Global politics and confidence building measures

At the All Wales Peace Festival on 22nd September there was an inspiring talk by Professor Nick Wheeler from Aberystwyth, on the concept of trust-building in world politics - the topic of his latest book . I remain firmly sceptical about the trustworthiness of many world leaders. However, I’m able to relate the concept to a concrete example from my experience of the UK Government’s confidence-building strategy for Guatemala and Belize

This programme was funded under the Global Conflict Prevention Pool, itself a three-way cooperation between the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development - the so-called 3-D model (diplomacy, defence and development) now popular for working with other countries. I’ve criticised this model elsewhere, in Mali , arguing that its use by western governments tends to be motivated by the thought of their own economic and political gain rather than being of any real benefit to the developing countries in question. However, due perhaps to particular personalities involved in the Guatemala-Belize strategy, there was observable confidence-building over the two years that I acted as independent evaluator against identified objectives

The strategy aimed to help resolve the longstanding border dispute. Since 1939 when Belize was declared a separate state, Guatemala has refused to recognize its status, claiming the territory is still part of Guatemala. Thus the Organisation of American States , acting as mediator, coined the terms ‘territorial differendum’ (for the dispute itself) and ‘adjacency zone’ (AZ) to designate the disputed border region. The term ‘confidence-building measures’ (CBMs) was substituted for ‘conflict prevention’ because the Guatemalans maintained there was no conflict to prevent. It may sound simply like playing with words. In fact people found the use of the term highly significant - not only in maintaining non-violent relationships at state level but also in influencing the attitudes of other actors from each side of the border.

One of the notable aspects of the programme was that, as it evolved, it included an increasing number of different sectors and levels of Guatemalan and Belizean society: government officials, non-governmental organisations, the media, academia, environmental and human rights groups, communities on either side of the border and the private sector. Similarly it involved a range of cross-border activities: training workshops, exchange visits, study tours, trade fairs, cultural celebrations, civic action and community mobilisation (clearing the river, HIV awareness), mapping, educational materials – and positive media coverage.



Bi-national committees were also set up to develop and move forward joint plans, especially for the economic and social development of the adjacency zone, far from the capital, marginalized, impoverished and neglected. Through working together, representatives from both sides recognised the importance of this as the root cause of conflict. Illegal incursions into Belize’s nature reserves by Guatemalans were driven by the need to forage for food, firewood and also what they might sell to middlemen for export (for example, ornamental ferns) despite the threat of arrest and imprisonment by the Belizean security forces. So, community-based enterprises, facilitating legal cross-border commerce, boosting basic health and education services were all initiatives identified for addressing these problems.

Workshops were held for the various partners, from top to bottom, to share experiences and review progress: here, perhaps for the first time, diplomats heard what civil society had to say about the issue of conflict. In particular, it was clear the strategy had helped to change negative stereotypes and perceptions of ‘the other’. Overall there was an increase in bi-national cooperation and a capacity for joint initiatives. This created a more conducive atmosphere - resulting in reduced tensions at the border and more positive attitudes towards a final settlement. Local ownership of the OAS confidence building process also developed. As one steering committee member put it:

‘

The key lesson to pass on to others in similar situations is the promotion of dialogue at all levels, enabling different people to see the problem differently – not in terms of conflict or illegal incursions but, for example, in terms of shared economic and health needs – and to do things differently. It takes time, it’s an ongoing process (and other problems can be created along the way) but bringing people together to dialogue is a first step. This process, this approach to solving problems, wasn’t there at the outset. For example, the Health Commission for the AZ, this happened because both governments have commitment to working together in this area. We have tried various ways to reach a final settlement through OAS mediation, now maybe it’s time for us to work things out directly government to government.’

The OAS representative was based at the main border crossing (Melchor-Benque) in a small prefabricated office - a humble place where diplomats and high level foreign office personnel, among others, could meet informally to try and resolve border incidents peacefully. In 2005 a new agreement was signed here, a positive step which the then OAS representative attributed to the work of the UK’s confidence-building strategy. The office is still used for meetings.

One innovative initiative, which is ongoing, was the inoffensively named Language Exchange (LX) Project - developed (perhaps surprisingly) by the then Military Attaché to Guatemala when bi-national relationships proved too sensitive to go ahead with original plans for joint military training. Working with other ministries on exchange visits and training, developing goodwill and a high profile, the project was eventually joined by both the police and the military – and joint activities by security forces in the adjacency zone were recognised by all as a key factor in reducing tensions.

The LX project was thus an excellent example of the elements contributing to success in confidence-building: flexibility, creativity, persistence, commitment, allowing enough time for things to develop… as well as language skills, of course.




As regards trade collaboration between the two chambers of commerce under the strategy, I had some reservations, mainly because of the US-imposed Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)and its potential effects on poor farmers in the AZ. Doubtless the UK had its own economic agenda too. However, the stakeholders I spoke to emphasised that there were already long-standing, though informal, relationships in trade– as indeed there were close social, ethnic, cultural and linguistic links between families in border communities. As happens in many other parts of the world, the real conflicts - which were played out in the everyday lives of the people - were created by their own leaders.




If Guatemala did decide to use force to take back the disputed territory, the UK government would feel obliged to provide military assistance to its former colony Belize – and that’s not a desirable scenario. However, the potential conflict between Guatemala and Belize is low priority in comparison with the ever-escalating crisis in the Middle East. I understand the Oxford Research Group have attempted to apply a confidence-building approach there but have not been able to find ‘high enough people on either side who are willing to dialogue.’

Nevertheless, the event planned for October 18th - when hopefully One Million Voices will be heard in parallel gatherings in Jericho, Tel Aviv, London, Washington and Ottowa - suggests that there are many people who do want to work together: OneVoice counts over 25,000 Israelis and more than 25,000 Palestinians calling for ‘concrete confidence-building measures to improve the lives of the Israeli and Palestinian people.’ As Nick Wheeler pointed out in his talk, the impact of grassroots movements on leaders (and vice versa) shouldn’t be overlooked. In other words, we shouldn’t just focus on summit diplomacy but on all stakeholders. As was observed in Guatemala-Belize, the more people at different levels became involved in confidence-building, the less easy it was for each leader to maintain an overtly aggressive public stance.


Read more

One Million Voices

DDMI blog (The David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies / Department of International Politics, University of Wales Aberystwyth)

Archived material on Guatemala-Belize Confidence-Building

Language Exchange Project

Boys may under-perform but it is women who are under-paid

“Girls outperformed boys by 11% in Key Stage 1 (seven year-olds) writing this year.”

It’s that time of year - results from school examinations and other national assessments have been published and newspapers herald the poor communication skills of boys as a national crisis. The Guardian is even hosting a major event this month for secondary headteachers ‘to identify barriers that impede boys’ learning, to work on practical solutions and set future goals to raise attainment.’ My intention is not to dismiss this as a valid topic for discussion. I’m simply saying it isn’t news.

Let’s go back to the dark ages of the 11 plus examination (established by the Butler Act in 1944). That national assessment test was used in the last year of primary education, allegedly to separate out children with academic potential, placing them in grammar schools, while the future hewers of wood and drawers of water were sent to ‘secondary modern’ schools. Because it was well-known even in those days that boys under-performed in the 11-plus, a special quota system for them was established, to ensure that grammar schools were not predominantly populated by girls. In other words, a percentage of the boys who went to grammar school did not merit their place. And a certain percentage of girls who went to secondary modern school were too bright to be there.

The practice was discontinued at a national level by the Labour government in 1974 (although it is still used in a few education authorities today) partly on the grounds that age 11 was too early to determine an individual’s future and that the exam favoured middle class children. The introduction of the comprehensive system also eliminated this 30 year-old practice of discrimination against girls at age 11 – a fact that has largely been overlooked in discussions about education in today’s ‘meritocracy’.

Of course, there is still a tendency for girls to have to teach themselves, especially at secondary school, while their teachers’ attention is taken up by boys’ bad behaviour. And unfortunately in many co-educational classrooms boys tend to undermine the confidence of teenage girls and inhibit them from showing how bright they really are. So girls sit and listen, take note, do their homework, help each other out and apply themselves consistently to coursework tasks throughout the year - rather than taking a mad dash to revise one week before the exams - behaviour which often earns them the epithet of being intellectually unadventurous and ‘not as naturally bright as boys’.



But in all this, the obvious answer to the conundrum of boys’ under-achievement seems to have been ignored. If, for the 60+ post-war years of co-educational statistics, boys continue to under-perform in comparison with girls, could the reason perhaps simply be that boys are not as bright?

‘News’ reports last week on another well-known fact suggest that we don’t need to worry about this because it doesn’t affect their achievement in later life. 30 years on from the Equal Pay Act, women may climb the career ladder faster than men – but are paid nationally 17% less for doing the same job, according to the latest National Management Salary Survey. Frances Gibb and Marcus Leroux in The Times, 5th September disingenuously reveal that 75% of women in the survey viewed qualifications as benefiting their career prospects compared with 66% of men. Of course: women know they have to work harder to get on and even when they are successful, are still under-paid.

So why should we bother about boys’ under-attainment at school when our ‘meritocratic’ society is still stacked in favour of men’s achievement at work?



The Equal Opportunities Commission, in its final report before being merged with other watchdogs into the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights on 1st October, has laid out its gender agenda: all those aspects of continuing sex discrimination in Britain which still require action by the new body.
The integrated human rights commission has potentially the advantage of being able to address the kind of connections between gender, race, class and ability that are not always made by the news reporting of the day.

But the newspaper advertisement I read for three key directors for the commission doesn’t bode well. Even as a linguist and an institutional development consultant, I couldn’t quite decipher the job description for ‘stakeholder relationships’ although I’m perfectly familiar with the concept. Perhaps it was written by one of those men whose communication skills are 11% poorer than mine but whose salary is 17% more.

Read more about the EOC gender agenda.



human rights

Out of Basra

Preparing them for a future they cannot yet imagine…

No, really, how could I make it up? I found this slogan accompanying the photograph above on the home page of Metrix - the private consortium which - I have just learned - won the British government contract earlier this year to develop and run a mega military academy in St Athan, south Wales, as part of streamlining UK’s armed services. The consortium includes a subsidiary of the US company Raytheon(‘customer success is our mission’) which makes cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions, supplies electronic guidance equipment for the British nuclear weapons system Trident and is a favoured US government supplier of arms to Israel.

No surprises there, perhaps, but another long-term partner in the consortium is the Open University (‘study with us and fulfil your potential’) as Brenda Gourley Vice-chancellor proudly announced when opening the new Cardiff office in March as part of the Wales’ assembly government mission for a ‘learning nation'. Gourley also spoke at the OUSA conference 14 April on ‘learning from the past – embracing the future’: ‘Lastly let us not forget our social justice agenda – if we join hands together, we can change the world.’

As the report from a meeting of activists at the Temple of Peace with Cardiff university researcher Stuart Tannock points out: ‘Young people will be trained to in a craft which murders people, destroys environments, has no respect for communities and can lay waste huge areas forever. You have to blink hard to make certain this is actually Wales and not Wonderland.’

While Gordon Brown brings the British soldiers home from Basra it’s clear that no lessons have been learned about how best to prevent conflict, as I predicted when he first took office. Peter Beaumont highlights in The Guardian that youth training opportunities in Iraq, especially in Basra, are now largely provided (for men) courtesy of the Mahdi army of Moqtada al-Sadr and restrictions (which didn’t existed before 2003) are placed on women university students regarding dress and behaviour.

Meanwhile, despite Tony Blair’s appointment as special Middle East envoy, his support and influence have been conspicuously lacking in the case of the under 19s Palestine National Youth Football Team. Due to tour the UK for 3 weeks over the British summer and play 3 matches in the north-west of the country as part of a youth project – a visionary educational and bridge-building initiative of benefit to all involved – the team were banned from entry at the last minute by UK government visa restrictions.



Several reasons have been given. The official one from UKvisas (‘making travel and migration work for Britain’) with reference to the British Consulate in Jerusalem ‘which continues to provide a service in Gaza’ explains that some of the team from the Gaza strip did not meet the visa criteria. In fact the authorities were afraid that some of the players would seek asylum in Britain: in other words, ‘they were too poor to come’. Journalist Mark Steel ironically suggests the government were afraid the young people were part of a terrorist plot . Check them out.



As is reflected in the film Goal Dreams, to be screened at the All Wales Peace Festival this month, it’s actually quite difficult to put a national football team together ‘without a recognized homeland, no permanent domestic league, no place to train, Israel air strikes on the Palestine stadium…’

But, never mind, the Israeli football team will be playing at Wembley this weekend 8th September although a vigil against the government’s hypocrisy is being organised and the self-styled ‘world’s greatest football blog’ (edited by an Israeli football fan) doesn’t mention the Palestine team at all.


The United Nations resolution 58/5 entitled ‘Sport as a means to promote education, health, development and peace’ recognizes the power of sport to contribute to human development, touching the individual, community, national and global levels. In particular sports programmes are regarded as a key strategy for addressing the social alienation of disadvantaged youth and helping to fulfil their potential.

As we all know from Hollywood films, sporting activities, like the Open University partnership, can mean working together to change the world. But whatever else young people may learn at St Athan, we can be sure it’s not cricket.

Read the full report on St Athan’s military academy from UK Indymedia here

Women, socialism and language

“ Taking part is not enough, you have to express your opinion.”

I found this quote on a card from Puntos de Encuentros
the leading women’s advocacy organisation in Nicaragua. What they say is true, but I know it’s not easy because it took me a long time to find my own voice as a writer. And like many other women I have found blogging a creative and empowering means of expressing my opinions and at the same time helping to raise other women’s voices.

I blogged live from the World Social Forum in Nairobi in January, and from the G8 alternative summit in Rostock in June. Now I’m grounded for a while in north Wales experiencing withdrawal symptoms. But fortunately the world keeps on spinning and the social movement keeps on moving. So in August musicians and political activists from the Americas and Europe descended on the tiny Welsh town of Machynlleth, home to the Centre for Alternative Technology for a Latino-Welsh extravaganza. They came to celebrate the living inspiration of the Chilean musician Victor Jara and discuss common environmental concerns – thus proving yet again that the sweet old-fashioned dream of socialism succeeds in eluding eradication and can be found bringing people together happily in what may seem the most unlikely of locations.

In fact, for me, the event is not surprising because there is a tradition of connection between Wales and Latin America which goes back to the first Welsh settlers to Patagonia in Argentina in 1865. More recently, solidarity groups in Wales have regularly exchanged visitors with Nicaragua and organised bilateral conferences on Cuba . This is the second Victor Jara festival in Machynlleth, and now links are being developed with Venezuela, since Cesar Aponte from the ministry for the environment was at the festival to talk about oil, equity and biosphere.



The reason for today’s connections, of course, is the common experience of oppression: Wales by the English kings, landlords, law, church and language; Latin American countries by dictators at home supported by successive greedy US regimes equally violating human rights including the right of free expression. The connection means that both Welsh civil society and politicians are active in LA solidarity: Jane Davidson, minister for education in the Wales Assembly, has visited Cuba on official business and Eluned Morgan (now Labour MEP) worked on the Nicaraguan coffee harvest. LA links are particularly strong among members of the Welsh Language Society : poets, musicians, writers like Angharad Tomos or educationalists like Branwen Niclas who have in their time been held in English prisons over Welsh language rights.

Mother tongue

Language was one of several themes of commonality in a cross-cultural initiative between women in Wales and women in Nicaragua last century (1995-6). This was a particular link with the multilingual Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, where, as in Wales, it is women who have been instrumental in maintaining indigenous language in the face of oppression by conquistadores, government, society or husbands. They have kept the mother tongue alive at home, in community life (especially Sunday school) in bringing up their own children, through stories, oral history, shared childcare and the development of a bilingual education programme.

At the conference in Bangor we discussed the paradox that while women are keepers of the language we are not always encouraged to use it ourselves in public. For this reason some researchers suggest that women’s speech is associated with powerlessness and can be characterised by over-politeness, hedging and hyper-correct grammar. Jennifer Coates has argued that these features do not actually correlate with the sex of the speaker but with social status, linked to previous experience and confidence in the context. “Powerless language has been confused with women’s language because in societies like ours women are usually less powerful than men.”

In mixed communication men are observed to interrupt three times as often as women, thus violating the rules of turn-taking. Conversely, women tend to act as facilitators, doing more of the interactive work and respecting others’ turns. Coates points out that “both men and women are disadvantaged by the existence of these two different models of conversation: women because their style leads to their being dominated (by men) in mixed groups and men because they lack competence in co-operative interaction.”

Angelica Brown, then councillor for the southern Atlantic coast region of Nicaragua highlighted: “Problems arise when it is a question of women taking on a public role because we underestimate our abilities of management and communication. For women in bilingual communities there is the additional worry of having to speak in public in your second or even third language.”


I have to keep on fighting

“Pay attention to the way you construct the present. It should look like the future that you dream of” (Alice Walker) is the message on another card from Puntos de Encuentro. Although the socialist experiment hasn’t always been so good for women, it has only been made possible by their active participation. While the reality may not live up to the dream, socialism in different Latin American contexts has opened up a space where women can raise their voice, take part in decision-making and are able to move, influence or inspire others. And, as Amanda Hopkinson says, ‘If you want to make a protest in Central America, you write a poem.’ The following two poems are not new but their writers’ dreams live on.

Firstly, the Creole painter Joan Beer, who died in 1984 not long after writing Love Poem, talks about the reality of personal relationships at a time when the Sandinistas (named after the anti-US-imperialism fighter, Sandino) were working for a greater love - for the sunrise, as the liberation of Nicaragua was called. The poignancy of ‘trying to keep back the night from falling’ is even greater in retrospect, given the World Bank’s dismantling of developments in health, education and equality during the 1990s.

Oscar, yuh surprise me
assin for a love poem

Ah sing a song a love fa meh contry
small contry, big lite
Hope for de po’, big headache fa de rich
Mo’ po’ dan rich in de worl
mo’ people love fah meh contry

Fa meh contry name Nicaragua
Fa meh people ah love dem all
Black, Miskito, Sumo, Rama, Mestizo
So yuh see fa me, love poem complete
‘cause ah love you too.

Dat no mek me erase de moon
an de star fran de firmament.

Only somehow wen ah rememba
how you bussin yo ass
To defend dis sunrise, an keep back
de night fran falling
Ah know dat tomara we will have time
fa walk under de moon an stars
Dignify an free, sovereign
children a Sandino.

In the conclusion of the second poem, the recently deceased Claribel Alegria expresses her choice more starkly:

Because I want peace and not war
I want to keep on fighting.
Because there are liberated territories
Where people learn to read
And the sick are cured
And the fruits of the earth belong to all,
I have to keep on fighting.

Note:
Creole is one of the languages used in Bluefields on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. As a community they were socialised to believe that Creole is just ‘bad’ English, not a real language, especially by the powerful Moravian church and its schools. Comments from afro-caribbean activists:

“The church teaches us women to be humble – that is, stupid!” Marjorie McKenzie.

‘When my husband is at home, we all speak Spanish. When he’s away, we speak bad Creole.’ Shorlaine Howard.


Further links

OpenDreams live on blog

El sueno existe

History is a weapon, Joan Jara (downloadable)

Lovers and Comrades, Women’s resistance poetry, edited by Amanda Hopkinson, The Women’s Press, 1989
Welsh Writing 1960-1985, Ned Thomas, 1996

We share the same struggle, edited by Patricia Daniel, 1996 (downloadable)

Climate change: sustainability, socialism and music

My latest blog for openDemocracy.net covers El Sueno existe the Victor Jara festival in Machynlleth, mid-Wales, which brought together environmentalists, musicians, academics and political activists from Latin America (Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Cuba..) and Europe (Wales, England, Italy, Finland...)to discuss practical solutions to climate change actually working today, as well as socio-economic scenarios for the future. I interviewed both women and men on a range of issues and came away inspired by seeds of hope, including the example of political and economic empowerment of women in Venezuela.

Please check out the blog here openDreams live on

Democracy in Mali: the president and the prostitute

The second round of parliamentary elections in Mali was completed at the weekend (22nd July 2007). The ADP coalition supporting Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT) was always the favourite to win and in the end they took 128 seats out of 147 in the national assembly. Since ATT was re-elected president for a second five-year term in May, the casual observer may be forgiven for assuming that the Malian population are happy with his style of leadership and that, clearly, he has their support to go forward with the neo-liberal programme of economic reform imposed by western donors.

Let’s look beneath the surface, because this also occurs in other countries. While Mali is perceived to be one of the most stable democracies in the African continent, it is also right at the bottom of the UN’s human development index. Despite a raft of donor-driven institutional reforms, life has not improved for the majority of her citizens. This is one good reason why the turnout for the national elections was low - as in bye-elections over the last year or so - indicating disillusionment with politics in general. Overall the turnout was estimated at 33% but this figure hides the disastrous lack of engagement of citizens in the capital (12%) and the relatively high engagement in some rural areas (up to 50% or more in a country where the literacy rate is around 25%).

Gender equality has made no progress whatsoever in the past 5 years. In fact, it looks as if it might be reversed. In the outgoing assembly, women deputies counted for a bare 10% or 14 out of 147 seats with 5 women ministers (18%). This year for the first time there was a woman presidential candidate Aminata Sidibé who entered the race late and was only able to draw on the support of a network of Malian women working in the non-governmental sector. In the parliamentary elections there were 227 women candidates out of 1,408 and none of them were elected in the first round, leaving only 26 to save Mali’s honour in the second round. Predictions that the number of female deputies would be halved in the new assembly were found to be too pessimistic: 14 women were finally elected.

This is not because women don’t want to be involved in politics. They have campaigned vigorously, in a cross-party coalition for the introduction of 30% quotas on the candidate lists (which are put forward by the different political parties) and even managed to get a bill discussed in the national assembly last August, in preparation for this year’s elections. After a stormy debate, the bill was thrown out by a majority of the legislature – but as they are almost all men, this is hardly surprising.

And while male commentators continue to claim that women are not politically competent or confident enough to run a successful campaign, women themselves complain that the main factor is economic inequality. Those candidates that have money to bribe the electorate will win. The vast majority of women in Mali are economically dependent and anyway women don’t play that game. Possibly one reason why men are against more women in government is that “their presence would bring scruples back into public life and rehabilitate politics in the eyes of citizens for whom ‘democracy’ has become devalued.” (Bintou Sanankoua secretary general of the network of African women ministers and parliamentarians and former deputy in Mali). Indeed, the ombudsman’s report for 2006 revealed that 103 billion West African francs (more than £103 billion) had been ‘lost’ that year through government corruption in Mali.

Coalition politics

The problem is that Mali exemplifies open democracy gone wild, but only for men of course. There was a total of 154 political parties contesting the 2007 elections, the same scenario as in 2002, when ATT formed a coalition government. For the 2007 elections, the ADP (the alliance for development and progress) comprised over thirty political parties and numerous other civil society organisations. In different constituencies different coalitions joined together to form other coalitions as seemed expedient in order to present the most attractive lists. This form of coalition politics is entirely cynical and has nothing to with political principle, according to Nina Walet Intalou, councillor in the northern-most constituency of Kidal and deputy chair of the independent state watchdog for local government.



In other words there is no viable opposition. As another friend there commented, the strongest candidate standing against ATT was Ibrahim Boubacar Keita - who had just been working with ATT as a minister for 5 years in government (sound familiar to British readers?): how can he be seen as a serious political opponent? Although I’m not generally in favour of the combative male two-party oppositional political paradigm, I have to agree with Nina Walet that it at least means representatives attempt to have some kind of position. The situation is also a disadvantage for ATT, because as leader he has to please everyone in the coalition. Realistically, he has to go along with corruption. And as for social justice, well, for example, he allegedly supported the women’s quota bill himself but was not able to push it through. Yet it seems he certainly had all the civil servants in his pocket come election time.

So, the long and the short of it is that the citizens of Mali don’t bother voting because – despite the plethora of apparent options - there isn’t really any choice. And, in the same vein, journalists are free to say what they like about ATT and the government because that’s not going to make any difference either.

Freedom of the press

However, there was a little fuss in June when a secondary school teacher was arrested for disrespect to the president, along with five journalists - which led Reporters without Borders to query Mali’s status as one of the few African countries to field a free press. Believe it or not I actually met this young man who used to drive up on a moped to visit his cousin Mboye, the housekeeper in the Bamako courtyard where I lived for 3 months. In his first year of teaching, Bassirou Minta had taken advice from an older colleague on essay themes that had been used before. He then gave his students an assignment to write on moral corruption in relation to an imaginary president and his mistress. The press got hold of this, thanks to a helpful parent. Minta was fined, jailed and barred from teaching; the journalists were also fined and had suspended sentences for publishing articles on the matter. The public were barred from the trial on the grounds it was a ‘sex case’.

On 21 June, a crowd of around 200 journalists marched in the capital in front of the office of the Justice Minister to demand the release of their colleagues (as reported by the International Federation of Journalists) Security forces violently broke up the protest and fired tear gas at the journalists, badly injuring Ibrahim Famakan Coulibaly, the president of the Malian Journalists' Association and the West African Journalists' Association.

But the story was nothing to do with politics - or was it? Firstly, the woman in the story was ‘a student and economic prostitute’. It is so much taken for granted in Mali that young women will sell their favours to older wealthy and more powerful men. It is only when the girl falls pregnant, as here, that there is an issue to debate - one of the dilemmas being should the president marry his mistress and recognise his child - which in fact he is forced to do when the girl comes into a cabinet meeting to plead her case.

Apparently ATT is well known for his extra-marital liaisons and his long line of natural-born children. A lot of people think ‘a big man’ like him should have disregarded the story in the press instead of over-reacting. As the journalist who first published the story puts it: “the link is clear between moral corruption at the grassroots and the role model at the very top which has created it.” Seydina Oumar Diarra continues: “We allow young girls from our own families and villages to be pimped - in a society where money has become the only sign of success.”

Meanwhile Mali’s new poverty reduction strategy depends on money from the US-based Millennium Challenge Corporation. The MCC currently uses 16 objective indicators of social, political, and economic performance to determine a country’s eligibility for support – including combating corruption. The aid invested is expected to deliver a return, namely, improvements in the lives of the poor. Mali’s plans are to upgrade the airport at Bamako which will advantage private and foreign companies. In addition, rural development will include parcelling out land to what another journalist (Ousmane Sow, writing in Les Echos 22 November 2006) calls ‘Sunday farmers from Bamako.’ Instead of the people benefiting from the great green river Niger, their water and electricity supplies are controlled by outside entreprise - and GM crops are being introduced by the US under a new agricultural project.

So, that’s democracy in Mali. Who’s the prostitute in the story? And where’s the moral outrage? A government committee is complaining that not enough people went online to cast their vote for Timbouctou to become classed as one of the seven wonders of the world. Never mind, two young Maliennes have been voted in to the final round of the regonal Miss Sahel competition. Let’s get things in proportion.



Afterthought: The women’s platform

The women’s cross-party coalition in Mali held a round-table in January 2007 to develop a women’s platform for future increase in political participation . I hope they get the support they need to move this forward for the 2009 local elections. At that level, another women’s platform already exists : the labour-saving multi-purpose machine run on battery power which performs a range of tasks normally allotted to women, lightening their physical load and freeing up time – to become involved in politics. If every community in Mali had one of these, we might begin to see real progress in democracy and development.



Read more

See an earlier post on the same theme: The Boys Club Rules OK

Pamela Mhlanga discusses the 50.50 gender protocol in southern Africa

My original essay on Mali: everyone's favourite destination, 2006

The language of Goethe

“Folklore is the expression of the soul of the German people. Goethe led the way in writing poetry in folkloric style, a style which was emulated by poets who followed him, a style which still endears his poetry to the masses today.”

It’s been thirty years since I was in the BDR as a young English teacher. When I left, I never thought I’d come back and so threw away the dictionary. Now I‘ve had to go back into the museum of my mind, find the lost room, unlock the door, throw open the windows, take off the dust covers – and there, somehow, my German treasure house is still intact, apart from a little oil needed to grease the wheels. In fact, it’s been so long that I can’t actually remember ever speaking German! It’s a little bit scary.

Of course, things have moved on since then. There’s the new technology to catch up with. So I’ve had to learn the German for mobile phone: das Handy and the mobile phone emporium is das Handy Shop. Then in so many bars you get live music: Live Musik or sometimes there’s just a DJ: Live DJ (happily).

Every so often I get stuck for the right expression. I never like to stop in full flow so just throw in a word from another language (usually French). I find you can use die Nostalgie; die Philosophie; die Melodie usw. This seems to do the job and people tell me how good my German vocabulary is!

The easiest conversations are professional because here again German has adopted a lot of the English international development language. Some attempt has been made to integrate a German ending. For example you have ‘evaluation’ become
die Evalueirung. Der Monitoring sort of sounds a bit German, but then - oh why bother making it even look German: let’s just use der Gender Mainstreaming!

As always in a foreign country it is the everyday that is problematic, rather than debates on philosophy and politics. Because it is in the everyday where you expect things to be most familiar and yet you constantly feel as if you’re in a parallel universe – things are just that little bit different.

At the local orthopedic practice, which clearly caters for, and employs, a lot of people from eastern Europe, the doctor barks at me: “What, don’t you speak Russian?”

At the Postamt, I shamefully have to ask where the post-box is (no, they’re yellow and on the other side of the pavement!) but also am forcibly impressed by the notice that says:

Achtung!
Sie werden heute ueber unser Girokonto angesprochen!

(Attention! Today you will be spoken to about our Girobank!)

At the hairdressers – well, I’ve learned that hair stylists all over the world have their own understanding of what I want to look like, whatever language we’re speaking – I just sit back, smile and pay the tip.

So it’s always comforting to get back on the internet; that’s my medium and in Berlin every other café has wifi for free. You can sit in the sun, drink white wine and surf: what better working environment? I can do everything online! I was told for train journeys you go to www.bahn.de (our equivalent would be www.train.uk). I follow the German order here thinking: why not try the same for flights www.flugzeug.de (www.aeroplane.uk )? Yes!

However when I come to put new entries on my blog, I see that the instructions on blogspot are in German! (All the adverts come up in German too: how do they know, I ask myself?) Later I check my blog stats to see who is reading and find a lot of hits in northern Germany. Oh no, I think, the police are tracking me as a suspected terrorist planning violent action against the G8 summit! But then I realise it was probably just me uploading my entries in the local bar. Which also feels bizarre…


Bridging the gap

We don’t have wifi (I should say wireless lan) in the flat. I tell my landlord he has to move into the 21st century but he’s proudly fixed in the 19th, has no knowledge of the internet and doesn’t speak any other language than German. Still we manage to get on well, because we’re both very direct, have a good sense of humour and after all, we have to negotiate the important intricacies of shared living – whose turn is to buy the toilet paper and, oops, who left the lights on all night?

I just love playing with language. Like little children, that’s how you learn how to do it. My landlord comes in with his friend from their traditional Saturday afternoon pub-crawl (Kneipenbummel)

Wie geht’s? Besoffen? How’s it going? I say (Are you) drunk?
Verneunftig! he says. (We’ve been) sensible
Verneunftigerweise besoffen? I ask. Sensibly drunk? (Lots of laughter)
Ich auch! I say, me too…

Because there’s no easier way to get your tongue round those polysyllabic German words – and some are longer than that. Try the word for gender equality: Geschlectergerechigkeit (nice!) and another favourite at the moment is Entwicklungsnichtregierungsorgansiationen = development non-governmental organisations. The thing always to remember is that when we actually say those things in English, we don’t mind the gap either.

Noam Chomsky - before he became known as a political analyst and activist - first won worldwide fame as a socio-linguist, with the groundbreaking concept of the difference between the surface and deep structure of language. You have to track back from the words that are used (the surface structure – or code) to the speaker or writer’s actual intention (the deep structure - the real meaning).

The intelligent reader here will begin to see how this might relate to analysis of political rhetoric. Unfortunately in our so-called sophisticated society, so much use of language has become a self-serving commerce along with everything else.

I would say that genuine communication is more to do with paralinguistics : that is, the ability to pick up clues in a new context from your own knowledge of the world and to read one another – because you want, simply, to have real human contact and share fundamental life experiences for non-profit-making purposes.

Svenja Cussler, a German film maker who collaborated on a documentary of female genital mutilation in Mali, put into words for me what impressed her most there: “In Africa, people really see who you are. When they reach out to greet you, it’s not to check if your suit’s from Armani, they’re feeling the quality of your soul.”

(So, all in all, I seem to get by pretty well in the language of Goethe.)