New African articles from October 2007

New African archives from October 2007

African unity.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... Like Akyaaba Addai-Sebo (NA, June), it's also my fervent wish to see the unity of Africa. Yet, my wish gets tempered by the reality on the ground. The reality always reminds me that most of our present rulers are megalomaniacs who don't allow...

Africa and the pan-European world.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... Your May issue raises a number of issues, importantly, African unity and Africa's relationship with the pan-European world. The Zimbabwe report offered a well-balanced representation of the situation in that country as opposed to the one-sided...

How to deal with racists.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... Regarding Stella Orakwue's column, "Love and hate, which?" (NA June), as a black man who grew up in the southern United States, picked cotton, drank from a coloured water fountain and witnessed countless acts of racism, I can certainly identify...

Well done, Stella.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... I want to thank the whole staff of New African for the superb job you are doing. I am a "new reader" and have been reading NA for approximately 16 months. Stella Orakwue's column, Not in Black or White (NA June, "Love and Hate, which?") is one...

Slavery apology is in order.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... I totally disagree with S. Francis Damprani (Letters, March) that there is no "need for Tony Blair to apologise for Britain's part in the slave trade because the habits of centuries past cannot be compared with the standards of the 21st...

DNA and African ancestral roots.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... Increasing numbers of African-Americans are seeking to learn through DNA testing about their African ancestral culture and history. Your column, Tales from the Archives, would seem to fit quite logically into this scheme. Recently, I...

A beef with Cameron Duodu.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... Cameron Duodu's cry from the heart for "African Unity" (NA, July) showed some remarkable lapses of vision at the micro rather than the macro level--and surely he (and we) need to focus as much on the small things in at least the same light of...

Nuggets ahoy.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... I am an avid reader of your esteemed magazine. It is indeed my nourishment socially, economically, politically and professionally. I wish to express my profound gratitude to the editorial board for the creation of the wonderful column, Nuggets...

Shame on you, Mr Sarkozy.(Baffour's Beefs)(Nicolas Sarkozy)
October 1, 2007... "The tragedy of Africa is that the African man has never really entered history. The African peasant has known only the eternal renewal of time via the endless repetition of the same actions and the same words. In this mentality, where...

Retrieving the past is no taboo.(BLACK HISTORY MONTH)
October 1, 2007... This month is the 20th anniversary of Black History Month UK. It is a celebration that brings a lot of attention and focus on black communities in the UK. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Incidentally, the 20th anniversary comes at a time when...

Lies! Lies! Lies!(BLACK HISTORY MONTH)(Cover story)
October 1, 2007... For 34 weeks since 25 March this year, Britain and its former colonies have been celebrating "Wilberforce 2007", a major commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the day the Abolition of Slavery Bill was passed by the British Parliament in...

A giant step for mankind.(BLACK HISTORY MONTH)
October 1, 2007... Mixed race marriages have become so common these days that nobody bats an eyelid when a mixed-race couple passes them on the street. But it wasn't always like that. Fifty-nine years ago, the marriage of the Botswana prince, Seretse Khama, to...

Slavery gets first permanent museum: Mercy Eze reports from Liverpool, United Kingdom.
October 1, 2007... Tucked in the stillness of Liverpool's Albert Dock within the Merseyside Maritime Museum now sits the world's first permanent museum devoted to the transatlantic slave trade. The International Slavery Museum shows the horrific instruments used...

The diaspora and the future of Africa.(BLACK HISTORY MONTH)
October 1, 2007... Africans at home and in the diaspora, of every social background, gender, education and belief, must rise to the call of cultural renewal and socioeconomic regeneration. We cannot escape the political and socio-economic environment in which we...

Africans must take their history seriously: the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, has called on Africans to never forget their history, reports Kingsley Antwi Bosiako from Kumasi, Ghana.(BLACK HISTORY MONTH)
October 1, 2007... Africans forget their history at their peril, says the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the king of the Asante people of Ghana. In an indirect rebuke to the new French president, Nicholas Sarkozy, who told a huge crowd of Africans in the...

Leaders and stress: managing the monster.(Nuggets in a Nutshell)
October 1, 2007... Stress is part and parcel of active life. You can't but welcome stress if you're alive and active. In fact, experts say stress is useful as a work-life morale booster. But there is another kind of stress that results in distress, fatigue,...

'He rose above the greatest without arrogance': after seven years of wrangling between the mayor of London and Westminster Council, a 9ft statue of Nelson Mandela has finally been unveiled in London's Parliament Square, not Trafalgar Square (the original site). Osei Boateng reports.(Feature)(Ken Livingstone)
October 1, 2007... If encomiums can kill a person, Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa, would be in the grave by now. On 29 August, and after seven years of wrangling, the 9ft bronze statue of Nelson Mandela was finally unveiled right in the...

South Africa: 'tell the truth, tell everything'; As apartheid South Africa's minister of law and order, Adrian Vlok radiated terror. On 17 August this year, he pleaded his way out of prison. Pusch Commey reports on how l'enfant terrible got away with it.(Feature)
October 1, 2007... In his heyday, Adrian Vlok, apartheid South Africa's minister of law and order (1986-1991), struck dread into the hearts of liberation movements. His deathsquads ran rampant, killing and dissolving bodies in acid. And every Sunday, he dutifully...

Ghana: how the power shortage is being fought; Following our story in the June issue, "Ghana: electricity crisis worsens", the country's minister for energy, Kofi Adda, has unveiled a programme aimed at solving the electricity problems in the country.(Feature)
October 1, 2007... The power crisis in Ghana has resulted in the shedding of load throughout the country since 2006. The current deficit in generation capacity is about 300MW. The power supply shortage was precipitated by the following: [ILLUSTRATION...

Carving up the Congo: in a sinister replication of the disgraceful treatment of DRCongo by Belgium during its colonial occupation, the plunder of the country's natural resources continues unabated. Stuart Price reports.(Feature)
October 1, 2007... In the murky days of colonial occupation, it was ivory pillaged by Europeans from deep within the jungles of DRCongo that formed the core of the exploitation. Over 100 years later, the plunder continues, but this time in the form of timber and...

Uganda: dammed if you do, damned if you don't; The green light has finally been given to a controversial multimillion dollar hydro-electric dam project on the River Nile. But, Stuart Price asks, will it be the silver bullet to Uganda's stifling power shortages, or will it leave the country precariously exposed to the consequences of climate change?(Feature)
October 1, 2007... An advert which has been running on one of Kampala's main FM radio stations for over a year now has individuals from different businesses bemoaning the lack of electricity. "We don't have power," says one; "Power blew up the equipment," laments...

Angola's new friends: Angola is now China's leading oil supplier, outstripping Saudi Arabia. Within the next decade, China will outpace the US as the biggest global consumer of oil. China, thus, sees Angola as a partner worthy of special attention. Kate Eshelby reports.(Feature)
October 1, 2007... A string of Chinese workers, dressed in their native straw hats, are busy fixing an electricity pylon in the main street of Tombwa, a town on the edge of the desert in the south of Angola. Since the end of a 27-year civil war in 2002, Angola...

Should Mandela statue be in UK's Parliament Square?(Under the Neem Tree)(Nelson Mandela)
October 1, 2007... "Perhaps the fact of our presence here... might serve to close a circle which is 200 years old. I say 200 years because the first time this country [Britain] entered ours as a colonising power was the year 1795" --Nelson Mandela to a...

Debating Zimbabwe.(Right of Reply)
October 1, 2007... We have received a stream of reactions to our two "sponsored reports" on Zimbabwe published in May (political situation) and October (economy). In line with our policy of giving our readers room to have their say, we publish below a sample of...

2010 World Cup South Africa is on the ball: since winning the prestigious, yet challenging mandate to host the 2010 Fifa World Cup, South Africa has been weathering a storm of cynical international media scepticism and downright misrepresentation regarding its preparations for the event. But as Mercy Eze reports, the true image is rosier.(Feature)
October 1, 2007... On 21 May 2004, Africa rose gallantly to celebrate its maiden opportunity to host the finals of the football World Cup for the first time in the 80-year history of the tournament. This was not just an honour for South Africa (the country given...

Cameroon: the woes of the cotton industry; Over 3.5 million Cameroonians depend on cotton directly and indirectly for their livelihood. But the sector has been in crisis since 2004. If no help comes very soon, the country's Cotton Development Company might not survive. Tansa Musa reports.(Foucus)
October 1, 2007... Cameroon's Cotton Development Company (SODECOTON), has entered a third year of crisis arising from the sharp fall in world prices and may not survive if it does not benefit from government and external assistance like its counterparts in West...

What is inflation? Take Zimbabwe. If you have no market to buck, because you have been deprived of your markets and your credit lines by foul Western economic sanctions, then you can do what the hell you like. If you cannot operate orthodox economic theories, then you have to operate unorthodox economic theories. And while you are doing it, sue the IMF.(Not in Black or White)(International Monetary Fund)
October 1, 2007... What is inflation? People are embarrassed about not going to find out what they do not know or that they have forgotten. When this is done in someone's personal life, it can lead to harm, severe or otherwise. They may be lucky that somebody...

Kenya: sheer glass; An hour's drive from Nairobi's city-centre is Kitengela Glass. It is one of Africa's most extraordinary arts' centres and it will take your breath away, reports Stephen Williams.(Arts)
October 1, 2007... Many tourists to Kenya's capital visit Nairobi National Park, a wildlife sanctuary unique in the continent for being located close to a major urban centre. But not many of those visitors will be aware that some miles to the south of the park is...

The sex trade in colonial West Africa: in the final of her three-part series, Carina Ray looks at the last stage of the protracted struggle to bring an end to the traffic in women and children for the purposes of prostitution in colonial British West Africa.(Tales from the archives)
October 1, 2007... In the first installment of this three part series, we explored the deeply racist assumptions about the sexuality of Africans that underpinned the long-standing refusal, on the part of colonial administrators, to introduce stricter...