The United States welcomes the exchange of Ambassadors between the Governments of Chad and Sudan on November 10. This is a crucial step towards bringing peace and stability to the region and resolving the conflict in Darfur. We commend the efforts on the part of the Government of Libya to facilitate this exchange. We encourage Chad and Sudan to continue to improve relations and cease support for rebels operating along the Chad/Sudan border. We strongly support the efforts of the Dakar Agreement Contact Group and look forward to the results of its next meeting scheduled for November 15 in N’Djamena.
We continue to encourage the Government of Sudan to support full deployment of the UN/African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). The United States remains committed to reaching a resolution to the conflict in Darfur, ameliorating the humanitarian suffering in both Darfur and eastern Chad, and restoring stability in the region.
GENEVA (AFP) — The United Nations anti-torture watchdog called Thursday on the Kenyan authorities to shed light on the violence that erupted between the end of 2007 and start of 2008 and to ensure those responsible faced justice.
The Geneva-based Committee Against Torture (CAT) said that complaints against police officers should be treated with the utmost seriousness to avoid promoting impunity.
This was particularly evident in respect of violence against women, according to experts quoted by the report.
According to Wang Xuexian, co-rapporteur for the Kenyan report, 405 people died from police violence in post-election unrest. Women and girls were the victims of widespread violence at the hands of the police, including gang rapes.
According to reports from human rights bodies, “in the court cases alleging torture raised directly with magistrates, no action was taken on 80 percent of those cases.”
Rapporteur Nora Sveaass said that 11 years after Kenya had ratified the UN convention against torture there was no definition of torture that conformed to that of the convention in Kenyan law.
That prevented criminal prosecution and risked favouring impunity. A further concern was the fact that psychological and mental suffering resulting from torture was not covered at all in Kenyan law, Sveaass said.
Kenyan Justice Minister Martha Karua said that the security forces had been obliged to act against armed criminal bands.
The post-election violence led to 1,500 deaths and the displacement of some 300,000 people. It followed the refusal by the Kenyan opposition to accept the reelection of President Mwai Kibaki, whom it accused of stealing the election.
The Kenyan government has set up two inquiries, one into the violence, the other into the election.
NINE hundred years ago, at a site on a high plateau north of the Limpopo River called Great Zimbabwe, Shona kings built stone palaces where they lived in splendid isolation from their subjects, with absolute authority over their means to sustain life—cattle herds, land, and the gold that came out of the earth.
In the nineteen-sixties, members of a liberation movement in what was then Rhodesia, among them Robert Mugabe, adopted Great Zimbabwe’s name to refer to the notional state they were fighting for.
Today, Mugabe can be said to be the owner of the riches that remain in the nation of Zimbabwe. After twenty-eight years, he remains in power––Zimbabwe’s only President since the end of whiteminority rule, in 1980. His nephew Leo, therefore, leads a cushioned life. He is an entrepreneur and has stakes in several companies, among them a mobile-phone network. He is a director of Zimbabwe Defense Industries, which purchases the weaponry for his uncle’s Army—most of it, these days, from China.
He also controls at least one large farm that had been seized from its white owners. In the nineties, Leo earned notoriety for his alleged role in securing kickbacks, on behalf of his uncle and other officials, in the construction of Harare International Airport. In 2005, he was arrested for the contraband export and sale of government-owned food, but the charges were withdrawn for lack of evidence. (Leo said the allegations in both cases were unfounded.) That year, he was a candidate for Parliament for the Zimbabwe African National UnionPatriotic Front, known as ZANU-P.F., the ruling party. He won in a landslide.
Earlier this year, Leo was added to a sanctions list first imposed by the United States in 2003 against Robert Mugabe and members of his government. The sanctions included a travel ban and the freezing of foreign assets, and also prohibit Americans from doing business with those on the list. Leo was also named on a sanctions list maintained by the European Union, for his arms-dealing activities. The new sanctions came in response to a wave of terror that Robert Mugabe had unleashed in the country’s Presidential campaign. More than a hundred and fifty opposition supporters were murdered, many were raped, and thousands of people were beaten or tortured, often after being herded into so-called reëducation camps.
Because of the violence, Mugabe’s rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, whose Movement for Democratic Change, or M.D.C., had won a slender majority in the country’s first round of voting in March, dropped out of the race and went into hiding. In the runoff vote on June 27th, Mugabe was unopposed and was quickly declared the winner.
Leo Mugabe works from an office building he owns in Harare, where I met him this summer. His brand-new silver Toyota Land Cruiser Amazon was parked outside. He is a slim, goateed man of fifty-one, and was dressed in a dark tailored suit. On the wall behind his desk hung a map of Zimbabwe made out of a patchwork of animal skins. His secretary, a young woman wearing a tight skirt and jacket, very high heels, and a great deal of jewelry, sat down with us. Her hair was arranged in red-dyed cornrows, and as Leo spoke she scribbled everything down on a notepad, expressing approval whenever he made a point, like a personal cheerleader. He was in a good mood, emanating confidence and optimism over Zimbabwe’s future.
“Have you seen anyone beaten up since you’ve been here?” he asked. “There was less violence here than in Nigeria! And we all know why Zimbabwe’s violence is being exaggerated—it’s about the fortune in the land. We have certain resources here, such as nickel, gold, and platinum. I think Zimbabweans now understand that they are suffering because of sanctions by the United States, Great Britain, and the Europeans.” Otherwise, Zimbabwe’s prospects were excellent—his uncle had been distributing computers to rural schools, for example. “In a few years, rural Zimbabwe will be computer-literate. We are a nation which is moving, and these children will understand what empowerment really means.”
That week, however, the inflation rate in Zimbabwe had officially reached eleven million per cent, the highest in the world; analysts later reckoned it to have been two hundred and thirty million per cent. Eighty per cent of Zimbabweans were out of work. Chronic malnutrition was prevalent, and starvation was spreading in the countryside. Close to two million Zimbabweans depended for survival on food handouts from international aid agencies. Twenty per cent of the population was infected with H.I.V./AIDS.
Zimbabwe’s life expectancy is forty-four years for men, forty-three for women. But Leo Mugabe scoffed at the idea that the situation was dire. “People are going about their business,” he said. “No one is starving—they are driving nice cars! As a Christian, though, I think it is a challenge by God, and the attention being drawn to Zimbabwe is maybe to highlight that we are the new people of Israel, and that we have our own Moses.” I understood “Moses” to be his uncle. His secretary greeted the analogy with an exclamation of delight.
Under Robert Mugabe’s leadership, in 2000 his most militant supporters—many of them veterans of the seventies civil war—began forcibly occupying the country’s five thousand white-owned commercial farms, with the help of armed gangs and, frequently, ZANU-P.F. officials. By almost all accounts, these actions precipitated the country’s economic decline. Leo disagreed. “We have no regrets—he has none, and I have none,” he said.
“We have taken the land,” Leo went on. “So what is the next move? The next move is the mines, the minerals. We know we are very rich—without the British or the Americans. Yes, they invested, but if we have to we will go and take over the mines, too.” Zimbabwe has the world’s second-largest platinum reserves and is relatively rich in other minerals. The country’s mining industry accounts for some forty per cent of its export income. In 2006, Robert Mugabe threatened to nationalize the mines by assigning Zimbabwe a controlling fifty-one-per-cent stake in them. Negotiations with the mine owners, which include South Africa’s Implats and Anglo Platinum, and the United Kingdom’s Rio Tinto, have dragged on ever since.
“Rio Tinto can stay there in London, but their mines and their equipment will stay here. Is that what they want? Because that’s where they are headed,” Leo said. “We can give the mines to the black Zimbabweans, the people who work them now,” he added. “We are not going to go back on the land issue, and the wealth that lies underneath the land will remain ours, too.”
Jon Lee Anderson works for The New Yorker, where this article was first published.
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – The Constitutional Court has dismissed ousted president Thabo Mbeki’s urgent application to oppose a high court ruling that ultimately cost him his job, reports said on Wednesday.
Eight Constitutional Court judges dismissed his application on Tuesday.
The judges ordered that it was “not in the interests of justice to hear [Mbeki’s] application at this stage”.
This was because the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) was in the process of appealing the same judgement in the Supreme Court of Appeal.
The NPA’s appeal will be heard on November 28.
Mbeki had wanted the Constitutional Court to scrap certain parts of the ruling handed down in the Pietermaritzburg High Court by Judge Chris Nicholson on September 12.
In his judgement, Nicholson said he could not exclude the possibility of political interference in the decision to re-charge Mbeki’s political rival and the new African National Congress president Jacob Zuma for fraud and corruption.
Mbeki said Nicholson’s judgement was related to the decision by the ruling party to remove him from office, about six months before his term would have ended.
Mbeki’s application was largely based on three points:
* That he had no chance to give evidence on the allegations of conspiracy in the Zuma trial;
* That he was recalled by the ANC on the basis of Nicholson’s “flawed” judgement; and
* That he has no standing in the high court or Supreme Court of Appeal because no judgement or order was made against him and is therefore seeking the indulgence of the Constitutional Court.
A senior Johannesburg advocate accused Mbeki of “going off sideways” while the NPA is still preparing its application for leave to appeal.
“But he also has another problem: what he [Mbeki] seems to be wanting to do is to review a high court judge. There is no such thing as reviewing high court judges and the courts have made it clear that you can only appeal orders. Very often judges say harsh things about all kinds of people, but I’m afraid you’ve got to take that on the chin.”
The advocate, speaking to the Mail & Guardian in September, described Mbeki’s application as “extraordinary” and “breathtaking”.
Yes, she is here! World number two female tennis icon, Serena Williams, made a humbled entry into the country for a three-day charity tour in an arrival that did not cause a huge stir at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.
The one half of the William’s tennis sister-act and nine grand slam singles title winner, was befittingly whisked to Nairobi’s Serena Hotel where she will be based during her stay in the country. Elder sister Venus, is also a former world number one and winner of nine grand slam titles as well.
A battery of journalists camped at the airport to cover her arrival but they left disappointed after they were denied interviews.
Local photojournalists had the chance of a lifetime to shoot pictures of Serena, the decorated superstar they only see in foreign media.
Looking charming in a black cap, dark sunglasses, a light blue blouse
Dr Fred Babumba left Uganda for greener pastures in Southern Africa, but he has never written off his patients back home, writes Agnes Asiimwe.
The silver Mercedes pulled in smoothly up the driveway and parked just outside the garage of his suburban home on the South Coast in Port Shepstone, in South Africa’s KwaZulu Natal province. The doctor was home. A few minutes later, the remote-controlled gate slid open again, his son and daughter, both attending nearby schools, were returning from school in their BMW. For Dr Fred Babumba and his family, life couldn’t be better.
He is a Ugandan of a rare quality. Despite all the comforts and the success, Dr Babumba, 47, has managed to shake himself out of his comfort zone and give back to Uganda, something not many Ugandans in the Diaspora can say they have done. Rather than join in the chorus to complain bitterly about the backwardness of his homeland, Babumba has decided to do something about it. He is investing back home.
In the last two years, he has been coming to Uganda every four months to operate on patients. Now, his longtime desire to have a quality health facility in the country is about to be realised when Nakasero Private Hospital opens for business in January.
But life wasn’t so good in 1986 after he completed his degree at Makerere University Medical School. A doctor’s pay was meagre and he promptly moved to Kenya where he worked at the Aga Khan Hospital.
In 1990, the government of Botswana went scouting for doctors in Kenya and he was among the 18 doctors who were recruited.
“I was not content at just being a general practitioner and wanted to specialise as a surgeon,” he said.
He applied for post graduate medical study in South Africa. In July 1993, he moved to South Africa to study orthopedic surgery at the University of Natal, Durban. Five years later, in 1998, freshly qualified as an orthopedic surgeon, he relocated to the coastal town of Port Shepstone (100km South of Durban) and opened a private practice which has since become the biggest and busiest orthopaedic practice in the region. He also works part-time at a government hospital.
His main area of specialisation is knee and hip joint replacements. He performs 150 joint replacements annually in addition to another 700 other orthopaedic related cases.
“The health care in Uganda is underdeveloped, the surgical facilities are backward and my dream was to put up a modern 80 bed private hospital, a venture of about $5m,” he said.
But he knew it was too big a project for him alone. He got an idea to first mobilise the Ugandan specialists based in South Africa and the specialists in Uganda and get them interested.
“I talked to Ugandan specialists in South Africa; many of them have written off Uganda, they are not interested. “They are in their own comfortable zones here, they are well paid, children are in school, the living environment is affluent, they don’t even dream of ever going to work in Uganda.”
He spoke to a number of businessmen in Uganda. “They welcome the idea but when it comes to the actual putting down of the money then it’s a different story.” While he was still thinking of how to make his idea work, he met Dr Ian Clarke who was already running a hospital at Old Kampala. “He had converted a hostel into a hospital, then he started building a proper hospital. I was glad, I could see someone with the same vision.”
Babumba looked at Clarke’s hospital drawing and he visited during construction, “and I think generally he put up a very good physical structure,” (at International Hospital Kampala [IHK] in Namuwongo). For the last two years, Babumba has been coming several times in a year to do surgery at IHK.
Its problem now, he says, is that it lacks equipment. “He has donated equipment which is very old. For example the X-rays, you can’t get all the views, the physical structure is good but the equipment is very archaic.”
Later on Babumba met Dr Ben Mbonye, an orthopeadic surgeon and a former permanent secretary for the Ministry of Defence. Mbonye, together with a team of Ugandan specialists had a consultancy near the Fairway Hotel. Two years ago, they started construction of their own hospital on plot 14A, Akii Bua Road in Nakasero, Kampala.
Babumba has bought shares in the hospital and he hopes to convince other medical specialists to come and offer services. According to Babumba, there are about 50 well trained medical specialists based in South Africa.
“I’m excited about that, it’s owned by at least 20 doctors, we speak the same language and we will have a quality hospital.”
He said Nakasero Private Hospital will bring quality health care nearer instead of such health care being a preserve of the few who can afford to travel out of the country. “Even the rich, sometimes it is too late or their condition is so poor for them to travel.”
“Patients come from Uganda to see us here for hip replacement, knee replacement, spinal surgery – we can offer that surgery in Uganda if we have facilities,” said Babumba, “It’s easier for the surgeon to go there and operate on 10 patients than the 10 patients buying tickets, getting attendants to come.”
Uganda has some good doctors, he says, but they don’t have facilities, that even some of the newer medicine cannot be practiced because of lack of proper equipment. The backwardness of medical facilities always shocks and humbles him. “When someone has a broken leg, we can’t reuse plates and screws to fix the fracture, but in Uganda, the same plates and screws will be washed and used on another patient. I have seen mops (used in theatre) washed of blood and re-sterilised for another patient.”
Ugandans can improvise, he said, but if you told someone in the know that such things still happen in hospitals, they would be utterly shocked. When Nakasero Private Hospital opens its doors, it won’t be only to the rich. He believes Ugandans have the money to spend on quality health care. “If they can afford to take their children to private schools, look at the residential areas, there are mansions coming up all over Uganda, there are designer shops, there are top class restaurants. If they can afford these, they should afford the quality heath care at this 80-bed hospital. It is time to offer them quality health care and get them to learn to pay for it,” he said.
The hospital will have gyneacologists, orthopedic surgeons, physicians, general surgeons, ENT surgeons, psychiatrists and later on, a cardiothoracic surgeon and neurosurgeon.
The specialists have plans to train junior doctors. “We have discussed that and we would like to give an opportunity to the doctors in Mulago, especially the newly qualified doctors to expose them.”
The doctors also hope to give back through charity and will periodically offer free surgery to the poor. As for patriotism, Babumba understands why there are many Ugandans abroad who shun their homeland and would never invest here. “These are developed countries, there is comfort, good schools, good health care, you don’t want to sacrifice that. “You need a lot of patriotism in yourself to pack your bags and leave your practice, say in Cape Town and go back to Uganda,” said Babumba.
Living abroad has its hardships. Living under the label of ‘foreigner’ is not comfortable. In the case of South Africa, the recent xenophobic attacks were a rude awakening to all the immigrants. “Whether you are a citizen of that country, there are people who still consider you a foreigner, home is still home,” Babumba said.
