New African articles from June 2006

New African archives from June 2006

War crimes and the race issue.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... Let me commence by stating that since I began reading New African in 2000, I have never missed a copy. There is a lot that I can say in my first letter to you, but today I will try and restrict myself to the issue of the extradition of our...

Many thanks to a generous lady.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... A benefactor (an African-American woman) who wants to remain anonymous, has kindly donated $4,500 for New African to be sent to 182 university libraries in Africa and the US for the next six months. A keen reader of New African who, in her own...

Christ and the Ancient Egyptians.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... Flying back to the UK on Emirates via Dubai last month, I picked up the New African April issue, and would like to correct two mistaken impressions found in it. The first comes through several of your readers' letters on the subject of the...

Can Africans survive another millennium?(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... I read the cover story on the Ancient Egyptians (by Ayi Kwei Armah) with a lot of interest, not to attempt to claim a certain history but to understand if I knew myself as a black African. At first I thought who is this author to tell us...

Positive energy.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... Chika Onyeani's new book, Capitalist Nigger, is instructive. In his analysis of the state of the black race, he notes the behavioural patterns of black people, and I suggest that people should take time to read this book and reflect on the...

Kufuor's new cabinet.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... In his second year of his second term, it remains to be seen what legacy President John Agyekum Kufuor would bequeath to Ghanaians when his term ends in 2008. Hopefully, unlike some African leaders who manipulate constitutions or the electoral...

Eradicating Guinea worm disease.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... It is heartening to see Ghana's economic and political progress, and President John Kufuor's laudable intent to reclaim Ghana's position as a beacon of hope in sub-Saharan Africa by using next year's 50th anniversary of independence to showcase...

Diego Garcia: victory to the people; After decades of endless court battles, the people of the Chagos Islands have won a decisive victory in the British high court that should see them returning to settle in the land of their birth, whose greatest prize, the island of Diego Garcia, is now home to a huge American military base. Dr Sean Carey reports.(Stop press)
June 1, 2006... "This is a huge victory for us--now we have the right to go and live in our birthplace. It has made me feel very proud," said a justifiably ebullient Olivier Bancoult, leader of the Chagos Refugee Group, when he spoke to New African two days...

Rwanda: Kagame vs protestors in Canada; Robin Philpot reports on the visit to Canada by the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, which was dogged by protests.(Stop press)
June 1, 2006... In an attempt to shore up international support, the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, made his first trip to Canada since his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) took power in July 1994. What was planned as a routine trip, during which he would pick...

South Africa land issue: 'we cannot wait any longer; It's crunch time down south. In a significant policy shift, the South African government has thrown the book at the willing seller, willing buyer principle that has derailed land reform for over a decade. Now the jitters are on, reports Kgomotso Nyanto from Johannesburg.
June 1, 2006... In his state of the nation address in February this year, President Thabo Mbeki came out strongly against the discredited willing seller, willing buyer principle and shifted gear towards expropriation of land, 84% of which is still held by the...

Jacob Zuma: one down, another to come; It was as if Jacob Zuma had won a presidential election when Judge Van Der Merwe pronounced him not guilty of raping a 31-year-old woman, a family friend. Kgomotso Nyanto reports from Johannesburg.
June 1, 2006... The verdict finally came on 8 May. When it sank in, the former deputy president rose to thank his legal team and numerous supporters who thronged the Johannesburg high court for days. But not before some poetic admonishment from the judge: "If...

Is the Kenya media its own worst enemy? "Kenya is the only country where the media censors the government instead of the government censoring the media", says Koigi wa Wamwere, Kenya's assistant information minister and a veteran journalist himself. Wamwere insists that "the Kenyan media is its own worst enemy", but others beg to differ. Wanjohi Kabukuru reports from Nairobi.(FOCUS: KENYA SPECIAL)
June 1, 2006... On the last Saturday of February, The Saturday Standard ran a banner headline, "Kalonzo, Kibaki in secret meeting". According to the story, President Mwai Kibaki had held secret talks with his former environment minister, Kalonzo Musyoka, with...

ECOBANK marches on: the West African regional bank, ECOBANK, is on the threshold of bigger things as it holds its 18th ordinary annual general meeting in June.(Company overview)
June 1, 2006... ECOBANK will have additional reasons to celebrate its achievements at the 18th ordinary annual general meeting (AGM) which opens in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, on 23 June. After two decades of AGMs, the bank stands today as the leading...

Malawi/Zimbabwe; Who do you think I am? Malawi has honoured President Robert Mugabe by naming a road after him. But controversy erupted even before the Zimbabwean president had gone to open the road in May. When he did, Mugabe turned the joke on his critics: "who do you think I am?" he asked, but the critics were nowhere in sight to give him an answer. Lameck Masina reports from Lilongwe.
June 1, 2006... There was a 49km road linking Malawi's commercial capital, Blantyre, with the tea-growing district of Mulanje in the south. The road was so bad that it was completely rebuilt recently by President Bingu wa Mutharika's government which deemed it...

Nigeria.(Nigerian Senate' election and constitutional amendment bill)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... President Olusegun Obasanjo's bid to run for a third term in office came crashing down on 16 May when the Nigerian Senate rejected a constitutional amendment bill that would have allowed him to contest next year's elections. [ILLUSTRATION...

Cote d'Ivoire: no tears for France; Ruth Tete reports from Abidjan on the rise of a new generation of national leaders who do not see France through the same rose-tinted glasses as the former leaders of Francophone Africa.(Around Africa)
June 1, 2006... Since the 1960s, France has helped maintain dictators in power in Francophone Africa against the will of the people. These leaders were expected in return to ensure that French economic and political interests were looked after not only in...

Somalia.(United States funding fuels civil war)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... The US is funding a coalition of Somali warlords who earlier this year battled Islamic groups in Mogadishu, says the Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf (photo above). According to him, the funding is fuelling the civil war in the country. At...

Cameroon: homosexuality on the rise? Two recent court cases have highlighted what had hitherto been hidden in the closet--that homosexuality is gaining ground in Cameroon. Tansa Musa reports from Yaounde.(Around Africa)
June 1, 2006... Biloa Ayissi, publisher of the weekly newspaper, Nouvelle Afrique, was sentenced to six months imprisonment at the end of March for defaming the parliamentary affairs minister Gregoire Owona, and a medical doctor Jean-Pierre Mayo. The two sued...

Sierra Leone 'dear president Obasanjo ... we have all been duped'.(Feature)(Issa Hassan Sesay of Revolutionary United Front 's letter)
June 1, 2006... Issa Hassan Sesay, the former "interim leader" of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and now an alleged war criminal standing trial at the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone, wrote from his prison cell on 15 September 2004 (a copy of which New...

Ghana: Dan Botwe speaks; As general secretary of the ruling NPP party, Dan Botwe helped President John Kufuor win two elections. But he was sacked as information minister in a cabinet reshuffle in early May. The country was stunned. What could have happened? Our correspondent Efam Dovi went to find out.(Feature)
June 1, 2006... As we sat down in his home near Tema trying to get him to put into perspective why President John Kufuor removed him from government, Dan Botwe, 48, received one telephone call after another. It had been almost two weeks since the president...

Idi Amin and his British friends: recently declassified Foreign & Commonwealth Office files in London offer a telling insight into the sheepish, yet cunning way Britain responded to Idi Amin's 1971 coup.(Tales from the Archives)
June 1, 2006... Idi Amin and his British friends: recently declassified Foreign & Commonwealth Office files in London offer a telling insight into the sheepish, yet cunning way Britain responded to Idi Amin's 1971 coup. In this month's "Tales from the...

Rwanda: setting the record straight; Amadou Deme (left), a Senegalese army officer who served in the intelligence team of the UN mission for Rwanda from August 1993 to July 1994, feels he cannot keep quiet when a good man who saved lives in Rwanda during the genocide, is portrayed as a villain in both a new book and the film, Hotel Rwanda.(Georges Rutaganda in "An Ordinary Man" and "Hotel Rwanda")(Column)
June 1, 2006... A small convoy of refugees is confronted by a murderous mob at a roadblock in the widely praised film, Hotel Rwanda. The UN troops protecting the convoy, led by a bold white commander, brandish their weapons. After some scuffling, threats and a...

'Apartheid was regrettable, but Africans were not ready for democracy'.(Excerpt)
June 1, 2006... In this, third instalment of the serialisation of Ayi Kwei Armah's memoir, The Eloquence of the Scribes, he tells of his university days in America and how, because of differences of opinion, he had to discontinue receiving largesse from a...

Why should democratic Americans find the democrat Lumumba so threatening?(Patrice Lumumba)(Excerpt)
June 1, 2006... Ayi Kwei Armah provides the answer: "Obviously, some value more basic to America than democracy was at stake. If democracy meant other peoples in the world getting control of their own resources and improving their lives instead of remaining...

The resurrection; Ships of Mercy: the remarkable fleet bringing hope to the world's forgotten poor, by Dons Stephens with Lynda Rutledge Stephenson (published by Hodder and Stroughton).(Book review)
June 1, 2006... "Riveting true story", "An incredible journey that will astonish and inspire"--how many times have we read phrases like that on the back of a paperback? And how many times have we been let down? Well, in the case of Ships of Mercy, these...

Africa is in Style.(Special Books)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2006... Africa is in Style By Berenice Geoffroy-Schneiter. Published by Assouline. ISBN 2-84323-800-5F68360 This book was put together to accompany a competition organised last year for young African stylists by the French Association...

Can Bristol city conceal its slave past?(Under the Neem Tree)
June 1, 2006... Thousands of Jewish people used as forced labourers by German firms during the Second World War have received huge compensations from a $4.5bn German compensation fund. But there is an uproar in the English city of Bristol for being asked to...

No one is laughing at the Asians anymore; Femi Akomolafe on the lessons Africa can learn from China: stop listening to the West and your economic dreams will come true.(Column)
June 1, 2006... It's now official: China has overtaken the UK to become the 4th largest economy in the world (behind the US, Japan and Germany). Given the fact that just 20 years ago China was a country that was lampooned as a "sleeping giant", this is nothing...

Burkina Faso: a lesson in African philosophy; Kate Eshelby, an experienced Western traveller in Africa, was bowled over by the lessons in African philosophy that the so-called poor pastoralists in northern Burkina Faso taught her.(Column)
June 1, 2006... Tears rolled down my cheeks as I hugged Daouda goodbye at the airport. "Why are you crying?' he asked. "I am not dead. We will meet again," he said, a statement which tells so much of the African philosophy. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

Ghana: Yaa Asantewaa festival in August; From 1-6 August, the people of Asante in Ghana will be joined by the rest of the world at a festival in Kumasi to commemorate the heroic deeds of Yaa Asantewaa, the warrior queen who, in 1900, took on the might of the British Empire and nearly defeated it. George Ferguson Laing reports.(Arts & Culture)
June 1, 2006... In 1900, at the advanced age of 60-plus and defying the mores of a woman's role in her society, Yaa Asantewaa, the queenmother of Edweso (or Ejisu, English spelling) stepped out of the shadows to lead an army of 20,000 men to resist British...

How I became a Portuguese Africanist: not many people know that I am the oldest columnist of New African. Now you know. I often feel the loneliness of the true pan-Africanist fighters who are struck by the irrationality of the neglect of those African countries, such as the Congo, whose potential remains largely untapped.
June 1, 2006... Last month, as I was undergoing a further treatment for cancer in one of the biggest hospitals in London, I mysteriously passed out. Apparently I recovered consciousness without needing "reversion" assistance from my surprised and excellent...

The World at their feet: when the Fifa World Cup opens in Germany on 9 June, five African representatives--Cote d'Ivoire, Tunisia, Ghana, Togo and Angola--will be among 32 finalists vying for honours. As the gulf in world football has virtually disappeared, the Africans could spring a surprise or two. Peter Law takes us through the permutations.(International Federation of Association Football)
June 1, 2006... In recent years, the same old African faces usually managed to qualify for the World Cup finals--Cameroon, Nigeria, South Africa and Tunisia. This time around, only Tunisia of the old guard managed to qualify, with Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Togo...

Africa at the World Cup; The history of the World Cup has some memorable holes at the beginning--there was no place for Africa, and then there was, and it got better, so much better that after the 1978 finals in Argentina, a proud Moroccan coach could thump his chest and declare: "the world has laughed at Africa but now the mockery is over." Peter Law takes us through memory lane.(World Cup)
June 1, 2006... As with many things on the continent, it all began with Egypt. The Pharoahs were Africa's standalone international flagbearer after first assembling their national side in 1916 while war raged in Europe. After their initial Olympic experiences...

World Cup 2006 fixtures.(World Cup)(Table)(Calendar)
June 1, 2006... WORLD CUP 2006 FIXTURES Group Matches (All times local German time, one hour ahead of GMT) Date Match Teams Time Venue Fri 9 June 1 Germany v Costa Rica 18.00 hrs Munich ...