Despite this, he was able to do very well in his Kenya 
Certificate of Primary Education exams and was admitted in one of the 
national schools.

His efforts were acknowledged and rewarded by a non-governmental 
organisation, which offered to meet all his high school expenses.

Many times in Kenya, children are seen to be involved in child labour only 
if they work as house helps or in farms and mines for a wage.

But as it is, many children are involved in work that hinders their 
enjoyment of life as children.

The 1998 Situational Analysis of Children and Women in Kenya, a document by 
the government of Kenya in conjunction with United Nations Children's Fund 
(UNICEF), refers to child labour as working children who earn a living for 
themselves, and to some extent for their families, and thus forego the 
opportunity to go to school.

Even though many of the children affected by this abuse of a fundamental 
right are not necessarily out of school, their capacity to learn and to 
achieve their full potentials has been thwarted.

As these children toil day and night to meet their needs, deep within their 
hearts they yearn for a time when they can play and do all other things 
that children do.

The dreams of these children can only be realised when the concerned 
institutions provide the needs they  are labouring so hard to get.

Information Kiosks Emerge As Tool For Growth

A concept of establishing information centres in rural Zimbabwe is being 
viewed as a steering tool for community empowerment. Observers say the 
Rural Information Kiosks, as they are called, will become the nerve for 
community development and mark a paradigm shift from urban centred 
information dissemination system, reports AANA Correspondent Tim Chigodo.

A
n elderly villager, Elias Chikambaza, picks up a small piece of an old 
newspaper being blown away by the hot afternoon wind of the Dande Communal 
Lands.

His squinty eyes, from years of seeing many different earthly things and 
partially from spirals of cigarette smoke, try to read some sense of that 
faded newspaper article.

The newspaper story appears interesting, yet the first four or so 
paragraphs are missing.  But he smiles and exposes his tobaccos stained 
teeth in the process, as he ponders about the story.

Eventually, Mr Chikambaza stashes his tobacco onto the paper, and rolls it 
into a cigarette.

Many villagers throughout Zimbabwe's remote rural areas are starved for 
information and read the newspaper and magazines only when they bump into 
small pieces being blown away by the wind.

In worse situations, some Zimbabweans receive signals of foreign radio and 
television stations, but no newspaper at all until during public holidays, 
when urbanites visit with copies of that day.

That is why the concept of Rural Information Kiosks, muted by the 
government's Department of Information and Publicity, is both exciting and 
fascinating.  It marks a paradigm shift from urban-centred information 
dissemination system.

Day-in and day-out, urbanites rush to buy newspapers and magazines.  They 
glue their eyes on television sets and cinema screens or listen to the 
radio at home.

In their offices and even in their posh cars, they are connected to the 
world of information but in rural areas, the situation is completely the 
opposite.

The information kiosks seek to reverse the situation and give rural people 
all the information available, under one roof, somewhere in the heart of 
the remotest communal lands.

Although different in style and content from the highly commercialised 
urban information set up, the rural information kiosk is a complete package 
that will nourish the mind of the rural person.

For the first time in the history of Zimbabwe, villagers will be able to 
walk into the kiosk and read everything available from newspapers, 
magazines, posters, hand-written notices and advertisements.

That a community in the heart of the remote Dande, Muchekayaora or Maranda 
Communal Lands, will be the custodian of thriving information centre, where 
a complete information package, ranging from newspapers, magazines to 
brochures of any kind, is in itself a powerful tool of rural development.

There is no doubt that the information kiosks will become the nerve for 
community development.

They will become the point of symbolic interaction or a seedbed of ideas 
that will make rural communities knowledgeable enough to fully access 
government facilities.

Over the years, many rural folks have been failing to utilise existing 
government facilities owing to lack of information and knowledge, leaving 
such facilities exposed to abuse by urbanites and peri-urbanites.

The kiosks bring with them enough information to breed debates that will 
nourish the mind of the rural people at low costs.

They will make rural folks become masters and sharers of their own destiny 
politically, socially and economically.

The concept is the brainchild of secretary for information and publicity, 
Mr. George Charamba, who went on a whirlwind tour of all the provinces in 
the country to ensure successful implementation of the project.

"The information kiosk is supposed to be faceless in that anyone with a 
message for the rural people can walk in and deposit it," explains Mr. 
Charamba.

The geographical divide, based on the highway road network, says Mr. 
Charamba, has done a lot of injustice to the rural people, whose 
"Zimbabweanesss" has been violated by the failure to give them enough 
information.

"At the moment, we are doing a lot of violence to the psyche of our rural 
people and we have always naturalised that violence by following 
traditional urban highway routes in information dissemination.

"Now is the time to strike the balance and give the rural people as much 
information as their urban counterparts at no cost," he says.

What is interesting though, is that the information kiosk comes at a time 
when the Government has restored a lot of function to the chiefs, who had 
been stripped off their powers by the colonial settler regime.

In Masvingo Province for instance, where chiefs are now given weekly police 
lists of wanted criminals in their areas and handcuffs to arrest those 
criminals, the information kiosk comes very handy.

Given that the national broadcaster, Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation 
(ZBC) covers about 84 percent of the country in radio and television 
reception, the information kiosk will supplement by giving newspapers, 
magazines and brochures.

It is a trite but true observation that Zimbabweans living in remote areas 
that constitute the 16 percent where there is no ZBC reception have been 
facing unjustified violence.

A significant number of Zimbabweans were becoming more South African, 
Mozambican and or Tswana as their outside interaction was only through 
radio and television broadcasts from their countries.

In such situations, no one would complain if the establishment of 
information kiosks gives first preference to those areas.

Whatever it takes, the rural information kiosk concept will go a long way 
in information dissemination throughout rural Zimbabwe, and will mark a 
turning point in nourishing the mind of the rural people.