Big Trouble Brewing.. In Africa; Horn to Cape
This is Unbelievable, in a country where they are claiming to have democracy. the elections were on recently in Kenya, which means we’ll be doing an indepth preview on this countries real politics. especially since they are highly placed with our New First Family
consider this strike one -
Girls flee circumcision in Kenya
(bbc news)
In some countries, girls tend to drop out of school after being circumcised
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At least 300 girls in south-western Kenya have fled from home and sought refuge in churches in a bid to escape forced female genital mutilation (FGM).
The girls, some as young as nine, are at two rescue centres in rural Nyanza province, police told the BBC.
Female circumcision is banned in Kenya, but remains common in some areas where it is considered to be part of a girl’s initiation into womanhood.
The traditional ceremonies take place between November and December.
Security
The girls in Kuria District are now in the care of the two churches and Maendeleo Ya Wanawake, a women’s organisation.
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 There are some parents who are against that [FGM practice] but they get pressure from these traditional people  Police commander Paul Wanjama
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Police are providing security at the centres to ensure that the girls are not forcibly removed or harassed.
Beatrice Robi, Maendeleo Ya Wanawake’s district chairperson and a gender activist, says that at least 200 girls are undergoing circumcision in the district a day.
She said she had found a seven-year-old girl who had just been circumcised.
“There are more girls who are still in their homes and they are undergoing it [circumcision], whether it is voluntarily or they are being forced,” she told the BBC.
She says her organisation along with the local churches and authorities have been trying to convince the community to stop the practice and rescuing girls from forced circumcision.
Paul Wanjama, the commanding officer in Kuria District, says girls in the region usually flee to the rescue centres until the season ends.
He said that in some cases, parents encourage the girls to go to the rescue centres to avoid being circumcised.
“There are some parents who are against that [FGM practice] but they get pressure from these traditional people,” he told the BBC.
Legal action
Girls who undergo circumcision feel that they are ready for marriage and do not go back to school when the term begins in January leading to a high drop-out rate, Mrs Robi said.
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She appealed to other girls to seek refuge in the centres until the end of the traditional ceremonies and praised the local police for their support.
Mr Wanjama says some cases of forced circumcision had been reported to the police and legal action has been taken.
The FGM operation involves the partial or total removal of the external genital organs.
The UN World Health Organization (WHO) says it leads to bleeding, shock, infections and a higher rate of death for new-born babies.
In Africa, about three million girls are at risk of FGM each year, according to the UN.
Animal rights activists say they will go to court to stop bull fights being staged in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
Bull fighting is an age-old practice in western Kenya and events are held every month in various towns.
The organisers say they want to promote the traditional sport, as part of a new “Obama tourism circuit”, based on the US president’s links to the region.
But the activists say bull fighting is illegal and cruel and say their law suit will be lodged next week.
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Western Kenya is in the Obama circuit… it’s high time we sold our culture to the outside. Franklin Wendo, Target Africa
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Hillary Wendo of events company Target Africa told the BBC that they are planning to hold a cultural extravaganza to promote Western Province as a tourist destination, with the bull fighting as a climax.
“Since now western Kenya is in the Obama circuit, it’s a high time that we opened up western Kenya and it’s high time we sold our culture to the outside,” Mr Wendo told the BBC.
In November, the government announced plans to introduce a new tourism circuit – the Obama circuit – for western Kenya to make the most of Barack Obama’s victory in the US presidential elections.
President-elect Obama’s father was from Kogelo in western Kenya.
In recent years, bull fighting has been advertised as a unique spectacle to attract both local and international tourists.
The bulls are bred and raised specifically to fight and are highly prized and pampered by their owners and the local community.
A cheering crowd encourages two bulls to engage in a fierce battle until one of them flees in defeat.
Drug use
Franklin Mkwanja, the communications officer for the African Network for Animal Welfare, says that bull fighting is a crime. It is illegal for anyone to promote or assist fighting between animals and to charge people money to watch animals fighting, Mr Mkwanja said.
He says the bulls are treated inhumanely during the events.
“The animals are given traditional brews, otherwise known as busaa, to charge them and some people have owned up that they expose them to drugs like bhang [cannabis],” he told the BBC.
But Mr Wendo denied these claims and said the bulls are treated very well, and are exempted from farm work.
Eight bulls are set to be transported to Nairobi for the event but Mr Mkwanja says the organisers have not taken precautions to transport the animals in proper conditions.
Mr Wendo says the bulls will be transported in individual carriages as stipulated by the law.
The event is scheduled for 13 December at the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani, on the outskirts of Nairobi.
Zimbabwe cholera deaths near 500
Tutu: ‘He’s destroyed a wonderful country’
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe must resign or be sent to The Hague for the “gross violations” he has committed, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said.
The Nobel Prize winner also told Dutch television that Mr Mugabe should be removed by force if he refuses to go.
On Thursday, Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga said African governments should oust Zimbabwe’s leader.
Archbishop Tutu said Mr Mugabe had ruined “a wonderful country”, turning a “bread-basket” into a “basket case”.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said it is “well past time” for Mr Mugabe to go, saying a “sham election” has been followed by a “sham process of power-sharing talks”.
Zimbabwe has declared a national emergency over the cholera outbreak, which has killed at least 565 people – the most deadly in the country’s history.
Zimbabwe’s cholera crisis worsens
Health workers say the collapse of the health systems and the water supply in the capital, Harare, are major reasons why the epidemic has killed so many people.
Mr Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai agreed to share power in September to tackle the country’s economic meltdown but they have been unable to agree on the allocation of cabinet posts.
The deadlocked agreement followed disputed elections, which both men claimed to have won.
Archbishop Tutu told the Dutch TV programme Nova: “I think now that the world must say: ‘You have been responsible, with your cohorts… for gross violations, and you are going to face indictment in The Hague unless you step down.’”
Mr Tsvangirai says his supporters were the victims of a state-sponsored campaign of violence which left at least 200 dead and forced many thousands from their homes.
Referring to the cholera deaths, Ms Rice said:
“If this is not evidence to the international community to stand up for what is right, I don’t know what would be. And frankly the nations of the region have to do it.”
Neighbours on alert
African leaders have generally refrained from criticising Mr Mugabe in public.
Although this is now starting to change, the BBC’s Jonah Fisher in Johannesburg says there is no real sign that Mr Mugabe is about to be forced from power.
Mr Mugabe has meanwhile blamed Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change for the power-sharing impasse.
“The MDC should say no if they do not want to be part of the inclusive government,” he was quoted as saying by the state-owned Herald newspaper.
Both the South African and Mozambican authorities are on alert in case the cholera epidemic spreads outside Zimbabwe.
South Africa says it will send a team of senior officials to Zimbabwe next week to see what assistance can be given.
As well as the cholera outbreak, up to half of the population – five million people – will need food aid in the coming months, donors say.
Zimbabwe has the world’s highest annual rate of inflation – 231,000,000% – and just one in ten adults are believed to have regular jobs.
Esther (not her real name), 28, a professional living and working in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, describes how the daily struggle to survive is reaching a point of desperation.
We have been very patient, waiting all this time for a peaceful solution. It is getting to be too much now.
It is beyond what anyone can face; what an individual can take.
The cutting off of the city’s water when there’s a cholera outbreak, the cash withdrawal limit and now the security forces becoming undisciplined.
We deserve a better life. We are not a country at war but look at the kind of life we are living. What on earth is going on?
Order of the day
People are dying in great numbers and there is no treatment because like I told you last time, Harare’s two main hospitals are closed.
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 We had always thought that the soldiers here in Zimbabwe were puppets of the state  |
It is so difficult because even the smaller local clinics are closed.
In some parts of town there is raw sewage running down streets.
But you should know that some people in the poor, poor parts of the high density areas have had to live with this every day for five years now. It is just that now pictures are circulating because of the cholera crisis.
Where I stay, we had water problems even before this complete city shut-down. It was becoming the order of the day – sometimes water would run from the tap but normally, not a drop.
Now all we can do is go over to a neighbour who has a borehole.
Unacceptable
I don’t think there’s a living soul in Harare who trusts the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) to provide water that is fit for human consumption.
Most of Zimbabwe’s capital has been without water since Sunday
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Absolutely everyone is boiling all their water. And because there’s no power we have to make a fire to do so.
I am astounded at the people who work for Zinwa – these are people who actually get paid every month to do their job and yet they have been unable to sort out our city’s water supply.
It is unacceptable.
I don’t know any other country in the world where people can just come out and say they were unaware that they were running out of water purification chemicals.
It is a total lack of responsibility; like no-one even cares. I am so emotional about it. Really, it boggles the mind.
On my way home from work yesterday, everyone in the commuter omnibus I was in was shocked at the sight in town.
Many, many people walking round the city centre – carrying buckets and jerry cans, empty juice and milk bottles – trying to find water to take back to their homes; everyone going around looking for a business that has a borehole and asking if they can get water.
Puppets of the state?
When it gets it to this stage, it is unbelievable but everyone in the city is helping one another out. Everyone except Zinwa that is.
You would think that by this stage it would be normal for riots to break out. But normal is not normal in Zimbabwe; and the sight of soldiers rioting, ransacking and looting would be considered implausible…
But finally, no, it actually really, really happened.
People are so shocked that some soldiers did. I missed the greater part of the action because I work a bit out of town but by the time I got into the centre there were broken windows and looted shop fronts, although I’m not certain if the shops were looted or if shop owners emptied their shelves for safety.
The talk of the town is amazement – we had always thought that the soldiers here in Zimbabwe were puppets of the state and so this was in effect a demonstration against the state.
Some people believe it is a good thing and they weren’t just ordinary citizens.
Long, expensive holiday
I heard that the first riot police who arrived on the scene yesterday afternoon were not stopping the soldiers or even the people the soldiers had encouraged to join in. People told me it was like they were smiling at the soldiers.
Almost 500 people so far are known to have died from cholera
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It is these cash withdrawal limits that have done this. The daily limit is 500,000 Zimbabwean dollars and it affects us all whether we are a soldier or a struggling citizen. That amount cannot even buy you a loaf of bread, not even a packet of chips. It is nothing.
Your money is sitting in your bank account but you cannot reach it and what then what really rubs salt into your wound is the fact that the black market dealers carry at least 100m Zimbabwean dollars just on their person on the street, which is the daily withdrawal limit for 200 people.
But you can’t get cash from them unless you have foreign currency to sell.
By the time I get into town at 0700 hours [local time/0500 GMT] the queues of people lining up outside the banks are already winding; and they queue all day – in the rain and in the hot sun – and at 1700 hours which is two hours after the banks’ official closing time, the queues are still winding.
It is like they [the government] keep poking you and poking you and poking you and poking you and poking you, daring us to do something to them. It’s starting to feel like that.
We have become a very angry people.
A certain teacher told me the other day that students only went to school for 23 days this year – it’s too much. They have been sitting at home on one very long and expensive holiday for a whole year. 
Fix Nigeria Initiative Commercial – maybe they need this one in Gabon, Congo and Guinea
Citing dozens of expensive properties, the plaintiffs said there was “no doubt that these assets could not have been acquired with the sole salaries and benefits of these heads of state.”
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Tags: african, bullfighting, cholera deaths, clitoris, desmond tutu, female genital circumcision, fgm, kenya, mdc, morgan tsvangirai, mugs, oust mugabe, sexual politics, Women, zanu-pf, zimbabwe
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