Strike Fever! Wage Demands Roil The African Continent-African News In Brief
By Global Information Network (GIN)
Wage Hike Demands Roil The Continent: Sep. 4 (GIN) – Demands for living wages are spreading around the continent, most notably in South Africa where mines have been shutting down in solidarity with a wildcat strike last month that left 34 miners dead and 76 wounded.
Thousands had turned out at the Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana when shooting by police began. A subsequent order to return to work was suppressed and government hurriedly called for a day of mourning. A week later, workers at the Gold One Int’l called a strike and faced rubber bullets and teargas fired by police.
This week, an open letter signed by over a dozen civil rights organizations, read: “We believe that the indifference of mine executives and investors to the impoverished conditions in and around the workplace ought to have consequences. For too long corporate abuse has gone unpunished…”
An investigation into the shooting has been ordered by Pres. Jacob Zuma.
Meanwhile, strikes have broken out in Swaziland, Kenya, Malawi and Guinea in what appears to be a contagious fever for fair pay and other worker rights.
A strike by lecturers at Malawi Polytechnic is entering its second month. Employees of the capital city Blantyre Council have also walked off the job since the devaluation of the Kwacha has resulted in prices skyrocketing.
In Kenya, tens of thousands of teachers are striking for higher pay.
Finally, the Swaziland Democracy Campaign has launched a Global Week of Action to protest the monarchy of King Mswati III running the country under emergency laws, banning political parties and union organizing.
Gabriel Babalola of the Africa section of the IUF labor group said: "Now is the time for unions in Africa and around the world to support our sisters and brothers in Swaziland and their struggle for basic democratic and human rights." w/pix of Lonmin protestors
Loggers Poised To Raze Liberia’s Pristine Forests
Sep. 4 (GIN) – Logging companies have bought up a quarter of Liberia’s woodlands and almost half of the country’s best intact forests, using a legal loophole to grab precious private land, according to a new report.
The scale of the deals threatens the country's vast rainforests, as well as the hundreds of thousands of people who depend on them.
"A quarter of Liberia's total landmass has been granted to logging companies in just two years, following an explosion in the use of secretive and often illegal logging permits," said Global Witness, one of the researchers involved in the report.
The UK-based Global Witness conducted the investigation with two Liberian advocacy groups - the Save My Future Foundation and the Sustainable Development Institute.
The new contracts - termed Private Use Permits – were designed to allow private landowners to cut trees on their own property. Instead, multinationals are using them to avoid Liberia’s forest laws and regulations. One of these companies, Atlantic Resources, is linked to the notorious Malaysian giant Samling - already involved in illegal logging around the world, from Cambodia to Guyana to Papua New Guinea.
Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has suspended the head of the Forestry Development Authority and launched an investigation into the sale of land to logging companies.
"Private Use Permits are great news for logging companies. They are very bad news for pretty much everybody else in Liberia," said Robert Nyahn of Save My Future Foundation, speaking to Afua Hirsch of the Guardian newspaper. "Some communities will receive less than 1% of their timber's value, while very little revenue will reach state coffers." w/pix of Pres. Johnson Sirleaf
NY ‘Good Samaritan’ In Hot Water, Charged With ‘Land Grab’ In Cameroon
Sep. 4 (GIN) – An American philanthropist with business interests in Ghana, Uganda and Cameroon has sparked an outcry over his company’s clear cutting of canopy forests to put a massive palm oil plantation in a tropical rainforest in Cameroon over the objections of locals and an international group of scientists.
Contrary to claims made by the investor, Bruce Wrobel, CEO of Herakles Farms, the plantation project, proposed for the Cross-Sanaga forest, is threatening a region of exceptional ecological richness and diversity. “This region, along the Cameroon-Nigeria border, has been recognized as a global center of biodiversity by the World Wide Fund for Nature and Conservation International,” notes a coalition of scientists in an open letter earlier this year.
The Environmental Defender Law Center, a Montana-based group, wrote on their website: “The rainforests of the Gulf of Guinea in Cameroon are among the most biologically rich forests in the world, harboring numerous unique and threatened plant and animal species. In this landscape are several protected areas, including Korup National Park, Bakossi National Park, Banyang Mbo Wildlife Sanctuary, and Rumpi Hills Forest Reserve.
“If current plans proceed, a roughly 300 square mile mosaic of dense forest, agroforest, farmland, and human settlements in this area will be transformed into a monoculture of oil palms. The plantation will further fragment the unique landscape, threaten the biodiversity of the area, and restrict the movements of many animal species.”
The Massachusetts-based group, Cultural Survival, adds: “It seems this project is a continuation of western dominance over the people of Africa. Indigenous Peoples have legal rights enshrined in international law to free, prior and informed consent in regards to any development project that may affect them. Herakles Farms is in violation of the rights of the Oroko, Bakossi, and Upper Bayang peoples since they have not been consulted or involved in the planning process.”
Wrobel, along with the palm oil project, is also head of All for Africa, a blue-chip charity which claims to take “a collaborative approach to poverty reduction.” He strongly denies the allegations by all the activist groups.
Meanwhile, Cameroonian lawyer Adolph Malle, in an open letter, wrote: “It is difficult for anyone conversant with this matter to remain silent when a company makes glaring misleading statements … and more especially so for someone like I who is a native of the proposed project area and watching company maneuvers to illegally grab our land over the past few years.” w/pix of 'illegal' oil palm nursery in Cameroon
Gambians In The U.S. Protest ‘Barbaric Execution Order’ By Pres. Jammeh
Sep. 4 (GIN) – West Africans from the Gambia, living in Atlanta, Washington, DC, Seattle, Minnesota and Rhode Island will mark a National Day of Outrage this week over the Gambian President’s execution of nine prisoners and his threats to kill more.
Pasamba Jow, one of the coordinators of the Gambia National Day of Outrage, said the executions violated the Gambian constitution.
Speaking to a reporter, Jow said that President Yahyah Jammeh had ignored appeals from the international community not to execute all 47 death row inmates. “We are protesting because we believe this was a violation of the Gambian constitution,” he said.
Among those executed were Lamin Darboe, whose death sentence had been commuted to life in prison years ago by a former President; Buba Yarboe, who suffered severe mental illness and was incapable of making rational decisions, and Tabara Samba, a mother of young children, tried and sentenced for murder in an apparent manslaughter case, was gang raped by her captors.
“What all three individuals shared in common was their cruel, mind-numbing execution at Mile Two Prisons, an act of brutality so unimaginable, it left an entire nation numbed by grief, disgust and utter disbelief,” wrote the editor of Senegambia News.
The Gambian Vice President, Isatou Njie-Saidy, defended the government action. “Capital punishment is practiced in many countries, she said, and asked why those countries were not being criticized.
Demonstrations in New York will take place Thursday.
A petition against the executions has been posted online at w/pix of Pres. Jammeh
Wage Hike Demands Roil The Continent: Sep. 4 (GIN) – Demands for living wages are spreading around the continent, most notably in South Africa where mines have been shutting down in solidarity with a wildcat strike last month that left 34 miners dead and 76 wounded.
Thousands had turned out at the Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana when shooting by police began. A subsequent order to return to work was suppressed and government hurriedly called for a day of mourning. A week later, workers at the Gold One Int’l called a strike and faced rubber bullets and teargas fired by police.
This week, an open letter signed by over a dozen civil rights organizations, read: “We believe that the indifference of mine executives and investors to the impoverished conditions in and around the workplace ought to have consequences. For too long corporate abuse has gone unpunished…”
An investigation into the shooting has been ordered by Pres. Jacob Zuma.
Meanwhile, strikes have broken out in Swaziland, Kenya, Malawi and Guinea in what appears to be a contagious fever for fair pay and other worker rights.
A strike by lecturers at Malawi Polytechnic is entering its second month. Employees of the capital city Blantyre Council have also walked off the job since the devaluation of the Kwacha has resulted in prices skyrocketing.
In Kenya, tens of thousands of teachers are striking for higher pay.
Finally, the Swaziland Democracy Campaign has launched a Global Week of Action to protest the monarchy of King Mswati III running the country under emergency laws, banning political parties and union organizing.
Gabriel Babalola of the Africa section of the IUF labor group said: "Now is the time for unions in Africa and around the world to support our sisters and brothers in Swaziland and their struggle for basic democratic and human rights." w/pix of Lonmin protestors
Loggers Poised To Raze Liberia’s Pristine Forests
Sep. 4 (GIN) – Logging companies have bought up a quarter of Liberia’s woodlands and almost half of the country’s best intact forests, using a legal loophole to grab precious private land, according to a new report.
The scale of the deals threatens the country's vast rainforests, as well as the hundreds of thousands of people who depend on them.
"A quarter of Liberia's total landmass has been granted to logging companies in just two years, following an explosion in the use of secretive and often illegal logging permits," said Global Witness, one of the researchers involved in the report.
The UK-based Global Witness conducted the investigation with two Liberian advocacy groups - the Save My Future Foundation and the Sustainable Development Institute.
The new contracts - termed Private Use Permits – were designed to allow private landowners to cut trees on their own property. Instead, multinationals are using them to avoid Liberia’s forest laws and regulations. One of these companies, Atlantic Resources, is linked to the notorious Malaysian giant Samling - already involved in illegal logging around the world, from Cambodia to Guyana to Papua New Guinea.
Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has suspended the head of the Forestry Development Authority and launched an investigation into the sale of land to logging companies.
"Private Use Permits are great news for logging companies. They are very bad news for pretty much everybody else in Liberia," said Robert Nyahn of Save My Future Foundation, speaking to Afua Hirsch of the Guardian newspaper. "Some communities will receive less than 1% of their timber's value, while very little revenue will reach state coffers." w/pix of Pres. Johnson Sirleaf
NY ‘Good Samaritan’ In Hot Water, Charged With ‘Land Grab’ In Cameroon
Sep. 4 (GIN) – An American philanthropist with business interests in Ghana, Uganda and Cameroon has sparked an outcry over his company’s clear cutting of canopy forests to put a massive palm oil plantation in a tropical rainforest in Cameroon over the objections of locals and an international group of scientists.
Contrary to claims made by the investor, Bruce Wrobel, CEO of Herakles Farms, the plantation project, proposed for the Cross-Sanaga forest, is threatening a region of exceptional ecological richness and diversity. “This region, along the Cameroon-Nigeria border, has been recognized as a global center of biodiversity by the World Wide Fund for Nature and Conservation International,” notes a coalition of scientists in an open letter earlier this year.
The Environmental Defender Law Center, a Montana-based group, wrote on their website: “The rainforests of the Gulf of Guinea in Cameroon are among the most biologically rich forests in the world, harboring numerous unique and threatened plant and animal species. In this landscape are several protected areas, including Korup National Park, Bakossi National Park, Banyang Mbo Wildlife Sanctuary, and Rumpi Hills Forest Reserve.
“If current plans proceed, a roughly 300 square mile mosaic of dense forest, agroforest, farmland, and human settlements in this area will be transformed into a monoculture of oil palms. The plantation will further fragment the unique landscape, threaten the biodiversity of the area, and restrict the movements of many animal species.”
The Massachusetts-based group, Cultural Survival, adds: “It seems this project is a continuation of western dominance over the people of Africa. Indigenous Peoples have legal rights enshrined in international law to free, prior and informed consent in regards to any development project that may affect them. Herakles Farms is in violation of the rights of the Oroko, Bakossi, and Upper Bayang peoples since they have not been consulted or involved in the planning process.”
Wrobel, along with the palm oil project, is also head of All for Africa, a blue-chip charity which claims to take “a collaborative approach to poverty reduction.” He strongly denies the allegations by all the activist groups.
Meanwhile, Cameroonian lawyer Adolph Malle, in an open letter, wrote: “It is difficult for anyone conversant with this matter to remain silent when a company makes glaring misleading statements … and more especially so for someone like I who is a native of the proposed project area and watching company maneuvers to illegally grab our land over the past few years.” w/pix of 'illegal' oil palm nursery in Cameroon
Gambians In The U.S. Protest ‘Barbaric Execution Order’ By Pres. Jammeh
Sep. 4 (GIN) – West Africans from the Gambia, living in Atlanta, Washington, DC, Seattle, Minnesota and Rhode Island will mark a National Day of Outrage this week over the Gambian President’s execution of nine prisoners and his threats to kill more.
Pasamba Jow, one of the coordinators of the Gambia National Day of Outrage, said the executions violated the Gambian constitution.
Speaking to a reporter, Jow said that President Yahyah Jammeh had ignored appeals from the international community not to execute all 47 death row inmates. “We are protesting because we believe this was a violation of the Gambian constitution,” he said.
Among those executed were Lamin Darboe, whose death sentence had been commuted to life in prison years ago by a former President; Buba Yarboe, who suffered severe mental illness and was incapable of making rational decisions, and Tabara Samba, a mother of young children, tried and sentenced for murder in an apparent manslaughter case, was gang raped by her captors.
“What all three individuals shared in common was their cruel, mind-numbing execution at Mile Two Prisons, an act of brutality so unimaginable, it left an entire nation numbed by grief, disgust and utter disbelief,” wrote the editor of Senegambia News.
The Gambian Vice President, Isatou Njie-Saidy, defended the government action. “Capital punishment is practiced in many countries, she said, and asked why those countries were not being criticized.
Demonstrations in New York will take place Thursday.
A petition against the executions has been posted online at w/pix of Pres. Jammeh
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