Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

A view of the world from an Irish hole

Category: Niger

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Hanging on to power at all costs in Africa

The problems of legitimacy still continue to plague Africa’s rulers. There are those who are able to claim the mandate of election but who go on to squander the goodwill invested in them by their electorates by pursuing gradually more oppressive policies, accompanied by corruption that enriches their cronies at the expense of the  population. Some of those who are elected are already elderly, yet in spite their growing senility they wish to hold onto power indefinitely, as if by doing so they can defy morality. Africa has always fallen victim to the men with guns. The army of the various states have seldom needed an excuse until recently to seize power, sometimes presenting themselves as national savours charged with undoing the errors of civilian politicians. In time the trappings and perks of power go to their head, and their rule becomes no more than a bloody and cruel kleptocracy. Although no fan of military government it must be said that some of Africa’s best rulers have stemmed from the armies’ ranks.

 I have written recently about the worrying spectre of armed groups in Guinea seeking to overturn the will of the people by attacking the home of the man whom they had elected president, Alpha Conde. A

Niger's president Issoufou

 similarly sinister development has been uncovered in the land-locked and impoverished state of Niger, where a group of middle-ranking officers have been arrested on foot of an attempt to assassinate the recently elected president, Mahamat Issoufou who has used his power to pursue and stamp out corruption within the military – an activity which has won him few friends among the officer corp. It is not unusual amongst the armies of many African states to grow rich by pocketing money intended as salaries for more junior officers and soldiers.

 Keeping it in the family.

Wade

When Abdouilaye Wade was elected president of Senegal in 2000 many saw it as a sign of how the country’s democracy had matured. Wade was a long-time opponent of the (admittedly well-educated) clique who had ruled the country since independence. He was no street-savvy firebrand, but a French-educated lawyer with two PhDs who was fluent in French, English and numerous African languages. He came to the international stage in 2002 for all the right reasons, not because his country had been hit by devastating natural disasters but because his country had not only qualified for that year’s world cup, but had beaten many stronger European teams. A beaming President Wade appeared on television screens around the world holding aloft a football.

 Wade is unfortunately old. He claims to be 85 but even he is unsure. As his time in power has started to drag rumours of corruption have increased. The inevitable popular discontent has been met by repression. Wade had wanted to hand over power to his son Karim, and many believed that he was prepared to use both fair and foul means to bring this about. Riots erupted and the president was compelled to deny any such intention. Plan B was then put into action; Wade would run for a third term in the 2012 president elections, something that was unconstitutional. Once again popular outrage was met by the imposition of a ban on political protests in the capital Dakar and a wave of arrests that have included the popular singer Thiat. While the clampdown is benign by the standards of some rulers, it does seem to augur badly for the country that was starting to generate goodwill for pursuing policies that placed it outside the general tenor of a headlong rush to disaster and national misery.

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December 9, 2008

La Voix du Sahel

Last Saturday night, while trawling through the airwaves I came upon a station in the 31 metre band at 9705 khz to be precise. It was playing African music, however I assumed it must be a big international broadcaster, as they predominate in that frequency range. However, the music sounded too authentic and the broadcast was not exactly strong. I looked up the frequency in a list and to my surprise I discovered that it was La Voix du Sahel from Niamey in Niger. The broadcast was in an African vernacular, possibly Zarma, and was certainly stronger than the frequency I’ve usually caught La Voix du Sahel on in the Tropic Band.

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October 30, 2008

Crisis, What crisis?

Niger is one of the world’s poorest countries. Its people inhabit a vast swathe of territory in Africa, much of it desert or under risk of desertification. Those crops which grow are subject to devastation by locusts.

I’ve never been there and I doubt I’ll get there now, but I have heard their national radio station La Voix du Sahel  broadcasting from the capital Niamey. Each night it ends its programmes with its jaunty national anthem performed by a group of school-children, most of whom are out of tune. I believe the recording was made at the time Niger gained its independence from France in 1960. I wonder how many of the school-children are still alive or even in Niger? Many, probably the lucky ones, migrated to France where they eventually settled. no doubt having to suffer discrimination and hostility at first. Others may have died of hunger in one of the incidents of mass malnutrtition which have visited Niger. A small handful may have joined the small elite of senior army officers, bureaucrats and politicians who never have to worry about hunger, who live in comfortable villas with all the latest mod-cons and who send their off-springs to be educated in either the best French lycees or exclusive American B-schools.

The Nigerien government seems to be very sesnsitive about figures. Not surprising, I suppose, given that fhese figures usually place Niger on the bottom rung in the world and that they usually hint that life has disimproved dramatically since independence. These figures are embarrassing, but the government”s response is embarrassing at another level.

The succesful case brought by Hadijatou Mani has highlighted the persistence of slavery in Niger. Human rights organisations like Anti-Slavery International claim there are as many as 40,000 slaves still in Niger; the Nigerien government dismisses the claims as grossly exaggerated. The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, which has worked for many years in Niger, says there are tens of thousands of malnourished children in Niger. The government doesn’t agree and in July it suspended MSF’s activities in the country. Since then the charity has asked to be allowed to resume work but has received no response from the authorities. This has prompted the charity to pull out of the country altogether.

Have some of these bureaucrats trained in Ireland?

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The persistence of slavery

Slavery is as old as human history, and if like so many blinkered historians we consider human history as only being as old as written records, well then it’s much older. It stems from a really nasty need to own and possess another human being, to control not only their waking moments but when they are asleep too.

Many people’s visions of slavery centre around stereotypes of the Deep South of the USA, maybe coloured by Gone With the Wind or Roots. It is far too easy to see slavery in simple racial terms: the abduction of black children to work for white people. But this is simplistic: slavery has existed within Africa for centuries, maybe millennia. What’s more the Roots stereotype whereby the young Kunta Kinteh was kidnapped by greedy white monsters and torn from his black brothers to enter a world of degradation and exploitation was not that common. It was far more common for the young black boys (and girls) to be captured in internecine conflicts and then sold to white slavers by local African rulers in return for money, weapons or often mere trinkets.

Most people assume that slavery was ended in the US by the Civil War. They also know that it was replaced by a culture of repression and discrimination of black people every bit as horrible as slavery. Some people will also have heard of Hull’s most famous son, William Wilberforce who persuaded the English government to turn its back on slavery in the early nineteenth century. Few people will be aware that slavery still exists; one of the regions where it seems endemic is in a belt of territory in Africa embracing the nations of Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

These countries have outlawed slavery. Mauritania did so in the late ’70s, yet it is estimated that up to 18 per cent of its’ population live as slaves. Recently, a former slave has won compensation from her country’s government for its failure to resccue her from enslavement despite claimng to have outlawed the practice in its territory.

Hadijatou Mani was born in the impoverished nation of Niger twenty-four years’ ago. When she was twelve her family was compelled to sell her to a farmer for the equivalent of $500. She was raped and forced to bear her owner’s children. She was also beaten incessantly. All the while she had to work as an unpaid domestic and farm-worker performing tasks including carrying water and looking after animals. On numerous occasions she attempted to escape and flee back to her family, and each time they, no doubt reluctantly, brought her back to her “owner”. Two years’ ago he granted her a “certificate of liberation”, yet he insisted on viewing her as one of his wives and when she married another man she was charged with bigamy and jailed.

In 2003 the government of Niger formally outlawed slavery in its territory, though most observers (both inside and outisde the country) viewed this as mere window-dressing.  Hadijatou learned of the decree and also learned, even more importantly, that the status of being a slave she had been compelled to accept was unnatural and illegal. This year she brought a case against her government for failing to protect her from being treated as a slave and its failure to enforce its own ban on the practice, and this week a regional court found in her favour, granting her compensation. Significantly the government of Niger has accepted the judgement and has promised not to appeal it. Hadijatou has vowed to spend the money on building a house, buying land and sending her children to school  sp that they can gain the education she was denied during her youth.

The judgement was handed down by the court of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas). When this was set up there were many who felt it was no more than a joke, yet it has shown that it has the capacity to make real-life decisions that impact positively on the livest of the many million of mainly poor people who inhabit the ECOWAS territory.

Hadijatou Mani is a very brave young woman, yet there are many more young girls like her who are still in slavery. Some don’t even realise they are slaves and that their conditions are wrong. Hopefully Hadijatou’s victory will help them too.

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