Polonia Global Fund

Philadelphia/Los Angeles — On May 4, 2004 British Prime Minister Tony Blair chaired the first meeting of the Commission for Africa in London. The high-level group of politicians and economists, representing thirteen industrialized and developing nations, will spend the next year analyzing the problems of underdevelopment in Africa and recommending new solutions to improve the economic and social conditions of the poverty-stricken continent.

Blair’s team of experts reviewed the proposals of the Brandt Commission, a panel spearheaded by former German Chancellor Willy Brandt in the early 1980s, which set out a similar plan for global development. Unlike the Brandt Commission, which was an independent body of retired politicians, the new initiative is comprised of active political leaders. After the group’s report is published next April, Blair intends to use Great Britain’s presidency of the G-8 and EU summits in 2005 to petition those bodies for new development financing for Africa.

Current trends indicate that many African states — plagued with HIV/AIDS, low life-expectancy, and chronic poverty — will not meet their 2000 UN Millennium Development Goals for 2015. At its conference last week at No. 10 Downing Street, the Commission for Africa set an agenda for its future discussions, including conflict resolution and peace building, health and human development, AIDS, natural resources and agriculture, governance, education, culture, heritage, and participation. The commission will also focus on global trade and financial policies — like rolling back agricultural subsidies in developed nations, offering development bonds through the international capital markets, and expanding debt relief — to get Africa on track to meet its anti-poverty targets.

Like the Brandt Commission, the Blair Commission is linking various development issues to demonstrate their interdependence and the need for multilateral action to address them. With nine representatives from Africa, the new development panel is also following Brandt in its commitment to local participation and cooperative decision-making between rich and poor nations. The commission pledged its support for major programs involving public-private cooperation, including the New Partnership for African Development and the G-8 Africa Action Plan.

Blair announced that Bono, the rock singer and activist, may serve as a popular ambassador for the new commission. Members of the commission include Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown MP (UK), Finance Minister Trevor Manuel (South Africa), African Personal Representative Michel Camdessus (France), International Development Secretary Hilary Benn MP (UK), UN Economic Commission for Africa Secretary K. Y. Amoako (Ghana), musician and activist Bob Geldof (Ireland), Prime Minister Meles Zenawi (Ethiopia), Chairman of the Uganda Investment Authority Dr. William S. Kalema (Uganda), Chairman of the FATE Foundation Fola Adeola (Nigeria), Central Bank Governor Linah Moholo (Gaborone), former Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker (USA), Aviva PLC Development Director Tidjane Thiam (Côte D’Ivoire), President Benjamin Mkapa (Tanzania), Finance Minister Ralph Goodale P.C., MP (Canada), and Executive Director of UN HABITAT Anna Tibaijuka (Tanzania).

A presentation on the Brandt and Blair commissions was given on May 27th at UCLA by Dr. James Quilligan of Brandt 21 Forum, a division of the Center for Global Negotiations, which promotes social and economic dialogue between developed and developing nations. For more information visit the Brandt Forum.

A PROFILE

Drawing inspiration from the very soul of African tradition, Ancestral Ambassadors from Africa is a group performing in an artistic invention dubbed ‘Ritualistic Poetry’. It combines poetry (metaphysical), drumming (ritualistic), songs (traditional blues, jazz, and spirituals) and dance (mbaya, makossa, Ngom’a wetuli), in one package, for one purpose, i.e. to unite nations, races and people.
The pioneers of this group include:

• Simon Mol— published Poet, artistic creator, actor, writer and journalist from Cameroon. With one poetry anthology to his credit and a second underway, Simon has been published in Africa, Europe, India and the Americas.
• Ngodi Jeanblack— Inspirational Singer and professional Crier who traces his roots to one of the most popular musical families in Cameroon. He used to play with his maternal uncle— the redoubtable makossa maestro and one of Cameroon’s and Africa’s music giants, Misse Ngoh Fancoise.
• Hope Ngwa— an initiate of African ritualistic drumming, he currently teaches drumming at the Warsaw School of drumming. He is also from the Northwest province of Cameroon where initiates of drum rituals use drumming in healing and foretelling the future.
• Isaac Tanyi— an outstanding animator, Isaac combines drumming and theatre simultaneously on stage through body language while beating the drum.
• Mafiamba Victor— has been school and initiated into the Mbaya dance which is the soul of Cameroon’s national culture. The dance employs gymnastics and acrobatic stunts in one display.

REFERENCES

On March 26. 2003 at Tam Tam in front of a packed hall, The Ancestral Ambassadors in the presence of several ambassadors, including the Nigerian ambassador to Poland and powerful delegations from the South African and Norwegian embassies, left tears in the audience’s eyes after a 70-minute performance which evoked contrasting emotions. The show demonstrated dramatic, thrilling, and tragic elements of life through poetry, singing, dancing, and theatre. The audience reacted with a standing ovation and a call for an encore.

The group can be contacted by telephone at 48 603 434 930 or 48 (22) 839 09 27 or by E-mail.

The Creation of KWANZAA (Kwahn-zah) — Celebrated December 26 to January 1 of every year

In 1966, KWANZAA was created by a young visionary living on the west coast who was also the founder and chairman of the Black Nationalist Organization. Dr. Maulana Karenga, a trained political and cultural scientist and a participant and theoretician of the Black Liberation Movement, postulated that significant and meaningful Black movement in the U.S. was improbable, if not impossible, without a cultural component (base). He felt that at the base of any movement must be the cultural imperative that give the people a clear and precise sense of “identity, purpose and direction.”

KWANZAA is derived from the Swahili word, KWANZA which means first fruits and is part of the phrase Matunda Ya. Dr Karenga added the extra “a” to distinguish the Afro-American from the African. The idea and conceptions of KWANZAA developed out the system of social and political thought of Kawaida (Tradition and Reason), also developed by Dr. Karenga.

The roots of KWANZAA are continental African, but the branches and fruit are distinctly Afro-American. Dr. Karenga sought to make the natural and profound connection of Afro-American people to their ancestral beginnings, therefore, KWANZAA “as a holiday of the first fruits” comes directly out of the tradition of agricultural people of Africa, who celebrated and gave thanks for harvest at designated times during the year.

Each tribe or community in Africa would come together to sing, dance, eat and drink and celebrate the harvest of the first fruits and vegetables. The would bring food they grew or items they made to give to the feast.

Although Afro-Americans are essentially an urban people and, thus, have few crops to harvest, the concept of “ingathering and celebration” formed a conceptual basis for KWANZAA.

The cultural dynamism of KWANZAA is best displayed through its progressive value base, the NGUZA SABA (the Seven Principles) and its unique absence of a dependency on mystical or spookistic distortion of the world. The NGUAO SABA was created by Dr. Karenga in 1965 and represents the “minimum set of principles by which Black people must live in order to begin to receive and reconstruct our history and lives… they are social principles, dealing with ways for relating to others and rebuilding lives and a more positive image.”

The NGUZA SABA requires an introspective confrontation of self and society, demands political action rather than non-action and emphasizes building than crippling destruction. The Seven Principles of the NGUZO SABA are listed below:

NGUZA SABA (the Seven Principles)

• UMOJA (UNITY) –To Strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.
• KUJICHAGULIA (SELF DETERMINATION) –To define ourselves, names ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves rather than to allow others to do these things for us.
• UJIMA (COLLECTIVE WORK AND RESPONSIBILITY) –To build and maintain our community together to make our sister and brothers’ problems our problems and to solve them together.
• UJAMAA (COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS) –To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
• NIA (PURPOSE) –To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
• KUUMBA (CREATIVITY) –To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than when we inherited it.
• IMANI (FAITH) –To believe with all our hearts in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

Suggested Reading:

• KWANZAA A Progressive and Uplifting African American Holiday (ISBN 0-88378-012-7) by Haki R. Madhubuti
• The KWANZAA Coloring Book by Valerie J.R. Banks Illustrated by Sylvia Woodard (ISBN 0-9622340-4-4)

Recorded HIV/AIDS cases are growing at an astonishing rate in southern Africa and the deadly virus is threatening the manpower of the world’s poorest countries. What can the UNAIDS program do to battle the spreading consequences of this global problem?

It is no coincidence that the six southern African nations that now face the prospect of mass famine — Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe — also have substantial and still growing HIV epidemics, with between one sixth and one third of their populations infected. In southern Africa, famine and AIDS are, in fact, directly related. Addressing the links between hunger, disease, lack of education and war is vital to long-term solutions to humanitarian emergencies. The world’s most serious health problems, including HIV/AIDS, are deeply connected to the violence and poverty that shackle hundreds of millions of people around the world.
In observance of this week’s commemoration of World AIDS Day, UNAIDS (the joint UN program on HIV/AIDS) has released new data showing that 3.1 million people died of AIDS this year. Five million were infected with HIV over the course of the year and 42 million men, women and children are now living with the virus.

But what do these numbers mean? What happens when 42 million people in the prime of their lives become ill, the great majority of them unable to access any kind of treatment?

AIDS is combining with other factors — including droughts, floods and in some cases shortsighted national and international policies — to cause a steady fall in agricultural production in Africa. An AIDS-related death in a farm household causes crop output to plummet – often by up to 60 percent. Household incomes also shrink, leaving people with less money to buy food. Multiply that by millions and famine is not far behind. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, 7 million agricultural workers in 25 severely affected African countries have died from AIDS since 1985. A 2002 study in central Malawi has shown that about 70 percent of surveyed households had suffered labor losses due to sickness.

Women in agricultural societies, who perform the bulk of duties related to household food production and care, have been particularly hard hit. When caring for a sick husband, the amount of time a wife has available for tasks such as planting, harvesting and marketing drops up to 60 percent. When the male head of household dies, she may find herself denied access to necessities such as credit, distribution networks or land rights. When she becomes ill or dies, the household often collapses completely — leaving orphans to fend for themselves without schooling or the skills to carry on food production. More than 11 million African children have now lost one or both parents to AIDS.

UN agencies are mobilizing to address the famine in southern Africa, and have launched a joint appeal for more than US$600 million in assistance, including more than US$500 million in food aid. This critically needed assistance may alleviate the symptoms. But as UN Special Envoy James Morris notes, the “dramatic impact of HIV/AIDS on the humanitarian situation in southern Africa is not fully appreciated.” The scale and severity of the impact of AIDS makes swift recovery unlikely. And because the food crisis intensifies and prolongs the epidemic — as insecurity heightens risk, and poor nutrition hastens illness — HIV/AIDS responses must also be significantly stepped up.

This epidemic is not only about Africa, or famine. On every continent, AIDS is traveling along social fault lines and exploiting weakness, hurting both lives and economies. HIV infections increased by 25 percent in Eastern Europe and Central Asia this year. Infections in Asia jumped by 10 percent. Together in India and China, well over 5 million people are now living with HIV, and nearly 2 million are infected in the Caribbean and Latin America. In Indonesia, where there was virtually no injecting drug use 10 years ago, about a quarter of the country’s estimated 200,000 needle drug users are now infected with HIV.

One of the best things we can do now to safeguard economic and human development in the future is to invest heavily in alleviating the impact of the epidemic, extending access to care and scaling up proven HIV prevention efforts. We know that when prevention programs are mounted seriously, they work. Along with sustained drops in HIV rates in Uganda, prevention efforts are beginning to bear fruit among young people in Ethiopia, South Africa and Zambia. Prevalence is leveling off in Cambodia and the Dominican Republic. Countries as different as Senegal and Poland have demonstrated that the combination of leadership and community involvement can keep the epidemic at bay.

Scaling up global spending on 12 proven prevention strategies to US$4.8 billion per year by 2005 would save 29 million people from HIV infection by the decade’s end. When the immediate needs for HIV-related care and treatment are added, the required annual spending directly on AIDS in low and middle income countries is US$10.5 billion. This year, spending will be less than US$3 billion. And the more we delay making a proper investment in the AIDS fight, the more the eventual costs will escalate.

Perhaps for the first time, southern Africa’s famine brings the world face-to-face with the true scale of the consequences of AIDS. With 5 million new HIV infections globally this year alone, if we do not dramatically increase action against AIDS, we will be sowing the seeds of future humanitarian disasters — and not only in southern Africa.

Lewis Nkosi, who comes across as a mild, urbane and gently humorous world citizen, says he is astonished at how at home he feels in Durban, and attributes this to the notion of “home as language”. After 42 years of living abroad he is sometimes mistaken for an American in his home town, where he greatly enjoys the Zulu he hears around him: he is able to eavesdrop on disparaging remarks made by a rickshaw man, understand a colloquial term for hobos used on the radio, and ponder the ironies of a song he heard somewhere: “I will never return to Zululand/ because that’s where my father died.”

He left South Africa in 1960 on a one-way exit permit when he was 23 and en route to take up a Niemann Fellowship at Harvard after a spell as a very junior writer on Drum magazine in Johannesburg. In the years of his enforced absence he established himself as an academic and critic in the field of African and other post-colonial literature, working in places as diverse as the United States, the United Kingdom, Zambia and Poland.

Cornelius Molapo, the protagonist of Nkosi’s new novel, Underground People (Kwela), is a poet and teacher in Soweto and a member of the “National Liberation Movement”. Lewis says this character was partly inspired by Can Themba, whose eloquence and passion he remembers from his Drum days. The plot revolves around the sudden disappearance of Molapo, taking the reader into the world of underground resistance politics, international human rights and to the rural area of Tabanyane where the comrades are trying to oust the “Chief” newly imposed by the apartheid government — a familiar scenario.

Although the action of the novel takes place in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it seems to encompass the 1950s and 1960s in a sort of pastiche of attitudes and political issues that were current then, and still informing people’s decisions well into the 1990s. Pivotal to all this is Molapo’s relationship with his beautiful, estranged wife, Maureen.

Nkosi admits to having been “exercised” by certain questions that are the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of this novel, most notably the determinism inherent in the Marxist and Hegelian view of history, the role of the heroic individual as well as the effects of accidental contingencies on well-planned operations. The latter he illustrates by means of the discovery of the comrades’ mountain hideout by a pair of lovers who are only looking for somewhere to make love.

Although many South Africans attribute the gradual weaning of South African writing from its obsession with politics to people such as Albie Sachs and Njabulo Ndebele, Nkosi points out, and this has been acknowledged by these two, that “if one looks at the history of literary criticism in relation to the literature of protest, I am the first critic to have disputed the pre-eminence of the literature of protest as such”. So there is some irony in the fact that Underground People is both a celebration and critique of a life lived in “the struggle”.

Molapo, as early on as page nine, is speaking about “those nodal points where love and revolution intersect”. In an argument between him and Bulane, his movement bureaucrat superior, in which Bulane is manipulating Molapo into accepting the mission he’s been assigned, Molapo says: “How can we be free without love?” and Bulane counters with: “How can we love without freedom?” Nkosi enjoys the fact that as a novelist he can say that they are both right.

In a review of a recent biography of Chinua Achebe, Lewis comments that Achebe considers his role is to “defend African culture” (against Western cultural imperialism). There is no sense of this in Underground People; he has written about many strands of South African culture as if existing within them, and not from the outside. He is even sympathetic to the Afrikaner policeman, Adam de Kock, who is being intimidated by his English bank manager. And his most “disgusting” character, an incorrigibly racist farmer, amuses Nkosi so much that he admits to becoming quite fond of him.

Written in a swift and engaging style, this multi-layered novel moves from wonderfully observed characters and situations to theoretical discussions. Although the latter are embedded in the story they do contrast with the otherwise smooth action of the plot. But they are an essential element of Nkosi’s intention, requiring the reader to examine the idea that “men of action are able to live in suspension as if love and that type of emotion exist only for the purposes of feeding into their work … to me an astonishing way of conducting your life”.