Pathfinder international august 2017

Obama, where are you?

— Page 3

PATHFINDER International

Lifting up a standard for the Global African Community VOL. 1, NO. 3

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www.thepathfinderinternational.com

ISSN 2573-6523

August 2017

GLOBAL WITNESS SPECIAL REPORT:

Gecamines and Congo Republic — Page 7

How democratic is the Nigerian constitution?

— Page 9

Decolonizing African Bible Studies — Page 5

Why we should vote ‘yes’ in Kurdistan referendum — Page 5

One woman’s fight to claim her blackness — Page 11

Israel’s secret program to get rid of African refugees — Page 13

How Benjamin Franklin, a deist, became the founding father of a unique kind of American faith — Page 6

Meet the Gambian migrants under pressure to leave Europe — Page 16

2 | PATHFINDER International, Aug. 2017

Nigeria as the Frontline N

igeria is now the expression of the African problematic in its starkest form where self-determination advocacy has taken on serious dimensions, from outright secession to attempts at continued Legitimacy for the Nigerian postcolonial State through a series of moves by the country’s National Assembly whose aim is further dependence of the Peoples of Nigeria on the assumed good intention of their central g o ve rn me n t t hu s setting the stage for more conflicts as to its control.

This brings forth the question of any of Africa’s post-colonial states being anchored on this colonial architecture.

Not only had this State been unable to provide any form of developmental paradigm to its population, it has always expressed intense enmity for her citizens through impunity being the norm of its ruling elites where they become the first to abandon the legal

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framework of the State. There is a “democratic” Republic of the Congo which is nothing of the sort as can even be gleaned from this month’s cover story.

Since no goal is pursued in isolation, the self-determination campaigns in Nigeria need to take a dispassionate look at the Soviet, Scottish, Kurdish and Catalan experiences, where, in their different contexts, the Legitimacy of their goals was their first line of pursuit; with the breakup of the Soviet Union providing the clearest example of de-Legitimization by its various components.

President Buhari, in advancing the Legitimacy of the Nigerian postcolonial State, stated, among others, that “from 1914, we have more than 200 cultures living with one another. God had endowed this country with natural resources and talented people” and we should only “concentrate on these and be very productive”.

In Nigeria, God is

Editor’s Note always introduced into the equation as a means of escape and not as the route towards the goal.

Nigerian Christians use God to paralyze Ethno-National aspirations. They go on Pilgrimages to Israel, and massage their egos with the “JP”(Jerusalem Pilgrim) appellations, yet fail to address the question: if the State of Israel had not been created, will they be able to go on any pilgrimage? If so, what is the basis for the coming into being of the State of Israel, even when the Jews were and are still people of influence, power and prestige in their various Diaspora? They are children of the Promise, just as Christians are, who, by adoption have become joint heirs with Christ. So then, if the State of Israel can be created

wrapped around the Promise where the Hebrew Language is the expression of all Jewishness, why are African Christians not pursuing their own Lingual countries? And why are Nigerian Christians in particular, always shy of proclaiming this necessity especially now when all of the Peoples of Nigeria are angling for their self-determination, one way or the other, with the Nigerian post-colonial State being the only obstacle?

There’s no country/continent in the world without an endowment of natural resources (land of milk and honey).

Nigeria’s current reality does not fulfill the existential will of the over 200 cultures where some of these cultures have been balkanized inside Nigeria and placed

under administrative control incongruent with their cultural aspirations as a result of colonial proclivities and continued by successive governments in Nige-ria, military or civi-lian hence the impos-sibility of concentra-ting on and develop-ing the country’s natural resources.

These cultures had been living with one another before Nigeria came into being and transcend Nigeria’s pre or post1914 Nigeria’s borders and yet they have absolutely no say in how Nigeria exists and should exist. When this “living with one another” is being used as an argument against the break-up of Nigeria, the question is how come none of these cultures were able to make any input into the Grundnorm, the Constitution that binds all the cultures together, this being the first step towards productivity?

The section titled “How Democratic is the 1999 Constitution” addresses the

question.

None of these over 200 cul-tures were represen-ted at the Constituent Assembly that “produced” the 1979 Constitution; the 1999 Constitution was even worse as it was produced in a military dark room and used for an election where none of the office seekers knew what was con-tained in the document, it was and is not a pro-duct of the over 200 cultures that had been living together since 1914; the only conclu-sion being that these cultures are immaterial to the conditions of their own existence; they must accept their being a caricature; and these are the cultures the president wants to utilize their natural resources for development.

If President Buhari really wants the “over 200 cultures that had been living together since 1914” to be productive, the first step is to acknowledge th e ir e x ist e n ce a s makers of their own history. This starts from these cultures making a determination as to their Grundnorm and by extension, Nigeria’s. n

PATHFINDER International, Aug. 2017 | 3

NEWS Trump administration takes up the cause of oppressed white people

Why we should vote ‘yes’ in I Kurdistan referendum t’s an important reminder that the expected result of the referendum will not automatically translate into unilateral secession.

Kurdish leaders have rightly said they are seeking independence through dialogue with Baghdad. If a peaceful

breakup occurs, there is little reason that a nation, which has been subjected to genocide, would not achieve a de jure status in the United Nations. There is an American idiom that

goes, “freedom is not free.” After all the suffering they underwent in Iraq, Kurds must know that independence will not be a risk-free endeavor. Also, even if you think the timing is

Happy Birthday, Marie Jana Korbelova

By Emily Tamkin arie Jana Korbelova was born in Prague in 1937.

Her father, Josef Korbel, was a supporter of a newly independent Czechoslovakia and its nascent democracy.

During World War II, like many Jewish families and others who strongly supported the country’s leading democrats, the Korbel family fled to England, where Josef converted from Judaism to Catholicism and worked for Czechoslovakia’s government in exile. The family moved home after the war, but a 1948 Communist coup forced them out again, and Korbel and his family left their native Europe and immigrated to the United States.

Nearly 70 years later, Marie Jana Korbelova — now a tack-sharp octogenarian in a deep red dress — was back in Czech diplomatic territory. On a balmy spring evening, the Czech Embassy, tucked away from the grinding hustle of Washington just outside of the city's Cleveland Park neighborhood, was packed with men in suits and women in cocktail dresses. Diplomats from the Czech Republic and the United States and their spouses sipped champagne and clinked glasses with a coterie of distinguished guests: a former dissident from what was then Czechoslovakia, a Cuban refugee, and a renowned Czech pianist. All were

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gathered to celebrate Korbelova’s 80th birthday — or, as she's better known to the rest of the world, Madeleine Albright.

The guest of honor made her way to her seat alongside the Czech ambassador and his wife at the front of the room.

Adorning her dress was one of her famous pins — this one in the shape of the Czech lion.

In addition to the wine and pâté, duck breast, and knedliky (Czech bread dumplings) presented at the tables (all named after the various places Albright has lived over the course of her life), there was a certain irony served throughout the evening.

Albright became a famous Czech (or, as she called herself, a Czechoslovak) because of the life she made for herself after her family left for America.

Albright officially became a U.S. citizen at the age of 20, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at 56, and, four years later in 1997, the first female U.S. secretary of state.

She is “one of the quintessential Czechs,” Hynek Kmonicek, the

wisecracking, hotsauce-collecting Czech ambassador to the United States, said in his opening speech that night, wryly adding that if Albright were to become secretary of state again, they wouldn't need to worry about being forgotten by the United States, because “we are you, and you are us.”

(Indeed, during her time as secretary of state, Albright did keep her fellow Czechs in mind.

U.S. President Bill Clinton once joked that the Czech Republic was the only country to have two ambassadors at the U.N.) Indeed, during her time as secretary of state, Albright did keep her fellow Czechs in mind.

U.S. President Bill Clinton once joked that the Czech Republic was the only country to have two ambassadors at the U.N. In January 1994, when Clinton announced in Prague that it was no longer a question of if NATO would expand, but when and how, Albright, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, accomContd. on page 4

not right to declare independence, you should still vote 'yes.'

This referendum will become a strong political tool vis-à-vis Iraq and the international community in the future when it is time to declare; however, if the referendum yields a weak result, then the referendum will still remain a strong tool but not for the Kurds.The September 25 referendum will be historic for the Kurdish nation. It will be the day the Kurds strongly and with one voice will tell Iraq, the regional countries and the rest of the world that they will become free and independent; that they will no longer accept to remain part of Iraq against their will. n

To m a n y p e o p l e reading this, the idea that white people are being discriminated against in higher education – or anywhere else – is absurd. The idea that discrimination against whites is such a significant problem that it demands Justice Department action is positively ludicrous. But we should understand that this is exactly the kind of thing many of Trump's voters wanted him to deliver. And the administration will be only too pleased to hear the condemnations from the left over this initiative. That's not to say that the policy doesn't have its origins in Attorney General Jeff Sessions's sincerely felt belief that white folks can't catch a break in America. I’m sure it does. But it’s also part of a long and extra-

ordinarily successful Republican project to convince white voters that minorities in general and African-Americans in particular enjoy a panoply of free benefits from the government that make their lives comfortable and easy.

It's a lie, but it's extraordinarily widespread. So you can be sure that in the White House, they're only too happy to have a big controversy about affirmative action. It reinforces the racial allegiance of their core voters, with the happy side effect of diffusing any dissatisfaction that might arise from the fact that their economic policy is geared entirely toward serving the interests of the wealthy and powerful. And if they're successful in making it harder for AfricanAmericans to succeed, well, that's just icing on the cake. n

Defector looks to break Najib’s grip can break on Borneo, Malaysia Najib IfPrimeanyoneMinister Razak's stranglehold on Sabah, the Borneo state that holds the key to power in Malaysia, it should be Shafie Apdal.

“There is no path to

Prime Minister Najib Razak

victory for the Malaysian opposition that doesn't go through Sabah,” Rosman Abin, youth chief for Shafie's

new party Warisan, said before a recent party event in the state. Located more than 870 miles (1,400 kilometers) across the South China Sea from peninsular Malaysia, Sabah sits on the northern tip of Borneo between Indonesia, the Philippines and Brunei. Malaysia's second-largest state by size, the rain-forested former sultanate accounts for more than a quarter of the country’s crude oil reserves. Sabah and neighboring Sarawak are known in Malaysia as “fixed deposits” for Barisan Nasional. They have long supported the establishment, accounting for about a third of the coalition's seats at the last general election. Still, Barisan Nasional retained power in 2013 by its slimmest margin ever, and would have lost if not for the Borneo states. n

4 | PATHFINDER International, Aug., 2017

NEWS Devolution debacle O

By Segun Gbadegesin ur founding fathers struggled for a federal constitution on one important ground.

As peoples of diverse backgrounds and cultures, we have diverse interests which others may not share but which are not necessarily inimical to our union.

Each can best promote those interests without the direction or intervention of the central government. On the other hand, there are common interests that bind us and for which the federal government is best placed to promote and advance. The former include our economic interests, educational interests, health interests, and customs and conventions. The latter include external defense, currency, and foreign affairs. The compromise that the founding fathers reached was a federal constitu-tion that gives many responsibilities to the regions. But this was not seen as an end in itself. They were convinced that with each focusing on those areas of economic and social life that it alone knows best, national interest

would be advanced. It worked in the first republic. Undeniably, due to human nature, healthy competition gave way to unhealthy rivalry. But the military misread the cause of the fall of the first republic and threw the baby of federalism out with the bath water of crude partisanship. The later was the culprit, not the former. The nation advanced socioeconomically in the first republic because power was devolved to the regions.

Now the center has taken over many of the responsibilities that used to belong to the regions.

In education, the federal military government took over state universities, including the University of Ife. It delved into primary education through the Universal Free Primary Education decree. It got into secondary education with the creation of unity schools. The federal government has continued to create more federal universities around the country despite the glaring evidence of inadequate facilities and financial support for the existing institutions. n

I wanted to be Rwanda’s first female president; then fake nude photos appeared online — Diane Shima Rwigara:

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n May 3, I announced my intention to become an independent candidate in the upcoming Rwandan presidential election and was ready to challenge the domination of Kagame's regime.

Immediately after that announcement, Photoshopped, nude pictures of me were circulated online. It was the regime's attempt to discredit me and taint my public reputation.

International supporters praise the fact that women occupy about 60 percent of Rwanda's parliament as evidence

that Rwanda values women in politics. My treatment shows how untrue that is. The parliament mostly rubber-stamps the president's agenda. In disqualifying my presidential candidacy, the National Election Commission claimed that I failed to gather the 600 signatures required, despite the fact that I had submitted more than 1,100 signatures. Only 572 signatures were deemed to be admissible; the others, including signatures of my colleagues, were dismissed as invalid. n

Few counterintuitive and inconvenient facts,

By Biodun Jeyifo challenges for IPOB – and all of us! e live in a post-

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colonial and perhaps post-imperial epoch in which antiglobalist, irredentist “nationalisms” based on xenophobia and demagogy are rife. As a consequence of this development, we are seeing the resurgence of popularand widespread expressions of hatred, fear and the use of violently degrading language against both local and foreign “others”, the likes of which many had thought humanity in general had transcended. In this historic context, IPOB is in the “good” company of movements and organizations like the Front Nationale in France; the Law and Justice Party of Poland; United Kingdom Independence Party

(UKIP) of Britain; Jobbik, the Movement for a Better Hungary in that country; right-wing Zionism in Israel; and the make-Americastrong-again “white nationalism” of Donald Tr u m p w i t h i n t h e Republican Party in the United States. Every one of these parties, movements or organizations has been remarkable in the successes it has achieved through the use of deliberately vile, intemperate and offensive language and ideas to consolidate support among its followers, to gain visibility and even notoriety in the world, and to intimidate its actual and potential opponents. As a matter of fact, this is precisely

why Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB have expressed open admiration for the Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu and the America of Donald Trump. Some commentators have noticed that of recent, IPOB has been downplaying the diatribes and insults that “Radio Biafra”, its main media outlet, had been spewing out against the Oduduwa and Arewa “nations”. This is completely consistent with tendencies that have been observed among all the rightwing, irredentist movements of the contemporary world: as they grow more successful, as they leave the extremist fringe of society and enter the mainstream and/or actually become ruling parties, they

begin to temper their rhetoric of demagoguery and xeno-phobia. For the most part, this is more a matter of tactics than of sincere moral and ideological convictions. At any rate, from now on, IPOB faces the considerable challenge of convincing both its supporters and the world at large that it is not a movement, an organization whose driving force derives from hatred, xenophobia and intolerance. This is quite a tall order because in and out of power, not a single one of the separatist populist parties of the contemporary world has succeeded in engaging this challenge, Trump and the French Front Nationale being par-ticularly telling example of this failure. n

Devolution or federalism – which way for Nigeria?

By Ropo Sekoni

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evolution does not automatically lead to federalism. It is, simply put, the shedding of functions belonging originally to any central government – unitary or federal— to subnational government levels. A unitary government that feels overburdened or o v e r- p r e s s u r e d c a n choose to transfer some of such functions to any subnational government, without losing its superintending authority over implementation of transferred functions. So can a central government devolve new functions (not previously shared with subnational governments) to subnational governments to carry out in compliance with whatever standards the central government establishes for perfor-mance of such functions by the tier of government to which new responsibilities have been devolved or transferred. Such devolved functions are funded through grants or special allocations from the central government.

France is a good example of a unitary government that devolves a lot of functions to other levels of government. China is another example. Closer to home, Ghana operates

a unitary system that delegates some functions to provincial

governments that are defined as subordinate to the central government.

An abiding aspect of devolu-tion without federalism is that the central government reserves the right to take back whatever functions it delegates to subnational governments. Such devolution is gene-rally not embedded in the constitution and is not subject to negotiation between federating units. n

Happy Birthday, Marie Jana Korbelova Contd. from page 3 panied him on the trip. At least as notable — for those in attendance, if not for Czech history — is that Clinton and Vaclav Havel, the dissi-dent playwright-turnedpresident of what was once again a newly independent country, went to a jazz club. (As Czech diplomat and author Michael Zantovsky recounts in his biography o f H a v e l , C l i n t o n ’s mother had died just days before his visit, but he agreed to spend the evening listening to Jiri Stivin, the Czech saxophonist, flutist, and improviser, which Albright signaled to Havel, upon landing, with a thumbs-up.) Albright’s relationship with Havel would continue to flourish long beyond the days when either held office.

She served as his

Washington guide during his visit in 2005, and when he died in 2011, she spoke at his funeral.

The era of diplomacy during which Albright served as secretary of state was marked by excitement and uncertainty.

The Czech Republic, still finding its footing after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, was led by a man hailed as among the great intellectual dissidents in European history. Today, the country’s president, Milos Zeman, is a populist and a Vladimir P u t i n s y m p a t h i z e r.

During Albright’s tenure, the United States was the geopolitical champion of those countries in Central and Eastern Europe shaking off the Soviet shackles. It’s a part Wa s h i n g t o n s e e m s hesitant to play now with current Secretary of State

R e x Ti l l e r s o n h a v i n g suggested it will be pragmatism, not principle, that defines the role of U.S. foreign policy.

“We are the indispensa-ble nation,” Albright told her guests at the spring embassy party, a cloaked reference to U.S. President Donald Trump’s untraditional view of U.S. world leadership (“and we'll figure that out again pretty soon”).

That night, the Czechs presented Albright with — what else? — a brooch in the shape of a heart, the kind with which Havel used to sign off his letters. She smiled upon receiving it. To cap off the party, Czech pianist Tomas Kaco gave two performances — “My Funny Valentine” and his own composition, “Gypsy Soul.” Perhaps it was a nod to the visit to the jazz club.

Perhaps it was just a chance to show off Czech talent to a Czech talent. n

PATHFINDER International, Aug. 2017 | 5

FAITH

Decolonizing African Biblical Studies (2)

Contd. from last edition 4. Faith in God who is all-powerful is an important condition for African biblical studies.

This faith in God is not only in his existence but also in his absolute power to do and to undo.

He is in control and he performs miracles at will. This God can use any means to heal, protect, and bring success in all life’s endeavor.

5. Ability to read or memorize the words of the Bible is important.

The interpreter may not necessarily be a scholar of the Bible. Some of the evangelists in Africa are illiterate, yet they use the word of God to perform miracles and wonders in Africa. Some blind evangelists have the ability and good memories to memorize the Bible. They have also used the words of God to achieve great things in Africa.

COLONIZATION OF AFRICAN BIBLICAL STUDIES Whenever one thinks of colonization, what come to mind are the partition of Africa and the eventual physical conquest of the continent. Modern imperialism has to do with market inequality among the Third World people and the Western people, foreign aid as weapon for colonization, debt domination, political repression and state terror, globalization and others.

As far as I understand, colonialism is not limited to the partition of

Rev Prof David Tuesday Adamo, Department of Religious Studies, Delta State University, Nigeria of faith, that is, the affirmation of biblical religion as a historical faith. Although I believe that whatever mistakes the early missionaries have made, God has used them to bless Africa, it seems to me that one of the ways by which African biblical studies was colonized is through the establishment of Bible colleges and Seminaries throughout the continent of Africa.

My candid opinion is that colonization of biblical studies began with the establishment of Bible Colleges and seminaries, the establishment of universities in Africa by the missionaries.

These Bible Colleges and Seminaries became places where priests, pastors, and evangelists were trained. During the early period the teachers in these colleges were missionaries from the Western world. Their methods of teaching were western. In their enthusiasm to teach students how to communicate the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, they also taught western culture and ways of life.

All students must learn how to interpret the Christian scripture the way it is interpreted in the West. African culture and religion were not important and therefore were not taught to the students.

I will like to illustrate this fact with my eight years' experience in the Bible College and Seminary in Nigeria between 1968 and 1977.

Throughout my years in

Africa and the eventual domination of the entire continent by the European nations; it includes the colonization of our thought and the entirety of our way of life. Our concern however, is the discussion of how African biblical studies has also been colonized in various ways.

R . S S u g i r t h a r aj a h listed and discussed various marks of colonial biblical interpretation.

1. Inculcation, that is, “the use of the Bible as a vehicle for inculcating European manners.”

2. Encroachment, that is, “the introduction to the 'other' of alien values, under the guise of biblicization,” in order to repudiate the local culture which is considered incapable of transmitting Christian truths.

3. Displacement, that is, the displacement of local culture.

4. Analogies and implication, that is, the juxtaposition of biblical and secular history as weapon against those who resisted colonial intervention. The Bible stories were read to justify the cruelty and suffering caused by violent invasion of the Europeans.

5. The textualization of the Word of God, that is, the idea that no religious teaching was any value except it is in written form. This is in order to discredit the oral tradition of the local people.

6. The Historicization

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the Bible College and Seminary in Nigeria I cannot remember courses in African culture and religion.

The only course in African indigenous religion was taught with the main purpose of showing how heathenistic and useless the African religion and cultures are. When I first entered the Bible college in 1968 I was taught how to sit on the toilet cosmos, how to use toilet papers, how to dress like Americans and even how to use spoons and forks on the dining table.

But not any atom of the value of African culture was taught. By the time I graduated, I had learned to interpret the Bible the American way. I preach the Bible the American ways, and in fact tried to talk, walk, eat and do everything the American way.

More importantly I learned how to condemn African culture and religion perfectly well because I was taught that they were not valuable.

In Africa, and right from the beginning, the interpretation of the Bible took place in the “religious room.” Up till today, the Bible is read and interpreted within the institutionalized realms of synagogues, churches, and mostly interpreted in such a way related to the agenda of a particular denomination that directly or indirectly are still being controlled by the West.

Since the 18th century, the Bible has been read and interpreted in semi-

Since the 18th century, the Bible has been read and interpreted in seminaries and universities with departments of religious studies in the tradition of western scholarship. Even in our universities, espe-cially the Departments of Religious Studies in Africa, our curriculum betrays us as still being slaves to the tradition of western biblical scholarship.

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naries and universities with departments of religious studies in the tradition of western scholarship. Even in our universities, especially the Departments of Religious Studies in Africa, our curriculum betrays us as still being slaves to the tradition of western biblical scholarship.

In other words, in our interpretative mode, we are still colonized.

Throughout my eight years in Bible College and seminary in Africa, no one taught me the fact that Africans were present in the Bible. In 1960, there were only six universities and very few seminaries in the whole continent ofAfrica.

Edward G. Newing conducted a survey of how Old Testament research was conducted at this period throughout Africa and found that most institutions employed the method of higher critical approaches developed in the western tradition. The universities and theological institutions at that time were parallel to those of the West. Most of these universities and seminaries did not offer postgraduate level training in religious s t u d i e s . To p u r s u e postgraduate work at that time meant, in most cases, going to Europe and USA. As a result, most African scholars between 1960s and 70s got their masters and Ph.D. degrees in Western institutions.

University of Ibadan, Ibadan, and University of Nigeria, Nsukka, were the first universities that initiated a postgraduate program in religious studies. The first Ph.D. in biblical studies was awarded in early 1980s.

Although by the 1980s and 1990s the establishment of universities and theological institutions increased (more than one hundred universities and

one thousand seminaries by the end of 1990s), yet most of these universities and seminaries have no postgraduate programs in biblical studies and that is why much of the training continued to take place in Europe andAmerica.

Still it is interesting to know that the overseas training of African biblical intellectuals overseas followed ecclesiastical (Catholic students go to Rome, Evangelicals to USA and Britain), historical and politico-colonial lines (Great Britain, France, Belgium, and USA who are former colonial and neo-colonial masters). In fact, it is unfortunate that up till now there has not been any outstanding center for biblical studies to boast of in Black Africa. The bitter truth is that the training of African scholars in a context that is both culturally and scholarly nonAfrican is gradually becoming a problem.

A non-African colleague, Professor Knut Holter, points out these problems: “... it is increasingly being experienced as a problem that the training is given in a context that both culturally and scholarly is non-African. One result of this is that questions emerging from cultural and social concerns in African only to some extent are allowed into the interpretation of the OT. As a consequence, there is a gap between the needs of ordinary African Christians for modes of reading the OT, and the modes provided by scholars trained in the western tradition of biblical scholarship. Another result of the location of the training outside Africa is a feeling, at least in some cases, of inferiority vis-à-vis the massive western tradition.

This might eventually lead some scholars to neglect their African context, and instead see[…] themselves as ambassadors of Turn to page 6

6 | PATHFINDER International, Aug. 2017

FAITH How Benjamin Franklin, a deist, became the founding father of a unique kind ofAmerican faith

Benjamin Franklin

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une 28 was the 230th anniversary of one of the most intriguing episodes of the Constitutional Convention of the United States. On that day in 1787, the 81-year-old Benjamin Franklin, famously known as a deist, proposed that the convention open its sessions with prayer.

Deists, who believe God created the universe but remains apart from it, a r e n ’t s u p p o s e d t o believe in prayer or that God intervenes in history.

But the puzzling moment over prayer tells us a great deal about Franklin himself and about the role of faith in the nation's founding.

There was a lot more to Franklin's religion than his self-description as a deist. In fact, Franklin was the pioneer of a uniquely American kind of faith, one which

touted the benevolent effects of faith even as it jettisoned virtually all theological beliefs.

During the convention’s first month, the delegates were bogged down in intractable debates between the large and small states, and the free and slave states. The delegates' inability to agree on issues such as representation in Congress illustrated the “imperfection of human understanding,” Franklin observed in his papers.

“In this Situation of this Assembly, groping, as it were, in the dark, to find Political Truth,” Franklin asked, “how has it happened, sir, that we have not, hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the father of lights to illuminate our understandings?”

During the American Revolution, the patriots had seen repeated

instances of God intervening in their favor. “And have we now forgotten that powerful friend?”

Franklin wondered.

Franklin cited his age and experience as he defended his belief in prayer and the Providence of God. “I have lived, sir, a long time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this Truth, that God governs in the Affairs of Men!” This was a doubly strange proposal coming from Franklin. Since he was arguably the representative figure of the American Enlightenment, we might imagine that Franklin had supreme confidence in “human understanding” to fix political problems.

Moreover, Franklin told us in his autobiography that he was a “thorough deist.”

Franklin adhered to a religion that we might call doctrineless, moralized Christianity. This kind of faith suggests that what we believe about God is not as important as living a life of love and significance. Franklin grew up in a devout Puritan family in colonial

Boston, but by his teen years the bookish boy began to doubt key aspects of his parents’ Calvinist faith. Abandoning Christianity altogether, however, was not a realistic option for someone as immersed as Franklin in the Bible's precepts and the habits of faith.

Although Franklin did at times toy with some radical anti-Christian beliefs, he settled on the conviction that Christianity was useful because of the way it fostered virtue. Franklin wearied of how colonial Americans incessantly fought about theological minutiae. But he still believed that Christianity represented a preeminent resource for benevolence and charity, qualities he considered essential to any worthwhile religion.

Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson all doubted some fundamental tenets of the Protestant faith. These could include salvation

by God’s grace alone, the divinity of Jesus, or God's Trinitarian nature.

But leading patriots agreed that the new American republic depended upon having a

virtuous citizenry. Although some elites might employ education to develop moral fortitude, the founders believed that average Americans needed religion for the inspiration to do good.

Franklin saw the convention’s impasse over representation in Congress as a perfect example of how rational deliberation alone failed to foster compromise for the greater good. But prayer could remind the delegates of their need for divine assistance and national unity.

Franklin was exasperated when the convention declined to hire a chaplain to lead the prayers. But perhaps the speech still had a u n i f y i n g e ff e c t , a s Franklin later helped to craft the “Great Compromise” over representation in the House and Senate, arguably the critical agreement of the whole convention.

In pioneering this doctrineless, moralized Christianity, Franklin was helping to develop one of the most common forms of spirituality in modern America.

Adherence to specific beliefs and congregations is slipping in many

sectors of America today, but Americans remain an overwhel-mingly theistic people. Self-help celebrities and writers from Oprah Winfrey to Steven Covey reach audiences in the hundreds of millions with their quasi-religious messages about living a life of maximal goodness and significance. Even popular preachers like Houston megachurch pastor Joel Osteen downplay doctrine in favor of practical sermons and books on living “your best life now.”

Franklin’s Christian friends and relatives were always worried that the great printer, scientist and diplomat might be gaining the world but losing his soul. Traditional Christians today would likewise argue that authentic faith is based upon true beliefs about God, Jesus and the Bible.

But the “deist” Franklin was convinced that in crafting a doctrineless, moralized Christianity, he was redeeming the best of traditional religion by channeling it toward the ideals of love and charity.

Thomas S. Kidd, author of “Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father” (Yale University Press, 2017) n

Decolonizing African Biblical Studies (2) Contd. from page 5 Cambridge, Oxford, [the] Tubingen school etc.’

Wi t h t h e a b o v e situation what appears to be the only available alternative is to send the would-be scholars to universities and seminaries in the West for biblical training. The majority of eminent African biblical scholars that we have today are trained in the western institutions where they were trained in Eurocentric approach to biblical studies.

Although one appreciates the opportunity to study in many of these great western universities and seminaries, one thing is certain: The overseas training in biblical studies and theology is one of the ways by which African biblical scholars have been colonized.

By the time we graduated, we became expert Eurocentric interpreters of the Bible. By the time we came back to our institutions at home, we spread the good news of Eurocentric biblical interpretation. They taught pastors, priests

and other leaders in the church the Eurocentric method, and these pastors, priests and leaders passed them to their congregations.

All the pastors, priests, their congregations, other leaders and biblical teachers became colonized with Eurocentric methods of biblical interpretation. (I am one of the beneficiaries of these colonizations but I am grateful to God and to the missionaries).

Consciously and unconsciously, the establishment of churches became another means of colonizingAfricans.

As discussed above, the African biblical scholars who are immersed in Eurocentric approach to biblical interpretation and therefore colonized, passed on the colonization to pastors and priests and other leaders. They then passed it on to their congregations who look for converts not only to Christianity but also to Eurocentric Christianity.

That is why the congregation method of Bible studies remain Eurocentric. One should not be surprised that immediately one teaches a

different method of biblical studies, such as Africentric methodology in biblical studies, one is labelled an infidel.

Such Africentric method is outrightly rejected. To think and interpret Africentrically has become a problem because we have been thoroughly Eurocentrically schooled.

Another major means of colonization of African biblical studies is the absolute domination of the field of biblical studies by Eurocentric scholars. Eurocentric scholars who write Eurocentrically, write most of the commentaries, Bible Introductions, Bible Atlases, History of Ancient Israel, and Major Bible Translations that we use in universities and seminaries all over the world.

Not only are they Eurocentric in their approach to biblical scholarship, they feverishly attempt to deAfricanize the Bible.

Yet, that is what we read and consume in our universities and seminaries. (see Stony the Road we Trod). These authors write with scholastic

prejudice and hold tenaciously to the conception that the Eurocentric methods of biblical interpretation are “the interpretation.”

It is therefore superior and universal. This also has led to using Eurocentric criteria as a yardstick for judging all Africentric materials. As a result, the major publishers in religion in the western world rejected our manuscripts for publication. They also rejected most of our manuscript with the pretense that there will be no market for them when published.

For example, in 1989, I sent an article on African Presence in the Bible to a reputable journal, and in return, I was accused of trying to “smuggle Africa and Africans into the Bible.” Also in 2001, a reputable publisher refused to publish my book manuscripts for the reason that there will be no market for it in the western world and that Africans do not buy many books. Perhaps many of you will have similar stories to tell.

I have deliberately invited Faith Victory Church Choir (Bishop C.

Diolu, Pastor) to sing a decolonized song.

Before we go further, let us listen to another decolonized song by my congregation (DELSU Interdenominational Chapel), who gives me the opportunity to minister to them every Sunday.

DECOLONIZING AFRICAN BIBLICAL STUDIES Having discussed above what African biblical studies is and the various means by which African biblical studies have been colonized, let us discuss the more important section of this paper: DECOLONIZATION. Admittedly, there is what we call African biblical studies, and African biblical study has been colonized. How then do we decolonize African biblical studies?

First, African Biblical scholars must continue to write and publish despite the rejection that we constantly face. We must attend conferences at home and abroad.

Second, and more importantly, we should in our African biblical studies, employ African cultural hermeneutics, or

inculturation hermeneutics which include all the various approaches to African biblical studies, namely, African comparative, evaluative, Africanin-the-Bible, the Bible as power, African bibliographical, and contextual/ reading with the ordinary people approaches.

African Comparative Approach What is African comparative approach to biblical studies? African comparative approach to biblical studies is the comparison of the Old and New Testament with African culture and religion. The field of Eurocentric comparative biblical studies has been dominated by the comparison of biblical materials with the culture and religion of Ancient Near East. While African biblical studies include a comparison of the biblical materials from the Ancient Near East, emphasis and concentration is on African culture and religion, such as African literature, archaeology, and the entirety of African tradition.

Read more on www.thepathfinderintern ational.com

Page 7

Magazine

PATHFINDER International

Vol. 1, No. 3, Aug., 2017

GLOBAL WITNESS SPECIAL REPORT

Gecamines and Congo OVERVIEW

M

ore than $750 million of mining revenues paid by companies to state bodies in the Democratic Republic of Congo was lost to the treasury between 2013 and 2015. Instead, the money disappeared into a dysfunctional state-owned mining company and opaque national tax agencies. There is no clarity on what this money was spent on or where it ended up, but testimony and documentation gathered by Global Witness indicates that at least some of the funds were distributed among corrupt networks linked to President Joseph Kabila’s regime.

Gecamines, the state-owned company, is the main culprit in the diversion of Congo’s mining revenues from the budget. Its chairman, Albert Yuma, was appointed by Kabila in 2010 and is an ally of the president. He is described as a “financier” to the regime. He is on the audit committee of Congo’s Central Bank and is the head of Congo’s Business Federation.

Our investigation shows how Gecamines is hemorrhaging money in suspect transactions — sometimes involving millions of dollars in cash — while simultaneously failing to make any substantial contribution to the national treasury or invest in its own mining operations. The company is saddled with well over a billion dollars of debt and it carries out almost no mining of its own, despite having once mined up to 500,000 tonnes of minerals in a year.

Gecamines has apparently prioritized paying off debts to a friend of the president over paying its staff, who have at times gone months without their salaries, and has handed out a crucial contract in opaque circumstances to a little-known sub-contractor. Meanwhile, it fails to pay dividends to the government, its sole shareholder, and barely pays more than $20 million in tax per year, according to an industry transparency body – much lower than the contributions of several private mining companies in Congo.

Furthermore, each year Congo’s national tax agencies keep back a portion of mining revenues for their “own funds”, rather than transfer it to the treasury. What happens to this money is unclear. The agencies are secretive and often headed by powerful individuals with close professional or personal ties to the Prime Minister’s office or to the Presidency. The opacity around the withheld funds makes this system highly susceptible to corruption.

The tax agencies are permitted by law to issue penalties to companies for violations of tax codes and to keep a proportion of the fines. These fines can sometimes be enormous,

GÉCAMINES is Congo’s biggest state-owned mining company and a closed book in terms of revenue management. The company has shares in over 20 mining projects but is hemorrhaging money.

running to hundreds of millions of dollars. Global Witness has found that this system has encouraged predatory behavior by agencies, which have been incentivized to impose penalties on spurious grounds and keep huge sums for themselves. So, while the tax agencies’ retention of part of the penalties is legal, it too can encourage and facilitate corruption.

The amount of mining money that failed to reach the national treasury from 2013 to 2015 rises to $1.3 billion when company payments to other government bodies and a provincial tax agency that has since been dissolved are included. It is unclear what this money is ultimately spent on.

This analysis has been made possible in part by the steps towards transparency in some parts of Congo’s mining sector in recent years, notably the information published by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). In order to close down the diversion of state funds public and private bodies involved in Congo's mining system need to commit to greater transparency.

Congo possesses a geological endowment the envy of countries worldwide. It should be extraordinarily wealthy, but the average Congolese person is among the poorest on the planet.

Congo’s economy is driven by its mining sector, and primarily by two metals: copper and cobalt. Copper is used for building and electrical equipment across the planet, and cobalt – a by-product of copper mining – is in the midst of a price boom due to soaring demand for the lithiumion batteries used in electric cars. Together, the two

metals make up 80 per cent of the country’s total export earnings.

Congo became Africa’s biggest copper producer in 2013, and is the world’s leading source of cobalt. Each year, up to $10 billion worth of copper and cobalt is dug up from Congo’s soil and sold abroad. However, our analysis shows that as little as six per cent of annual mining export reach the country’s budget.

Congo’s mining revenues have been the focus of Global Witness investigations in the past. Since 2010, Global Witness has reported on suspect mining deals involving a network of offshore shell companies linked to Dan Gertler, a friend of Congo's President Joseph Kabila. Global Witness has questioned these deals, showing how Gertler obtained licenses at knockdown prices before selling assets on to major mining and commodities companies at or near full price.

The settlement of a US investigation into the Och-Ziff hedge fund in 2016 strongly suggested that Gertler and his associates were paying huge bribes – up to a total of $34 million – to Kabila and his righthand man for access to mines.

A spokesman for Gertler disputed all accusations of wrongdoing in any dealings in Congo including those with Och-Ziff. Just five such deals saw Congo lose out on $1.4 billion in potential revenues.

Having shown how these deals have resulted in Congo’s mining revenues flowing offshore, with this report we aim to tell the other half of the story: what happens to mining money that stays onshore, inside Congo.

Congo is in the midst of a

political crisis. President Kabila was obliged by the constitution to step down at the end of 2016.

However, he has remained in power despite the protestations of political opponents and mass demonstrations that have faced deadly suppression from Kabila’s forces. A fragile political truce fell apart in April when Kabila unilaterally appointed a Prime Minister, and there is little sign that elections will be organized soon.

The diversion of much-needed public funds into parallel networks close to the regime serves only to entrench the deadly divisions in Congolese politics today. It also heightens the risk of Congo backsliding towards the disastrous civil wars from which it has not yet fully recovered.

Article 58 of the Congolese constitution says that every Congolese has the right to enjoy the benefits of the country's national wealth, and that the state has a duty to redistribute that wealth equitably and to guarantee the right to development. To the vast majority of Congolese today, those are empty words. The hollowing out of Gecamines and the fragmented tax system mean that the agencies that are supposed to be gathering up mining revenues for the benefit of all, are in fact open to abuse by political elites seeking to extract cash from the mining sector: they are a regime cash machine.

Now is the time for the gaps in the revenue-collection system to be closed and for more mining money to reach the treasury.

After a two year slump, copper prices are set to rebound strongly while cobalt is booming. Copper and cobalt price rises, coupled

with the recent production boom, could reinvigorate Congo’s economy. The country and its people can scarcely afford to miss out.

BOOMING MINES, BUT TOUGH TIMES “Here, either the state doesn’t exist anymore, or it preys on us,” says Claude, a traditional leader from Lubumbashi in Congo.

At 83, he has lived long enough to see his country change name five times. Born under Belgian colonial rule, he lives in Congo's Katanga copperbelt in the south of the sprawling central African country. For him, Gecamines, the Congolese state-owned mining company, used to symbolize opportunity in Katanga. Today, however, the company is a shadow of its former self.

In the last 15 years private international mining firms have moved in to operate alongside a remodeled Gecamines. Claude says; “despite the large presence of mining companies, our suffering increases daily.”

Those born in Congo have some of the worst life chances anywhere: ten children out of 100 die before they reach the age of five. Over 40 per cent have stunted growth due to malnutrition.

Raymond, a Gecamines worker since the 1980s, goes further, describing how Gecamines used to “spoil” its workers. “It was the vache laitiere [cash cow] of the whole country,” he says. But when Gecamines virtually stopped production in the 1990s life became unbearable.

“The company is now an emaciated cow, with no more milk to feed its children.”

Turn to page 8

8 | PATHFINDER International, Aug. 2017

MAGAZINE Contd. from page 7 It need not be this way for Congo’s people. On paper Congo’s mines have been booming; in 2014 Congo produced over a million tonnes of copper for the first time having in 2013 overtaken its southern neighbor Zambia to become Africa’s number one producer. It is even more dominant in the more lucrative cobalt trade, producing 60 per cent of the world's cobalt. The mineral is essential for lithiumion batteries found in mobile phones, laptops and electric cars.

What Congo digs out of the ground helps fuel the Chinese and Californian economies. The demand for Congo’s cobalt is only like to increase: cobalt is essential for the battery technology needed for the shift to renewable energy. But Beijing’s skyscrapers and the San Francisco Bay are a long way, literally and figuratively, f r o m K a t a n g a ’s r o l l i n g savannah. Demonstrators gather in front of a burning car during an opposition rally in Kinshasa in Septe.

MONEY DRAINS OFFSHORE AND DISAPPEARS ONSHORE Global Witness and other researchers have shown in detail how Congo lost out on at least $1.36 billion in five mining deals struck between 2010 and 2012.

This is double the country's annual health and education spending. These secretive deals were struck with offshore companies which managed to get hold of mining licenses at knockdown prices. Later, it was revealed that these companies belonged, or were linked, to Dan Gertler; a billionaire Israeli businessman who is a friend of Congo’s President Joseph Kabila.

Despite this offshore hemorrhaging of wealth, some mining money does remain onshore in Congo. The companies in the five offshore deals paid state bodies $275.5 million for control of the mining assets (although they were worth at least $1.63 billion).7 In addition, private international mining companies in Congo, together, pay over a billion dollars a year in taxes, royalties and other charges to tax agencies and the scandal-hit state mining company, Gecamines. Yet our analysis – based on the most comprehensive data available – shows that, year after year, Congo is losing out on a fortune.

Between 30 and 40 per cent of the payments fail to reach the national treasury.mbe A BLACK HOLE IN THE ECONOMY At the heart of Congo's industrial copper and cobalt mining operations is Gecamines, the most prominent of the country’s state-owned mining companies. It’s also central to the problem of revenues not reaching the treasury, and has a history of being looted by a corrupt leader clinging to power.

“Gécamines is practically a black hole. A black hole where you don't know who is doing what, where the money goes, which deal is going where, under what conditions and so on.”--Cyrille Kabamba, Congolese civil society activist.

Gecamines and Congo

Gecamines traces its roots back to colonial times.

Nationalized in the 1960s, it used to be a major mineral producer in its own right. At its peak in the 1980s, it contributed 43 per cent of the country's budget revenues and produced almost 500,000 tonnes of copper a year. It was a towering presence in the lives of the Congolese. Augustin Katumba Mwanke, who was – until his death in 2012 – the hugely influential right-hand man of President Kabila and a mining dealmaker, wrote of life growing up in Katanga in the 1970s: “We breathed Gecamines. We lived Gecamines. We dreamed of Gecamines… I dreamed of only one thing: to become…CEO of Gecamines. It was the idol, the ideal, the sphynx of my fantasies.”

But then, in the 1990s, Gecamines collapsed after decades of looting by former President Mobutu Sese Seko.

Michela Wrong’s book on the final years of Mobutu’s rule recalls the role of Gecamines’ cash in maintaining the ageing dictator’s grip on power. She writes of Gecamines; “for a president in constant need of ready cash, there could be little doubt where to turn.”According to Wrong, on one occasion in the 1980s Mobutu had a Gecamines subsidiary send $100 million to one of his accounts. A further $400 million went missing in 1988. It would not be until the 21st Century – after the destruction caused by the First and Second Congo Wars– that the company was reborn in its current form.

On advice from the World Bank, in 2010 the Congolese government transformed Gecamines into a “commercial” operation, in which the state owns all the shares. It is now primarily a junior partner in over 20 copper and cobalt projects operated by major mining companies from Europe, China and elsewhere. It has also been central to some of the asset sale scandals previously exposed by Global Witness and others.

On one level, the transformation of Congo's industrial mining sector with Gecamines at its heart has been a success.

Congo as a whole produced just over 16,000 tonnes of copper in 2003. Since 2014 it has produced one million tonnes of copper per year, more than any other country inAfrica.

H o w e v e r, i n t e r m s o f generating funds for the state, Gecamines has gone backwards since its 1980s heyday. Having

failed to relaunch as a significant producer of minerals, Gecamines now operates more as a caretaker of Congo's copper and cobalt wealth. Gecamines contributed around $15 million in taxes to government out of a reported income from mining of $265 million in 2014, according to the EITI. In 2015, it paid just $21.8 million out of reported revenues of $249.5 million.

Despite being at the heart of the most important sector for Congo's economy, Gecamines only contributed 0.3 per cent of all of the country’s revenues in 2014; the year the country first topped one million tonnes of copper output.

THE KINGPIN Gecamines today is dominated by its Chairman, Albert Yuma, who controls the company with very little oversight. Under Yuma, money has flowed into Gecamines, but there have been few signs of productive investment of those funds.

Mining production has collapsed and wages have gone unpaid. A civil servant at the Ministry of Mines anonymously told Global Witness: “you should forget Gecamines my friend. It's an empty shell.

Plunder is done in the open.

Decisions come from the top [officials] and there’s nothing we can do about it.” An experienced Gecamines official said Yuma’s tenure has seen Gecamines’ wealth flow to a small group of “oligarchs”.

Like President Kabila, Yuma is from the north of the former Katanga province. He was sent to school in Belgium at the age of nine and returned to Congo in his late twenties after having studied at the Universite Catholique de Louvain outside Brussels, Belgium. Often dressed impeccably – in a threepiece suit with a handkerchief in

his top pocket matching the color of his tie – the bespectacled Yu m a i s a s u c c e s s f u l businessman. He made his money in textiles before expanding his interests into property, food and transport. His Kinshasa-based clothing business has won contracts to supply uniforms to the Congolese army, among others.

Congo's president appoints the head of Gecamines.

A senior Gecamines executive in Lubumbashi, speaking on condition of anonymity, told a Global Witness researcher that Yuma was given control of the state mining company because of his “political connections” and that he “only answers to the President”.

In addition to leading Gecamines, Yuma also heads up Congo's Central Bank's audit committee and is the President of the Congolese Business Federation (FEC- Federation des entreprises du Congo), the country's main business lobby group. There is a clear conflict of interest in Yuma’s multiple roles in the private sector, the state mining company, and at the regulator of the financial system.

His Gecamines role requires him to be a caretaker of Congo's mineral wealth. However, Yuma’s FEC led business lobbying that shut down a revision of the mining law in early 2016 which could have increased the government’s tax take. The Mining Chamber of the FEC hailed the decision to drop revision of the law saying that “a more onerous code would drive investors away”.

Under Yuma, Gecamines has also avoided parliamentary scrutiny. In 2011, just a year after Yuma was appointed chairman of Gecamines and the company was “commercialized”, the head of the audit board of the Congolese National Assembly’s

‘ the 1990s,

Economic and Financial Committee told Bloomberg: “now that they're becoming a private company they don't tell us anything.”

Yet Gecamines has been turned into a commercial operation in name only. There are no private interests invested in Gecamines; the government owns all of its shares, which are not traded publicly. The “commercialization” has granted Gecamines the veneer of independence from government, while it remains very much under the control of those in power. The company benefits from its privileged position as the primary stateowned mining company by farming out mining licenses for huge fees and receiving signature bonus payments on contracts and royalties from mining projects. It is not competing on a level playing field with genuinely private companies in the sector.

For years Congo-focused local and international researchers, analysts, journalists and civil society organizations have described Gecamines as a black box: impenetrable, uncommunicative, opaque and ruthlessly ruled over by a narrow clique.

The cliche is as well-worn as the financial operations are a mystery. The (mis-)management of Gecamines is the subject of indiscreet conversation among Congolese and Congo-watchers across the world. What's less common is solid evidence of the alleged corruption inside the company.

Then, in October 2016, a bombshell dropped in the pages of Belgian daily newspaper Le Soir. A high-ranking member of a private bank in Kinshasa, BGFI, had come forward as a whistleblower, revealing information about transactions involving Gecamines. In December the New York Times reported on bank documents describing suspicious advance tax payments by Gecamines, some of which were made via the company's accounts at BGFI – the whistle-blower's bank.

Global Witness has separately obtained and reviewed the documents at the base of the New York Times story. The pieces of the story paint a picture of Gecamines as a cash machine for elites in Kinshasa, and Albert Yuma as a close ally of, and even commercial front for, President Kabila.

Read more on www.thepathfinderinternational .com

But then, in Gecamines collapsed after decades of looting by former President Mobutu Sese Seko. Michela Wrong’s book on the final years of Mobutu’s rule recalls the role of Gecamines’ cash in maintaining the ageing dictator’s grip on power.

’

PATHFINDER International, Aug., 2017 | 9

MAGAZINE

How democratic is the Nigerian 1999 Constitution (2)

T

he 1999 Constitution was not unveiled until after it had been used to conduct the first set of elections to end military dictatorship. In other words, citizens and candidates for elective posts had no idea of provisions of the constitution that the president and lawmakers were later to swear to protect. In the colonial era, especially between 1914 and 1951, colonial rulers had no apologies for creating such constitutions for Nigeria as a colony. In 1999, military rulers chose to deploy tactics of politics of silence on issues they would rather hide from the public.

The government of General Abubakar Abdulsalaam that succeeded the General Sani Abacha military presidency initiated a Transition to Democratic Rule process that included presidential, national, and subnational elections but avoided open discussion of a new constitution with the citizenry. Ironically, members of the group most involved in the struggle for an end to military rule, NADECO, also abandoned its demand for restructuring and a new constitution as it joined others to accept Abdulsalaam’s call for transition to civil rule.

Thus, efforts of citizens to have an input in the design of a constitution that protects individual rights and regulates or disciplines the tendency of the central government to crowd out values of subnational communities in a multiethnic state quickly collapsed, and the rest is history.

Through the military government’s choice of politics of omission, the last military administration, which like others before it that had deformed the country's federal constitution, was quick to neutralize demands for a new constitution that included citizens in negotiation for provisions of the constitution the Abdulsalaam regime had selected brokers to frame. It was clear to the military that agreed to withdraw from coercive governance that organizing a proper constitutional conference was likely to wipe out its marks on the polity, as such decision would enable citizens to bring into the open questions about military re-design of the country and offer new ideas about how to govern the country in relation to strident calls for political restructuring. The military thus opted for politics of omission, a process of issue-avoidance and opted to edit the 1979 Constitution, away from the gaze of the public.

High on the list of issues for avoidance by the military was (and still is) ‘constitutionalisation’ of cultural diversity of the country. Without allowing the people to express their wishes about what type of union they would prefer, appointed framers of the constitution returned a version of the 1979 Constitution that re-enacted non-justiciability of Chapter II of the 1999 Constitu-tion: Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy which provides for political, economic, social, educational, and environmental objectives of state policy. The most graphic paradox of the 1999 Constitution, like its 1979 version, is the non-justiciability of a chapter that states: it shall be the duty and responsibility of all organs of government, and of all authorities and persons, exercising legislative, executive or judicial powers, to conform to, observe and apply the provisions of this Chapter of the Constitution. What is the sense in creating duties that citizens have no power to enforce and that no court has the power to enforce?

That a document with such contradictions has been undergoing amendments for the past few years may sound promising to over-sanguine citizens, but the truth of efforts of the 8th National Assembly, like the one before it, is that most of the proposed amendments also avoid discussion of citizens' fear of some measure of veiled ethnocracy. Ethnocracy refers to what Holmes describes as “a single religious, linguistic, racial, or regional group” capable constitutionally of expelling, assimilating or subjugating all others. This situation appears to be encouraged by constitutional silence on the issue of a constitution that promotes mutual reinforcement between national and subnational governments.

The much-touted amendments by the National Assembly are more about reinforcing the interests of members of the ruling group: local government autonomy, creation of new states, provision of life pension benefits for principal officers of the Senate and the House, indigeneship versus citizenship, provision of space for independent candidacy in a country with over 30 registered political parties, etc.

Amending or appearing to amend the 1999 Constitution has been on for about five years.

This is an indication that constitutional amendment may have become another illustration of politics of omission or distraction. Like the military framers of the constitution, the lawmakers elected under the constitution also appear eager to narrow the agenda of constitutional debate by engaging in interminable exercise of constitutional amendment. As many of the proposed amendments only skirt the real issue about a constitution that shuts out citizens in the process of determining what provisions they want in the Basic Law that governs their interactions, there is need to stimulate a national conversation on a constitution that can save the country from self-distraction from good governance.

“It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide . . . whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force”.—Alexander Hamilton “Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details”.— Alexis de Tocqueville In the last piece, we argued that the authors of the 1999 Constitution failed to include the people in deliberating about the kind of constitution they would prefer. In other words, the constitution was not a product of agreement among citizens but an imposition from above. This omission has led to creation of a constitution that has failed to meet the standards of a democratic constitution: institutionalization of equality and liberty subscribed to directly by the people by way of referendum or agreement by duly elected delegates or representatives of the people.

Today's focus is on specific ways in which the 1999 Constitution has failed to meet the expectations of many of the nationalities in the federation about institutionalized equality and liberty.

In the 1960 Constitution, for example, equality takes two forms: equality of individuals and equality of regions. Equality of persons includes one-manone-vote principle and equality before the law. With respect to the regions, each region is given its own powers that cannot be arbitrarily taken over by the central government in the name

of federal legislative supremacy which is ubiquitous in the 1999 Constitution and in the 1979 version that served as template for it. Powers of the central government are about 12 on the exclusive list of the 1960 Constitution while regions (forerunners of states) had many concurrent functions and residual functions not subject to override.

For example, in the 1960 Constitution that grew out of attempts in 1951 to consult citizens and their representatives about the constitution of their choice, the central government has the following powers: Making grants of money, Implementation of treaties, Income tax and estate duty, Trade and commerce, Banks and banking, Electricity and gas, Authority to administer trusts and estates, Exhibition of cinematograph films, Exemption from Regional taxes with respect to mining, and Evidence. But in the 1999 Constitution, the Exclusive Legislative List ballooned from 12 to 68 items which range from railway to registration of business, without any room for residual functions and with the power of the central government to override the 30 items on the Concurrent legislative list.

Basically, the states under the two constitutions supervised by military governments: 1979 and 1999 have been emptied of the power to have control over their affairs. It needs to be added that unlike in the 1960 federal constitution, the 1999 Constitution gives the central government the power to allocate funds to states and local governments from monies collected into the Federation Account, thus making it possible for some states to collect more than they put into the joint account and other states to collect less than they put into it, all in the name of even development and quest for unity.

For example, persons who have visited both Lagos and Kano cannot but squint while reading newspaper reports of larger allocation of funds to Kano than to Lagos.

Consequently, the principle of shared governance under the 1960 Constitution was destroyed by the 1999 Constitution. This is enough for citizens who experienced active governance at the regional level between 1960 and 1975 to feel alienated under a constitution that has reduced the states to mendicants running after handouts from a central

government which has the function of dispensing funds from the Federation Account.

Funds pooled into the federation account is divided among states not on basis of productivity but largely on basis of landmass and population of each state. This is regardless of undying controversy over census since 1960. Further, local government creation which used to be exclusively under the jurisdiction of regions are cast in stone under the 1999 constitution.

As a result, all the changes in the relationship between central and subnational levels of government in the 1999 Constitution destroyed the principle of equal opportunity among the four regions to the extent of making citizens feel that their states have been turned into colonies of the central government. Again, the consequence of this arrangement is alienation of citizens from governance. Citizens in states that are not lucky to have supplied the principal executive officers and their legislative counterparts perceive themselves as orphans of the federal republic.

Such citizens, regardless of their social status feel frustrated and suffocated by a constitution that they feel has denied them of the liberty experienced under the pre-1966 constitution. States are turned into cry-babies who make a career of shouting against marginalization.

Similarly, the concept of liberty, which under the 1960 constitution recognized the human rights of individual citizens and regions to have control over their affairs, seems to have been compromised in the 1999 Constitution. Having rendered Chapter II: Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy non-justiciable, the 1999 Constitution, reads more like a memorandum of agreement between two business partners: the central government as major investor and the states as minor investors. The memorandum not only gives the largest share to the central government, it also empowers it to share dividends to states without any recourse to the contribution each state makes to the success of the business.

To say that the 1999 Constitution has become an albatross around the neck of the nation and the nationalities that constitute it is to say the obvious. Since almost two decades of its existence, many citizens — high and low — having been calling for restructuring and people's constitution in the belief that the Turn to page 10

10 | PATHFINDER International, Aug., 2017

MAGAZINE How democratic is the Nigerian Constitution (2) Contd. from page 9 1999 Constitution had defederalized the country in a way that makes the country unstable and economically stagnant.

Now that the country is at its lowest ebb economically is a good time to pay attention to those calling for refederalization of the polity and economy. Reading ulterior motives into every call for restoration of federalism will only amount to distraction from the real problem. For example, efforts by partisan pundits to devalue Atiku Abubakar’s call for restructuring as campaign rhetoric ahead of the 2019 presidential election are unnecessary.

If potential candidates from the northern part of the country that has been very resistant to demand for a new constitution are now ready to join the conversation about imperative of re-federalization, it is wise to give such politicians the benefit of the doubt. The conviction of the Atikus in the country should be encouraged, as doing so will en c o u rag e m o re o f s u ch believers in the role of federalism in development of a multiethnic nation in all regions of the country to join the national debate about how to re-design Nigeria for peace, harmony, and sustainable unity, peace, democracy and development.

Finally, the column welcomes formalization in a book form of General Alani Akinrinade's decades-long conviction about the inevitability of federalism in a country of huge religious and cultural diversity as Nigeria. The General's recently launched “My Dialogue with Nigeria” brings to focus his bravery as a soldier during and after the civil war as many of his military compatriots acknowledged. In addition, Akinrinade's views on the need for re-federalization to enable the entire country enjoy benefits of the nation's survival of the civil war in which millions of citizens perished, all in the belief that Nigeria was worth saving is in order. For someone who had participated in the civil war heroically and taken part in many of the governments that de-federalized the country, it is a mark of high intellectual courage and humility (qualities that had never been new strange to him) to acknowledge in a book that de-federalization of the country through enthronement of a unitary constitution masquerading as a federal one is not a wise thing to do by anyone who wants a peaceful, harmonious, united, and prodevelopment multiethnic Nigerian federation. With such avant-garde political views coming not only from Akinrinade, Atiku, and many of the country's leading politicians at the recent book launch, the new challenge is to turn the debate about federalism into a search for the type of constitution the country needs.

“Constitutions operate as constraints on the governing ability of majorities; they are naturally taken as antidemocratic. But constitutional provisions serve many different

interests. They may be liberal or illiberal; different constitutions, and different parts of the same constitution, protect different interests. We may distinguish, for example, between structural provisions and rights provisions.

Structural provisions are usually intended to minimize the pathologies associated with one or another conception of democracy. Thus, for example, a system of separation of powers is typically intended either to limit the power of factions—or to reduce the likelihood that representatives will pursue their own interest rather than those of the public generally. The two fears of factional tyranny and self-interested representation have often been important motivating forces behind structural provisions. . . . Rights provisions are designed to fence off certain areas from majoritarian control”.—Cass R. Sunstein To borrow a method of debate from Robert Dahl in his book What is democratic about the American Constitution?, particularly his decision to emphasize changing how Americans think about their constitution, the rest of this series will focus on some of the concepts that drive the 1999 Constitution, with the hope of illustrating provisions that are more likely than not to militate against stability, harmony, and unity.

The epigraph above raises two important issues about efforts by constitutions to constrain the governing group: structural provisions and rights provisions.

These are issues that are discussed in different ways by pundits who complain about the 1999 Constitution. With respect to structural provisions, the current constitution adheres partially to the principle of separation of powers. Like the 1979 before it, it copies the principle of horizontal distribution of power among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. But it overlooks the fact that in a federal system, power sharing between national and subnational government — region or state — is also an indispensable part of separation of powers.

Until 1914, Nigeria was governed as two regions: Northern and Southern protectorates. After amalgamation in 1914, it was governed as one country in a unitary way. The

constitutional conference of 1946 came to terms that a multinational country required a different governance model and by 1951, Nigeria embarked on a federal system, such that it was possible for southern regions to obtain self-government two years before the Northern region. The argument of Richards and particularly Macpherson, as well as of those Nigerian leaders who participated in the constitutional conference was that there was need for separation of powers between the central government and the regional governments.

By investing all the powers in the central government, the 1999 Constitution sacrificed the principle of separation of powers in terms of division of powers between two levels of government through adding more functions to the Exclusive list and nominally sharing functions on the concurrent list with states with one hand and compromising such sharing on the other through the power of the national assembly to override the choice of states on any issue on the concurrent list.

What is the logic for omitting vertical separation of powers that is integral to federal governance while keeping horizontal separation of government into its three arms?

Vertical separation of powers is a bedrock principle of federal governance, and a reliable checking and balancing mechanism in federal systems.

What choice of structural provisions in the 1999 Constitution has done is to knowingly or unknowingly increase the possibility of factional tyranny, the type that regions and later states experienced in the hands of military dictators and now under elected governments. One question is whether citizens in all parts of the country would have consented to this if they had been consulted before the crafting of the 1999

‘

Until 1914, Nigeria was governed as two regions: Northern and Southern protecto-rates.

After amalgamation in 1914, it was governed as one country in a unitary way. The constitutional conference of 1946 came to terms that a multinational country required a different governance model and by 1951, Nigeria embarked on a federal system, such that it was possible for southern regions to obtain selfgovernment two years before the Northern region.

’

Constitution, given the circumstances that smashed MKO Abiola's 1993 victory of the presidential election? The answer to this question is NO, and the departing military dictatorship of Abdulsalaam Abubakar and his coterie of military advisers were fully aware that the election after the death of Abiola would have taken a back seat to constitutional negotiation.

Another area that is overlooked by critics of the current constitution is the concept and practice of majoritarian rule in a country in which citizens have different cultural and value systems and do not have a hand in the constitution that circumscribes those that govern them. Under the “winner-take-all” electoral system, there seems to be an attempt by the constitution to promote a 'triumphalist majoritarianism' in the country.

In a recent interview of Ango Abdullahi about the contribution of the Southwest to General Buhari's victory at the presidential election, he argued that the North had the votes to give Buhari victory. He said if Buhari had failed to get southwest votes, he still would have been qualified for a second ballot and that he would have won a simple majority even if the only votes he got were just from the north. This kind of majoritarian rule is dangerous for multiethnic nations, as it is capable of engendering distrust among federating units.

Until we are clear about under what conditions all sections of the country want to participate in the Nigerian Union, it is better to just have unicameral legislature that is constituted the same way that the current senate is: equal representation from each state or region. This will save the country from the triumphalism suggested in the claim that one region has the power to determine who governs the c o u n t r y, b u t t h i s m u s t accompany reduction in the functions of the central government. In addition, it will also encourage decision-making by consensus, rather than the possibility of factional tyranny inherent in a winner-take-all system in which votes from nonnorthern states are not crucial to determination of who becomes president or which region constitutes the ruling majority in both presidential and the legislative elections.

Another contradiction in the constitution is in respect of Sec214-(1): “There shall be a Police Force for Nigeria, which shall be known as the Nigeria Police Force, and subject to the

provisions of this section no other police force shall be established for the Federation or any part thereof.” Although the same constitution recognizes distinctions between Federal and State crimes, and the existence of state courts to adjudicate state crimes, it sees no contradiction in preventing states from creating law enforcement institutions to curb crime. Isn't the noise about the police handling of the recent Ife crisis an illustration of tensions that can arise from builtin contradictions in a document that should ordinarily not harbor any ambiguity?

It seems that those who are opposed to sovereign or constitutional conference believe that the 1999 Constitution protects their special interests in ways that they are not ready to admit openly. No country can claim to have a constitution, if significant portions of the population complain that such constitution was crafted behind their backs and against their interests. No country that requires national unity can afford to ward off calls for a people's constitution. Those trying to label demands for a new constitution (as indirect attempt to destroy the unity of the country)may have joy in playing the ostrich, but the reality worldwide is that traces of domination of others in a federal system often leads to self-help on the part of federating units. The Soviet Union is a case in point.

If anything, a constitution that says one of its chapters is not binding or euphemistically calls it non-justiciable should worry all democrats. A constitution that foists imperial presidency on the people even when many clamor for parliamentary system, all in the name of majoritarianism appears not to be genuinely concerned about unity. Any constitution that comes into force through a process that avoids to 'hear' from many of its citizens and federating units is taking a great risk with its shelf life. That the National Assembly has chosen to privilege legislative sovereignty above sovereignty of the people by seemingly making a career of constitutional amendment may give impressions of legislative activity, the type that may make such activity perpetual. Demands for a properly negotiated and ratified constitution by the people are not likely to go away, for as long as citizens feel (as many currently do) prevented from having a chance to sit down to determine the provisions which they prefer to constrain all ruling groups at the federal and state or regional levels, as was the case when Nigerians went into nationhood voluntarily in 1960. n

PATHFINDER International, Aug., 2017 | 11

MAGAZINE

One woman’s fight to claim her ‘Blackness’

W

hen Maíra Mutti Araújo speaks, she draws out her vowels and pronounces them with a distinctively sharp tone. Her accent is immediately recognizable to Brazilians as typical of Salvador, a coastal city in the country’s northeast that is as famous for its beaches as its rich African heritage. Araújo grew up in Salvador, just like her mom.

Her dad, who grew up in a rural town eight hours away, has lived there since college. She has her mom's features — a broad nose, full lips — and her dad's nutbrown complexion.

Araújo comes from a bookish family. Her parents met when they were both chemistry majors at a local university — they now work as middle school chemistry teachers. She got her law degree at the Federal University of Bahia, one of the country’s most prestigious. During her time in law school, Araújo began to consider a career in the civil service. She interned at the Federal Attorney General’s Office in Salvador while still a student and took a job as an analyst at the government accountability office in Manaus, in the state of Amazonas, after graduation. Her goal was to eventually become a prosecutor.

“I love arguing cases,” Araújo says, “that whole process of taking a case and finding a solution for it.” As a prosecutor, she says, “you're responsible for propelling the case forward. The outcome depends on your approach.”

In late 2015, Araújo set her sights on an attractive job opening for a prosecutor back in her hometown, in the Salvador municipal department. Everyone encouraged her to apply using a relatively new affirmative action option. “You of all people! You have to do it,” Araújo’s boss at the time told her. “If I had the chance to apply as a quotas candidate, I would totally go for it,” her friends said. “And you do! So apply!”

Since 2011, lawmakers in the state of Bahia and in Salvador, its capital, have enacted a series of measures aimed at tackling racial inequality. These include legal measures banning discrimination against followers of Afro-Brazilian religions, the creation of a committee to combat institutional racism, and racial quotas for government jobs. The policy efforts in Bahia reflected a national wave of legislation spurred by the landmark Statute of Racial Equality signed in 2010 by thenPresident Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. After decades of fighting to be heard, Brazil’s black activist movements saw the concerns of the country’s black population — the largest, by some measures, of any country outside of Africa — become a political priority.

In 2012, the same year Araújo graduated from law school, Brazil's Federal Supreme Court unanimously ruled that racebased quotas in universities were constitutional. Two years later, then-President Dilma Rousseff signed a law that guaranteed 20 percent of public sector jobs at the federal level for candidates

The experience of a young lawyer raises difficult questions about race, belonging, and the bureaucracy of affirmative action in a country lauded for its egalitarian history. Report by CLEUCI DE OLIVEIRA, a journalist based in Brasília.

(Maíra Mutti Araújo at her parents' home in Salvador, Bahia, in June. (Photo credit: EDGAR AZEVEDO for Foreign Policy)

who identified as negro — the Portuguese term used by the census department and embraced by black rights activists to denote African heritage and which encompasses the identities of preto (black) and pardo (brown or mixed-race).

Bahia lawmakers went even further, reserving 30 percent of jobs in state and municipal departments for negro candidates. Like many such laws in Brazil, it will come up for review in 10 years.

That Bahia now provides the most extensive affirmative action mandates out of all Brazilian states is demographically fitting. Since the 1940s, Salvador has held a cherished reputation among locals and international visitors as the “Black Rome” of the Americas.

Currently, more than threequarters of baianos, as people from the state are called, identify as black or brown. According to the most recent census, Salvador is the blackest state capital in the country.

Bahia’s most prominent black leaders have celebrated recent equality measures — such as the decree in Salvador that formalized racial quotas for municipal jobs, like the prosecutor position that piqued Araújo’s interest. “Thank God! This measure couldn't be more appropriate,” Luislinda Valois, Brazil's current human rights minister and the country's first black woman to become a judge, said in a statement. “Bahia, the cradle of black culture, has set an example through Salvador.”

Araújo felt apprehensive about using the quotas option, despite its public embrace, to apply to

the prosecutor job. Wary of the stigma she knew was attached to it, she feared that her future coworkers would think less of her and assume she hadn’t scored high enough to get the job through regular hiring channels.

It was a stereotype she had encountered before: After learning that she had a law degree from a federal university, an acquaintance had reacted by saying, “Oh, so you’re a cotista” — the Portuguese word to describe affirmative action students and hires, which can be neutral or carry negative connotations depending on the context. She hadn’t, in fact, used the quotas option to apply to college. (“It doesn’t matter if I apply as an affirmative action candidate or not. People will assume that I'm a cotista anyway, because they judge you based on the color of your skin.”)

“But I learned from that experience,” she says. “It doesn't matter if I apply as an affirmative action candidate or not.

People will assume that I’m a cotista anyway, because they judge you based on the color of your skin.” So she heeded her friends’ advice. In 2015, she applied to become a prosecutor at the Salvador municipal department. On her application form, she put her race down as pardo.

What Araújo did not anticipate was that specifying her racial identity would, within a year, see her disqualified as a job candidate, facing the possibility of criminal charges for fraud, and vilified by the community of black activists in her hometown.

Brazil’s most recent census

came out in 2010. Over a threemonth period, from August to October of that year, census workers interviewed members of 67.6 million households across all 5,565 of the country’s municipalities at the time, gathering data on marital status, living standards, education, employment, and racial identity, among other topics. The results revealed something remarkable: For the first time since the 19th century, Brazil had more nonwhite citizens than white ones. In no other racial category was this surge more pronounced than among pardos — those who think of themselves as brown or mixed-race. While the numbers for white and preto people barely shifted, that of pardos swelled from 38.5 to 43.1 percent of the population between 2000 and 2010 — a shift for which birth and death records alone cannot account.

The demographic change became headline news. For the census department, and several academics, it suggested that millions of Brazilians who had previously gone to great lengths to be seen as white now took pride in being pardo. “The sense among scholars is that black identity went through a process of destigmatization,” says Verônica Toste Daflon, a sociologist and the author of So Far, So Close: Identity, Discrimination and Stereotypes of Black and Brown Brazilians.

The uptick in pardo identification coincided with heightened media and political attention to the Afro-Brazilian experience.

For years, conversations about black identity and pride, and the need for reparative measures to

make up for historical injustices, had steadily become mainstream.

In June 2010, just before census data collection began, Brazil passed the Statute of Racial Equality. Among other things, the statute added an Afro-Brazilian history requirement to the public school curriculum and ordered government departments to come up with diversity-boosting initiatives. Although it stopped short of setting up racial quotas, the statute laid the groundwork for the monumental legal decisions that would eventually lead to their establishment across public universities and the civil service. “I don’t know if we can uncouple measures like the racial quotas from the recent increased sense of worth felt by nonwhite Brazilians,” Daflon says. At their root, she explains, “quotas are an admission of past injustice.”

They engender pride of specific struggles.

Brazil is well known for its ethnic diversity, and people often speak about its racially mixed population in celebratory terms.

In a 2012 interview with Live Science, Stephen Stearns, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University, sought to illustrate how humanity will become more genetically homogenous over time. A few centuries from now, we're all going to look like Brazilians, he said. In the 1940s, some of Brazil’s leading sociologists advanced the theory that the country was a “racial democracy” — truer to the melting pot ideal than the United States was. But the national pride for the country’s comparatively harmonious relations obscured the brutal history that forged its Turn to page 12

12 | PATHFINDER International, Aug., 2017

MAGAZINE

One woman’s fight to claim her blackness Contd. from Page 11

multiracial people.

Brazil trafficked and enslaved 11 times as many Africans as colonial North America. It was also the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery, in 1888. Compared with the nearly 5 million Africans who arrived on Brazilian shores as slaves, Portuguese settlers comprised a small fraction of the colonial population. The vast majority were men, who often took up with indigenous and black slaves — usually by force.

As the sociologist Edward Telles writes in Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil, “[M]ixedrace Brazilians were largely spawned through sexual violence throughout the period of slavery.”

By the turn of the century, a complex hierarchy based on skin color, facial features, hair texture, education, and elocution, among other qualities, came to dominate the Brazilian social contract.

Even before slavery was abolished, the mixed-race Brazilians who resulted from these unions enjoyed freedoms not available to those with darker skin tones. Many thrived as small-scale farmers, for instance, and a few reached stratospheric heights: André Rebouças, whose grandmother had been a slave, rose to become one of Brazil’s most important engineers in the late 19th century. By the turn of the century, a complex hierarchy based on skin color, facial features, hair texture, education, and elocution, among other qualities, came to dominate the Brazilian social contract.

Unlike the United States, postabolition Brazil did not enact “anti-miscegenation” or “separate but equal” laws, so race relations evolved with relative fluidity. The end result was that, contrary to America, where even a single black ancestor several generations removed marked a pers on as legally black, Brazilians came to define blackness as a matter of physical appearance. According to the late sociologist Oracy Nogueira — arguably the most influential scholar of Brazilian constructions of race — the American concept of “passing” as white is a moot one in Brazil, where simply looking white makes one so.

The quotas implemented in universities and government

departments were born of attempts to push back against this pervasive colorism — the privileging of light skin over dark. Activists stress the importance of black representation in positions of power — particularly by those who, on account of having a darker complexion or markedly black features, do not benefit from a fluid racial identity that could otherwise see them classified as white. Which is why activists’ frustrations have grown over what they argue are light-skinned pardos taking advantage of hard-won affirmative action policies that were not fought for with them in mind.

“I’ve always suspected that it had to do with my hair,” Araújo says, about what she calls the “racial soap opera” that she has endured since applying to the prosecutor job. In the photograph she submitted with her questionnaire — a requirement for all candidates who identified themselves as preto or pardo — her hair falls primly behind her shoulders in a fine, black sheet.

But the flat style is nothing like her natural hair. Photos from her teenage years reveal a thick mane of densely packed ringlets.

“I wear my hair like this as a personal choice,” she says. “It's just easier to deal with.” (“I’ve always looked different,” Araújo says, “and so my mom raised me specifically in a way so that I never felt inferior because of the color of skin.”)

Araújo is now 28 years old.

When she was growing up, she could tell that she was one of the darker-skinned members of her family. “My sister’s skin tone is slightly lighter than mine,” she says. “Many of my cousins are blonde. And so I’ve always been seen as the pretinha of the family.” (The Portuguese word pretinha translates loosely as “little black girl.” It is a term of endearment within a tight kinship.) “I've always looked different,” Araújo says, “and so my mom raised me specifically in a way so that I never felt inferior because of the color of skin.”

Pregnant with her first child, she lives with her fiancé, who is also a lawyer, in a sparsely furnished apartment in Santarém, in the state of Pará.

They both moved there recently after getting jobs in the state's justice department. (Pará, unlike

Bahia, does not have racial quotas for state-level government jobs; she got the job through the one and only general admissions process.)

The job she wanted, of course, was the one back in Salvador, in the municipal department. She had thrown herself into the grueling first round of the application process, which consisted of three lengthy exams. In March, the department posted online a list of candidates who had scored high enough to qualify for the second round — résumé assessment.

She knew that a race check would come next. The official document detailing the application process specified that quota candidates who got through the first round would be submitted to a verification exam, “which may take the form of a photo examination or some other means,” it read. The instructions mirrored similar verification requirements in place in government departments across the country and have steadily gained legitimacy in the eyes of the Brazilian judiciary. In August 2016, the Civil Service Department, stressing the urgent need to combat race fraud, issued monitoring instructions to all governmental bodies, recommending the implementation of “verification committees comprised of members distributed by gender, race, and geographic origin.” But these directives are not standardized, and individual verification strategies vary across the country.

In the case of the prosecutor position in the Salvador municipal department, this comprised a photo submission and a one-page questionnaire.

“Back then, the idea of a verification process made sense to me,” Araújo says. But the questions — like “Are you currently dating or have you previously dated a black or brown person?” and “Are most of your idols black or brown?”

— took her by surprise. “I found them offensive,” she says. “I don’t think they have any bearing on how a person defines their racial identity.”

Even among prominent black rights activists who have led the discussion about the need for verification panels, views diverge over the most appro-

priate methods for implementing them. Lívia Sant'Anna Vaz, a prosecutor and the coordinator of a human rights and antidiscrimination group operating out of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, objects to the questionnaire Araújo had to fill out.

“Having black idols doesn't tell you whether a person is black,” she says. For Vaz, the primary test should be the candidates’ phenotypical characteristics: their facial features, hair type, and skin tone. “What prevails in Brazil is the kind of racism based on physical traits, not ancestry,” Vaz says.

For Friar David Santos, the head of the nonprofit Educafro and arguably the country’s most prominent black rights activist, admissions committees should adopt a gradient-based elimination process for nonwhite candidates. “Pretos should gain immediate admission, followed by darker-hued pardos,” he told me. “Mid-range pardos? Only if there are spaces left. And under no circumstances are lightskinned pardos to gain admission through quotas.”

The anonymous three-person verification committee that assessed Araújo’s questionnaire answers and scrutinized her photograph delivered its verdict in May: Araújo did not display the required “Afro-descendant phenotype” to qualify as pardo.

The panel did not elaborate any further.

Nor was it required to. The secrecy under which these committees tend to operate has been a source of consternation since the Federal Supreme Court ruled racial quotas constitutional in 2012. Justice Gilmar Mendes, who delivered a favorable vote in the 2012 decision, nonetheless called verification systems “hard to justify” and “far from being fool-proof.”

“We appear to have granted this supposedly enlightened group a power that nobody wants to possess,” Mendes wrote in his opinion, “to determine who is white and who is black in a highly mixed society.” He warned that such an approach could lend itself to “eventual involuntary distortions,” but also “entirely voluntary distortions of character,” and concluded by writing that “the idea of a racial tribunal evokes the memory of sinister things.”

Shocked at the panel’s decision, Araújo filed an appeal.

“Perhaps the ‘racial rigor’ utilized by the panel takes inspira-

tion from the standards of Nazi Germany’s Aryan racial courts!” she wrote. The anonymous panelists revisited their decision and issued a new ruling: She qualified for the quota system after all. “After careful consideration of the photograph at hand,” wrote one panelist, “I am of the opinion that the candidate is negro (preto or pardo).”

Araújo was back in the running for a Salvador municipal department prosecutor position. On May 18, 2016, almost nine months after she started applying for the job, the department posted the final results online: She had placed third out of more than 1,000 lawyers who had initially signed up as quota candidates.

The candidates, who had applied for the job from all over the country, had five days from the electronic summons to arrive in Salvador. Araújo lived in the state of Amazonas at the time and says she had no choice but to pay for an “extremely expensive lastminute flight.” Erick Magalhães Santos, a dark-skinned candidate who lived in Brasília, more than 600 miles away from Salvador, chose not to incur the cost. “I didn't think I scored high enough on the tests to get the job in the end,” he told me. Candidates like Santos who did not show up were disqualified.

The group verification session, held on a Wednesday during regular work hours, was open to the public. A few people came to observe the proceedings, but most of those present were the candidates about to be inspected.

“We all just kept looking around, sizing each other up,” Araújo says. “Everyone seemed incredibly embarrassed to be there.” One by one, they were called to the front, where five experts — “all of them preto, none of them pardo” — sat in a row on a raised platform. Araújo, like those who went before and after her, handed the panelists her ID and took her place on a chair in front of them.

“I felt like a zoo animal,” she says, as they examined her appearance while whispering among themselves. According to Araújo, the session took no more than three minutes. The only time they addressed her directly was to confirm her last name.

The results were posted on the job application website: Thirteen candidates were officially recognized as black or brown, while nine had their racial self-identification rejected.

Read more on www.thepathfinderinternational .com

“

Even before slavery was abolished, the mixed-race Brazilians who resulted from these unions enjoyed freedoms not available to those with darker skin tones. Many thrived as small-scale farmers, for instance, and a few reached stratospheric heights: André Rebouças, whose grandmother had been a slave, rose to become one of Brazil’s most important engineers in the late 19th century. By the turn of the century, a complex hierarchy based on skin color, facial features, hair texture, education, and elocution, among other qualities, came to dominate the Brazilian social contract.

”

PATHFINDER International, Aug. 2017 | 13

MAGAZINE

Israel’s secret program to get rid of African refugees Contd. from last edition

By Andrew Green

T

he official also showed him a letter, allegedly from the Rwandan government, guaranteeing that he would be granted a onemonth tourist visa when he arrived in the country. The official handed over the promised $3,500 in U.S. dollars.

Semene wondered why he was getting a one-month tourist visa when he had been told he would be receiving asylum. He also wondered why the laissez-passer was valid for only two weeks. He said he quizzed the official about both apparent discrepancies, but was assured any issues would be sorted out when he arrived in Kigali. Not quite convinced, he took photos of the documents with his cell phone, which he later showed me. A few days later, he received a call telling him to get ready. He would be leaving on Dec. 22. Despite his growing skepticism of everything the Israeli authorities were telling him, he decided to approach the trip with guarded optimism. It had been more than seven years since he fled a life of endless military service in Eritrea and more than half a year since he'd been incarcerated in Israel. He wanted desperately to believe that Rwanda would be the place where he would finally be free.

The pistachio-colored house where Semene and dozens of other Eritreans were held in Kigali sits at the end of a deeply gashed dirt road. About 50 yards away, down a steep embankment, there is a small kiosk painted Coca-Cola red, where men from the neighborhood often gather to drink sodas and chat. One day last spring, I stopped by to see if they had ever noticed any unusual activity at the house atop the hill. Through a translator, they explained that groups of “foreigners” regularly stayed there. Sometimes they could be spotted pacing on the white-trimmed balconies. None ever seemed to venture outside the house's heavy black gate and they were always gone after a few days.

Later, I trudged up the hill and knocked on that gate. It swung open to reveal two young Rwandan men lazily sweeping the driveway. I asked if I could speak to the owner. They indicated that he wasn't home, but passed along a phone number. When I dialed it, a man who identified himself only as Robert acknowledged that the house was indeed his. Yes, he intermittently hosted visitors from Eritrea. In fact, a group had just left a few days earlier.

He explained that he had begun renting out the house to unknown groups of foreigners more than a year earlier after a friend of his — a driver who

works at the airport — called to see if he could host some people who would be spending a few days in the country. Robert agreed, he said, because the house was vacant at the time.

Since then he has accommodated a handful of groups, he told me. The process is always the same: The driver friend calls him a few days before a new party is set to arrive and Robert sends workers to prepare the house for them. The foreigners stay for a few days — never more than three — and then leave. He didn't know to where. He had never met any of them.

When I started to press Robert for more details — How much was he paid? Did the driver work for the government? — he grew cagey and insisted we meet in person. We set a time for the following day. When I called back to confirm the location, he hung up on me and declined each of my subsequent calls.

It is unclear whether the driver friend is John, the man who picked Semene and the other Eritreans up from the airport, or someone working for him. It is also unclear whether John is actually an immigration official or just posing as one. But in a country as notoriously repressive as Rwanda it is almost inconceivable that anyone regularly bypassing immigration isn't operating with the blessing of senior government officials. (My calls from different lines to a number allegedly belonging to John have gone unanswered for months.)

What happens to those asylum-seekers who refuse John's offer to be smuggled into Uganda is yet another mystery.

Kabtom Bereket, an Eritrean who arrived separately from Semene in July 2014, told me that several members of his sixperson group asked to visit the UNHCR offices in Kigali

immediately after they arrived at the house from the airport. John refused their request, Bereket said, telling them, “We are immigration. There is the security on the gate. You stay here.” No one in the group was allowed out of the house, according to Bereket, which is also a pseudonym, until they all left to cross illegally into Uganda.

“Of the at least 1,400 other asylum-seekers who have arrived in Kigali from Tel Aviv over the last three years — the figure Israeli officials provided in court — Semene is certain that the vast majority have been smuggled out of the country.”

Some Eritreans have managed to escape the house. According to documents from the UNHCR office in Tel Aviv, Rwandan authorities have arrested at least four of the asylum-seekers who attempted to stay in Kigali on charges of lacking documentation. Others, though UNHCR won't say how many, have approached UNHCR staff in Kigali for support, claiming to have relocated from Israel. Of the at least 1,400 other asylumseekers who have arrived in Kigali from Tel Aviv over the last three years — the figure Israeli officials provided in court — Semene is certain that the vast majority have been smuggled out of the country.

Across the border in Uganda, UNHCR officials haven't heard of even a single successful asylum applicant among the Sudanese arriving directly from Tel Aviv or the Eritreans arriving from Rwanda, though they are aware of multiple rejections from among this pool. This is strange because Uganda has one of the most progressive refugee policies in the region. Nearly 3,300 Sudanese are currently registered as refugees in Uganda, according to the UNCHR office in Kampala. The

problem seems to be exclusive to those being resettled from Israel.

Sudanese I spoke to in Kampala said they have now learned not to mention Israel anywhere in their asylum applications.

Officials in the office of Uganda's prime minister, which oversees the country's immigration procedures, offered no explanation for the rejected asylum claims of migrants arriving via Israel. Rwandan officials do admit having discussed a deal with Israel to accept asylum-seekers, but say that no agreement was ever reached. It may be that the Ugandan and Rwandan governments do not want to answer questions about what they are receiving in exchange for accepting refugees. (Speculation among Israeli activists centers on weapons and cash.)

Unable to get asylum in Uganda, many Eritreans and Sudanese live in constant fear of the authorities. Within hours of his illegal scramble across the Rwandan border, in fact, Semene nearly landed behind bars. He and the other Eritreans in his group emerged from the borderlands thicket to find a van waiting on the Ugandan side that carried them the remaining 10 hours to Kampala. They arrived at a cheap hotel in the crowded, dusty area of downtown known as Old Kampala at 4 a.m. Five hours later, Ugandan security officials raided the hotel and arrested several of the asylumseekers. By that point, however, Semene had already split off from the group and melted into the neighborhood, his doubts having turned into outright distrust over the course of the journey.

More than a year later, he spends most of his evenings in a local bar watching football matches or playing pool. It is a short walk from the apartment he shares with a rotating group of

Eritrean refugees. Sometimes up to a dozen people cram into the one-room space. His world is now just a few blocks of Old Kampala, but he figures limiting his movement is the best way to avoid running into police officers or other security officials who might ask for his papers and then arrest him or demand a bribe when he is unable to produce them.

He is depressed, and also eaten up with resentment toward the Israeli government. This was not the life they promised him. “I am not safe here,” he said. “I am not safe anywhere.”

The linchpins of this system of human smuggling — and key to establishing whether the Israeli, Ugandan, and Rwandan governments are officially involved in it — are the men who pressure new arrivals from TelAviv to forget the promise of asylum and to cross illegally into third countries. Hassan Ali is one such man. He agreed to meet me on the condition that I not reveal his real identity. A squat 32-year-old Darfuri refugee, he steered me off a crowded Kampala street into a fried chicken restaurant with low ceilings and a greasy, tiled floor. He chose a side table and spoke in a quiet, quivering voice lost easily in the lunchtime bustle. He was among the very first asylumseekers in Israel to accept the proposed transfer to Uganda, he said. He had been in Israel since 2008 and sensed the mood toward asylum-seekers was growing increasingly hostile. He happened to have friends and family in Uganda, so when the offer came to relocate to Kampala in early 2014, he eagerly accepted.

But within weeks of his arrival, just as he was beginning to feel settled in his new life in the city, he started getting phone calls from a man he would identify only as Ismail. Ismail was also Sudanese and he needed Ali's help. Would he be willing to meet with groups of Turn to page 14

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MAGAZINE

Israel’s secret program to get rid of African refugees Contd. from page 14 new arrivals — mostly people Ali knew from his own time in Israel — and talk to them about resettling elsewhere? Ali is not sure how Ismail got his number or why he wanted Ali to be involved, but — for reasons he chose to keep vague — he decided he was willing to try. The requests from Ismail are relatively sporadic, but they have become more frequent.

Ali estimates that he has now met with at least a dozen groups of asylum-seekers.

He usually joins them on their second day at an upscale hotel called Forest Cottages, where the Sudanese flown from Tel Aviv are brought from the airport. Unlike their Eritrean counterparts in Rwanda, they are offered a brief respite before the pressure to relocate begins. But when the time comes, Ali is the one who applies that pressure.

He starts by talking about how much the men must be missing their families after years — and in some cases decades — away from Sudan. Except now, in Uganda, they are so much closer to home than they were in Israel. Using Ismail's connections, Ali says he can get them the rest of the way.

For $200, he will arrange the paperwork and logistics to transport them safely to South Sudan, the buffer between Uganda and Sudan. For $100 more, he can get them to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

Both countries harbor significant dangers. Sudan remains a police state, and killing continues in Darfur, though at a lower level than before. South Sudan is mired in a bloody civil war that has killed tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people and forced 1.7 million to flee the country. But the new arrivals in Kampala are discombobulated and often poorly informed. Ali fuels their confusion by telling them that Ugandan officials will hound them, blackmail them, and potentially deport them. South Sudan, because of the chaos there, actually seems to some refugees like a much easier place to disappear or to begin another journey toward a country that might actually grant them asylum.

The reasons other refugees chose to return to Sudan, despite the risk of arrest and torture, are much more straightforward: They believe their options are exhausted. They miss their homes.

They want to see their families.

Ali has learned to manipulate these fears and emotions. “I say, 'Welcome to Africa. If you tell me you're going to pass to Sudan, you come here, you will pass.' They're very happy,” he said. Dozens of people have taken Ali up on his offer, he says, at which point Ismail collects their information and money and hands it over to a man named George, the Ugandan minder who picked the new arrivals up at the airport — essentially the Ugandan version of John. Within hours of securing their agreement, George returns with individualized Ugandan travel documents stamped with South Sudanese entry visas.

I asked Ali about the level of government involvement in this scheme. After some prevarication, he conceded that Ugandan officials are not only aware of what is happening, but actively involved in pushing asylumseekers from Israel into South

African asylum-seekers sleep in Tel Aviv’s Levinski Park during a protest against Israel's immigration policies on Feb. 5, 2014. (Photo credit: JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images) UNHCR official in Kampala. that I heard of my grandparents.”

Sudan. “This is the secret they Some have drowned in the She said she understands why don't want to tell,” he said. But Mediterranean while trying to some Israelis are hesitant to open aside from the Ugandan travel reach Europe, friends and family the borders to large numbers of documents he claims to have seen members say. And at Holot, a refugees from outside the Jewish handed over to the asylumvideo circulated of Islamic State faith, but believes “we have a seekers, he had little evidence to fighters beheading three of the support his claims. That is, except moral obligation” to do so. men who agreed to resettle in The Israeli government, which, for one additional piece of paper: a Rwanda but were later caught in if not directly responsi-ble, is by permit granting him temporary Libya on their way, apparently, to now well aware that some of the residence in Uganda. attempt a Mediterranean crossing. asylum-seekers returned to Africa At the beginning of our Many proponents of the secret have been pressured into illegal conversation, he had showed me a transfer agreements are sympatborder crossings, clearly does not photo of the one-year legal hetic to the plight of the refugees, agree with Ovadia-Rosner. What's residency permit George had but argue that they pose a real not yet clear is whether Israeli secured for him from Uganda's danger to Israel — not just in terms courts do. In 2015, a coalition of Ministry of Internal Affairs. None of jobs lost or crimes committed Israeli human rights groups filed a of the other Sudanese asylumbut to the very nature of the Jewish petition challenging the legality of seekers I met had received state. They say that Israel tried to Israel’s policy of detaining anything similar from George, do its part, integrating tens of asylum-seekers unless they agree although several said they had thousands of asylum-seekers into to return to their country of origin asked for one. Ali only received a popula-tion of 8 million, but that or to accept a transfer to the the document, he acknowledged, the consequences were severe. unnamed third nations. They in exchange for helping Ismail.

“The neighborhoods have pretty sought to prove that, in the Before we parted ways, Ali much transformed,” said Yonatan Eritrean cases specifically, the offered to take me with him when Jakubowicz, who works at the the next group of Sudanese Israeli policy is effectively forcing Israeli Immigration Policy Center, the asylum-seekers to choose transfers arrived at Forest which has supported increasingly between possibly indefinite Cottages. But less than 10 minutes restrictive policies against the incarceration and a relocation after we left the restaurant, he asylum-seekers in recent years. process that strips them of any called to tell me the deal was off.

I met Jakubowicz in a Tel Aviv status or protection.

Apparently, he had phoned Ismail restaurant, across the street from But the petition, which was immediately after our meeting and an auditorium where he was had been lambasted for talking to a heard by a district court judge in scheduled to participate in a Beersheba — the largest city in the foreign journalist. Ali pleaded that debate that evening on Israel's Negev Desert — was ultimately I not mention him to any immigration policies. “While the rejected on the grounds that there government officials. He said I situation was never great, the local was “no evidence of persecution should forget his name and that we residents, they always say they or harassment by the authorities in had ever met. I followed up with had a sense of community. And the third country to which they Ismail, whose phone number Ali that way of life has been were removed.” The judge, had given me before we parted, threatened by the influx of these Rachel Barkai, based her decision but he stood me up for a meeting migrants,” he told me, adding that on evidence that she allowed to be the next day and refused to answer Israel had “turned into a main presented behind closed doors, additional calls. destination for migration from because of the confidential nature The Ugandan government has Africa and people were just of the agreements with the third consistently maintained it knows pouring in en masse.” countries. But according to Anat nothing about asylum-seekers Jakubowicz’s center supported Ben-Dor, the director of the being transferred from Israel, the closure of the border with Refugee Rights Clinic at Tel Aviv though reports of the arrivals from Egypt in 2013 and the creation of University and one of the lawyers Tel Aviv abound in the local Holot. The desert detention working on the case, it included media. Fred Opolot, then the facility is a kind of “sifting the findings of Israeli investigaspokesperson for the Ministry of system,” Jakubowicz told me.

Foreign Affairs, told me in April tors who traveled to Rwanda and People truly in need of asylum, he Uganda in May 2015. Their 2015, “We're making inquiries, argued, would rather spend a year interviews, Barkai wrote in her but no one is giving us a clear there than agree to return to their decision, “painted a positive lead.” Since then, Ugandan own country, as some of the picture regarding the integration officials have retreated from any asylum-seekers have done, or to process in the third country.” discussion of the issue beyond be relocated to an unknown third There is still a chance that the issuing blanket denials that any country. Elsewhere, he pointed deal with Israel exists. transfer program could be struck out, refugees have been content to down by an Israeli court. After As public opinion has turned live in camps that offer even less Barkai rejected their petition, the against asylum-seekers and Israel than Holot does. human rights organizations has become more insular, many His support for the third-country appealed the case to the country's Israelis believe their country is transfers appeared to waver, Supreme Court. The justices heard losing touch with its founding though, after I started telling him initial arguments early last year, values. Anat Ovadia-Rosner, the the stories of the refugees I had but the case is still pending. former spokesperson for the met in Rwanda and Uganda — Even as the judges deliberate, Hotline for Refugees and about their coerced departures, former residents of Holot are Migrants, a Tel Aviv-based legal about how they had been denied turning up in jails or dead in advocacy group, told me the asylum. “Most people aren’t countries across East and North situation makes her think of her aware of what's going on so Africa. At least three have been grandparents. “They were both in much,” he said. “Most people arrested in Kenya, according to Auschwitz, survivors of the believe that if the government says UNHCR officials in Tel Aviv, and Holocaust. When I hear the story they have an agreement with third another 40 were arrested of the asylum-seekers … it countries and that the Ministry of attempting to cross from Uganda reminds me exactly of the stories Justice and the Ministry of Interior into South Sudan, according to a

have gone there and sent representatives to check the situation, then they believe the situation is fine. That’s a good solution.”

But if Jakubowicz had begun to question the Israeli government's assurances about the transfers, he still didn't understand why people would continue to agree to be relocated if the situation in Rwanda and Uganda was as dire as I said it was. After all, new groups of asylum-seekers were signing up to leave nearly every week, despite the fact that many residents of Holot were in regular contact with friends and family members in East Africa who are likely informing them about what really happens there. I said I didn't have a good answer for him and that I would do my best to find out.

When I returned to Uganda in February 2016, I called Jamsom Berhane, one of the first asylumseekers from Israel I had met back in April 2015. Berhane, also a pseudonym, was born in Ethiopia, but to an Eritrean mother. In 1997, at the age of 20, he went to visit family in the Eritrean capital, Asmara. There he was arrested and, unable to convince the authorities that he was an Ethiopian citizen, conscripted into service. Over the next 10 years, he attempted to flee the Eritrean military at least a halfdozen times. In 2007, he was finally successful after he jumped, unnoticed, from a moving truck and took off running. He made his way from Sudan to Egypt and — in December — to Israel. After more than six years in Israel, he received his summons to Holot in April 2014. Four months later he agreed to be relocated to Rwanda.

Berhane had initially been happy to tell me his story, eager to make people aware of what had happened to him after he had agreed to be transferred to Rwanda.

But as we met and spoke regularly over the course of a year, he had become increasingly morose and reclusive. His money had run out and he was unable to find work. He lived off the goodwill of a distant cousin, but Berhane was afraid to ask too often for support. The result was a lot of skipped meals.

Still, he agreed to meet with me again at our usual location — an Ethiopian restaurant in the heart of Kampala’s nightclub district. After we exchanged greetings and I told him all the details of my trip to Israel, I posed Jakubowicz’s question to him: Given everything that had happened, would he accept Israel’s offer of the transfer again?

Yes, he told me, without hesitation. Though his life is miserable in Uganda, it offers a possibility now foreclosed in Israel, just as it had been in Eritrea and Sudan and Egypt. “I need freedom,” he said. “For 19 years, I am not able to move around. I'm thinking about my freedom. You have freedom and you do everything. You don’t have freedom, you close your mind.”

Ultimately, Israel never intended to give him his freedom, he said. To him, the lie Israeli officials told about asylum in Rwanda was merely the final confirmation of that fact. At least in Uganda, they have not yet put him in prison.

Berhane gestured for me to turn my recorder off. “I don’t want to speak about Israel anymore,” he said.

“Israel, it was my first mistake.”

Reporting for this story was supported with a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. n

PATHFINDER International, Aug., 2017 | 15

CARTOONS

16 | PATHFINDER International, Aug. 2017

NEWS

Meet the Gambian migrants under pressure to leave Europe T

he Gambia’s leader of 22 years, Yahya Jammeh, used to give Gambians good cause for claiming asylum, even if the majority were fleeing poverty rather than persecution.

But with the autocratic p r e s i d e n t ’s e x i t i n J a n u a r y, G a m b i a n s ' grounds for international protection have suddenly become shakier, making them prime EU targets for rapid return, although they are not the only ones.

Gambians are one of the top nationalities among the 93,000 mainly West African and Asian migrants who have arrived in Italy already this year. The majority, as in preceding years, are unlikely to qualify for asylum. And yet Italy, like most EU states, has had little success in forcibly returning them home or persuading them to leave voluntarily.

Italy’s threat to close its ports to foreign rescue vessels at the end of June prompted the EU to come up with an action plan promising more support, not only in deterring migrants from crossing the Mediter-ranean, but also in stepping up returns of those already on Italian soil.

Left to fester Ebrima Gaye was 17 when he disembarked a rescue boat in Pozzallo, Sicily in July 2016. He spent seven months in a centre for minors near Syracuse. After turning 18 in March, he was shunted around several times before being sent to the Frasca Centre in Rosolini.

Like many of the 2,000 extraordinary reception centres (CAS) scattered across Italy, Frasca was once a hotel. A white behemoth of a building, it sits on top of a scrubby hillside on the outskirts of town.

Residents congregate in a large living area with a pool table, where young men sit slumped on chairs, staring at their phones while daytime television babbles in the background. Others lie on their beds in dorms that sleep up to 30, immobilised by the stultifying heat and boredom.

The centre is meant to be an “emergency” shortterm facility, but the overwhelming demand on Italy’s reception system means camps like this one have become holding pens, while migrants' asylum claims move through the glacial legal system. Some residents have been there for a year.

Under Italian law, asylum seekers who have

By LOUISE HUNT — Freelance journalist and regular IRIN contributor specializing in social affairs and international development.

a residence permit can seek work, but residents reported that they had been forbidden from working while living in this centre.

Gaye’s asylum application was rejected in May and he is waiting to appeal the decision.

Almost a year after arriving, the reed-thin boy glumly admits he regrets making the journey.

Before leaving, Gaye worked as a barber in his home village on the banks of the River Gambia. “I am the firstborn son, so I contributed to my family, but the money I was saving was very small.

Many of my friends had taken 'the back way' [the irregular route to Europe via the Sahel and Libya], so I decided to go,” he said.

But Gaye's savings only got him as far as Agadez in Niger, then he had to beg his family to send him $2,400 to complete his journey.

Prisoners of hope Gambia’s new government has received unprecedented amounts of development aid from the EU to tackle its “back way” exodus with youth training and job creation programmes. But none of the young Gambians IRIN spoke to were persuaded by the promise of what has been dubbed “New Gambia”.

“I spent a lot coming here,” Gaye said. “I could have had a good business in Gambia, but now I've been here a year and I have gained nothing. So it is better I stay here and try to find something for my future first.”

In a camp for minors in

Messina, IRIN found another Gambian, Yahya Damfa*, much of the same opinion. “I'm not thinking about returning anyway,” said the 17year-old. “I haven't heard of any improvement yet (in The Gambia), I think it will take some time. I tell myself, 'if I have made it to Europe I'd rather manage here'.”

Once migrants like Gaye and Damfa have crossed the Mediterranean, the financial and psychological costs of the often-harrowing journey make the prospect of returning home empty-handed too much to bear. They become prisoners of hope.

That hope, however futile, combined with the EU’s poor record on returns are the fundamental factors perpetuating Europe's migration crisis, believes Gerald Knaus, chair of the European Stability Initiative, a Berlin-based think tank.

“Anybody from West Africa who makes it to Libya [and] survives the boat trip is in Europe forever, irrespective of whether they get refugee status or not. Unless this changes, the flow will continue,” he told IRIN. Low return rates L as t y e a r, 1 2 ,0 0 0 Gambians arrived in Italy, but just 15 were forcibly returned, according to Eurostat figures.

There is currently no readmission agreement with The Gambia. The Italian government attempted to negotiate one with Jammeh's government in early 2016, but was unsuccessful. The Ministry of the

Interior did not respond to IRIN’s request for information on whether new negotiations have started.

Knaus is hopeful that the Italian government will seriously consider ESI's policy proposal, which is being released this week. The so-called Rome Plan is based on a premise of “return realism”, explained Knaus, who was involved in drawing up the controversial EU-Turkey Agreement.

Knaus' new initiative urges the EU and member states to accept that poor countries that rely heavily on remittances currently have nothing to gain from taking back their citizens. According to the Rome Plan, member states should offer migrant-sending countries a certain amount of legal access in the form of scholarships or work visas in return for taking back their nationals who do not qualify for protection.

“Legal access has never before been linked to controlling irregular access,” Knaus said.

“With this [plan] you have less suffering, it benefits the development of the country of origin and it’s in line with the Refugee Convention.”

F o r n o w, I t a l y ’s response to its clogged up asylum and migrant reception system has been a series of immigration reforms introduced by interior minister Marco Minniti in April. They include the creation of 16 new repatriation centres. But without more readmission agreements with

countries of origin, detaining more irregular migrants in the new centres will be pointless, believes Flavio di Giacomo, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Italy.

“By law, migrants will only be able to stay [at the repatriation centres] for 60 days,” he told IRIN. “If they cannot be repatriated, they will get an order to leave by themselves. It will only increase Italy’s irregularity problem.”

The bottom line is that most Gambian migrants, who are unlikely to qualify for international protection or be deported, face a future of trying to survive in Italy's informal economy.

Hustling to get by In Catania and other Sicilian cities, each migrant nationality has a specialty: Bangladeshis clean car windscreens, young Nigerian women, most trafficked from Edo State, sell them-selves, and Gambians push drugs.

They loiter in alleyways in Catania's redlight district of San Berillo, sleep in derelict squats, and wheel their worldly possessions along the streets in shopping trolleys. One G a m b i a n t e e n a g e r, holding a can of beer, staggers over to slur a greeting to staff from Oxfam’s Open Europe programme, which supports irregularised migrants in Sicily. Back in Muslim-majority Gambia, such behaviour would be taboo.

Migrants like Mouhag Nyang, a 29-year-old Gambian, are completely

reliant on charities to support their needs.

Nyang, who arrived in Italy in 2014, has been living in a homeless shelter in Catania for the past two years since failing to qualify for protection.

Nevertheless, he would rather stay in Italy than return home. “For me, I see Italy is better; here they give us a place to sleep. I would have nothing to go back to in Gambia. My uncle sold my family compound to travel [the backway].”

Di Giacomo believes that helping more of these migrants to return home with at least a small amount of cash could go some way towards addressing the shame issue.

“Nobody wants to return empty-handed,” he explained. “AVR [Assisted Voluntary Return] is trying to solve this through reintegration packages worth 1,600 euros, plus they are given 400 euros in cash at the airport in Italy, so that there is a possibility to start again when they return.”

The EU's action plan urges Italy to partner with IOM to increase the use of AVR and reintegration procedures. However, only one Gambian has opted to return via the programme so far this year.

IOM is working with the Italian Ministry of the Interior to raise awareness with migrants about the opportunity to leave voluntarily with financial support, but di Giacomo is worried about a surge in demand. “We can only assist a maximum of 2,500 AVRs,” he said, adding that funding for AVR still represents only a small portion of the overall EU budget for returns.

For Gaye, such an opportunity could go some way towards addressing a difficult homecoming. “We are all praying to go back to our homeland, but to go back without achieving nothing is going to be so hard for me,” he said.

“My family would not agree to that, it would hurt them so much. Nobody wants to go back a loser.”

The production of this article has received funding from the Migration Media Award, funded by the EU. The information and views set out in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Neither the European Union institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein. n

PATHFINDER International, Aug. 2017 | 17

FEATURE

Obama, where are you? (2) Femi Ojo-Ade, a Professor Emeritus, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, USA, wrote on the emergence of President Trump and its avalanche of anti-African policies.

Contd. from last edition

B

ecause he is white, because he represents the idea of supremacy that they have been waiting for years for a rich man to spit out with promises of realization of dastardly dreams.

That brings us to the story of a black man, a popular black man in his time of triumph. As the reality TV of the Trump train was rolling across the screen, the networks conjured a “Breaking News” item. There he was, back slouched, dark glasses covering his bloated face, hanging on to a man leading him into the court-room. They say that he is legally blind.

He was in court on that day to continue in the charge against him by a former “female friend' now turned enemy because, according to her, Mr. Cosby had drugged and raped her in his apartment years ago while she was unconscious. Cosby's presence there on camera, more or less sharing the stage with Trump, gave one the opportunity to compare and contrast the fortunes, and misfortunes, of White and Black in America. To my mind, it was of particular interest given the matter of sex and gender in which the two men were embroiled. Note that, while Trump, as proud and confident as ever, strutted across the entertainment stage named America, Cosby, desperately discombobulated and ready to drop dead, was hiding behind dark glasses. A dozen woman came out to accuse Trump; more than fifty did Cosby the dishonor. Trump was in the news, he was the news; Cosby was an after-thought, a side show, after been in the limelight when he kept his place.

Some further comments on Cosby’s rise and fall is of necessity here. Young and talented, Cosby the comedian carefully and gradually carved a niche for himself in the entertainment world. He was black, and American. He was a comedian, first on stage as a stand-up, then on screen as a TV and movie actor. He was lowkey and courteous, avoiding controversy, especially issues of race and racism. While other

figure reduced Cosby to a mere blimp in the shadows.

And we cannot blot the image from our mind: To u c h i n g , f e e l i n g , bumping, pushing and pulling, caressing and kissing, the man is a trumpeter touting his trysts in a society where, notwithstanding the pomposity of development and democracy, as well as laws that should place them beside men in terms of rights, women are yet to attain true equality Cosby, one must admit, has apparently suffered from the disease of whitewomania, that condition whereby a black man, all in heat and sweating from head to toe, seeks temporary cure by being with and mating with a white woman, or simply touching her. No, that has no scientific origin, but the disease is easy to witness in certain quarters. It all dates back to history.

Certain existential conditions have been forced upon us by the selfproclaimed masters of the universal plantation, proponents of caucasoidland engaged in neo-Aryan supremacism. Stereotypy prevails. They say Black is l a z y, p r o m i s - c u o u s , instinctive, raw power, all rhythm and no reason, ugly ape-monkey-chimpgorilla, jungle man, sexhungry, unintelligent, shady, savage, and African.

Cosby never addressed such issues in his many public appearances and statements.

Maybe, tacitly, he bought into the Michael Jackson fantasy of “black or white”: You can be my baby it doesn't matter whether you're black or white. But, maybe not; for Cosby is too intelligent to be stupid or naïve. One thing for sure: Cosby knew and knows the difference between black and white and he chose white over black for his forays into the dreamland of Snow White. As long as he obeyed the rules of the game, as long as he stayed inbounds, everything went well, until that fateful day when the bubble burst and the women began to talk.

And they came in droves, like an avalanche descending upon an unprepared Turn to page 18

Former President Barack Obama President Donald Trump before he is proven condemned him like the world into a nirvana of black comics honed their innocent. We cannot but sexual predator that he true happiness. For, skills by using the black has shown himself to be, experience, Cosby feel that Cosby is being happiness, remember, is punished as an uppity and even worse in the not a forever and every endeavored to stay on the Negro that dared to bite eyes of his white friends moment condition. It has straight and narrow path the fingers that fed him. transmuted into fiery sadness for accomplice, to the heart of white Remember the good old foes. Once the guilty no matter how exhilaratAmerica. Dick Gregory days of Jim Crow (and verdict was delivered by ing it might be. and Redd Foxx, followed they are coming back, the watch-dogs of The Cosby smile

by Richard Pryor, Chris Democracy (demonstraRock, Eddie Murphy and the good old days!) when somehow combined a black man was lynched tion of craze, as Fela, the both conditions while at others were and by a mob for looking at a late Nigerian Afro-beat once categorically assurremained Black. On the white woman, a blatant exponent, called it), ing us that happiness was contrary, Cosby was a act of disrespect and Cosby was doomed. a conqueror, and you'd crossover, from slum to sexual thuggery?

They were relentless, better believe it. Do you Silver City, from Harlem Remember young with reports flooding the remember Cosby sliding to Hollywood, from the screen like the deadly Bronx to Beverly Hills, Emmett Till. The media into bed beside his exposed all of Cosby’s waters of Hurricane beauty of a wife played from Black to White. salacious secrets as he Katrina. Cosby, we are by the gorgeous Phyllis Mainstream Bill dragged and dealt in bed told, is more or less Rashad? There was that wowed every audience with his poor victims. blind, at least partially subtle, sly smile taunting with his excellent There was blood in their due to the trauma of us with his victory in all performance. When eyes and in the air. The these, his tragic times. things human, including America loves you, you From time to time we are a hero, you are on top tales were outdistancing the sexual, although at themselves one after the read of the ongoing case each of those defining of the world, you can do other. But, then, when that raises issue of moments, thought of sex no wrong. Cosby the deed was done, once justice. How come a never crossed one’s brought not only the object of their matter that was closed, a mind. That was the high laughter to the faces of sanctimo-nious ire was done deal, legally point of Cosby’s power the racial rainbow, but he in shackles and more or negotiated with an to hoodwink, to hide, and made everyone believe unrevealed huge amount in magic. It was the less left for dead, the to subtly harm with the self-proclaimed (and of settlement paid by mask of innocence and magic of success through acclaimed) cons-cience accused to accuser, love. optimism; the magic of of society went silent on suddenly became Suddenly, one day, the joyfulness even when Cosby. No more graphic unsealed and is now the series of lurid tales began monsters on the march tales, except for bits and centerpiece of a case that to unfold in the almighty are trampling upon the pieces to whet public has no doubt doomed the media. That is partially dreams of millions of his life of the ex-hero? brothers and sisters. His appetite and remind why I came to write this them that Cosby wasn't Note that this is no article to offer a lesson to message to the masses of physically dead, not yet. attempt to claim Cosby’s us Blacks. The American the impoverished: With As Cosby has receded innocence. Yet, we media — as usual, you hard work, you, too, into the shadows of cannot but look at the would say — celebrated leave the ghetto behind living death, the other, man's color in a context Bill Cosby as their (he and reach for the middleall-American sexual where Black is consiwas ours, too) hero. class skies. dered bad, backward, His TV comedy, the predator is the hero. On Then, they have a U-turn that fateful day on TV, bottom of the pit, and too and sullied and made two-pronged Bill Cosby h i s l a rg e r- t h a n - l i f e often pronounced guilty him a villain. They have Show, affirmed and confirmed him as an icon. We all watched in awe. We had faith (remember the magic?) and, when you have Proof of Trump's deliberate separatist agenda is embedded in his faith, you do not statements on Africans. ( If I win, you leave!… We need to get the Africans criticize, you never condemn. In the true out, not the Blacks. They are taking our jobs. Why can’t they stay in their American sense, Cosby country? Maybe we'll colonize them… Nigerians are everywhere now. I was a hero. He also had went for a rally in Alaska and met just one African in the entire state. that winning, rascally smile constantly Where was he from? Nigeria! He's in Alaska taking our jobs. They're in crossing his affable face, Houston taking our jobs,. passing ever so fast, on and off, that you were convinced that he was capable of changing the

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18 | PATHFINDER International, Aug. 2017

FEATURE

Protesters against cancellation of Obama health care programme by Trump

Obama, where are you?

Contd. from page 17 c o m m u n i t y. T h e suspicion is that the accusation was choreographed like perfect symphony, but one may never know.

Another famous black man has bitten the dust, and the great Trump is standing tall.

To which hero-turnedvillain would you show more empathy or sympathy? Cosby or O.J. Simpson? Cosby always cut the figure of a gentleman, seriousminded and focused on essentials, including the lives and destiny of Blacks in America. A philanthropist, a role m o d e l , A m e r i c a ’s modern father he was supposed to be. OJ? He was another VIP altogether. The allAmerican, world-class sprinter, the football hall of famer, the cynosure of many a white woman's curious eye, the chiseled body making them dream of the bed, The Juice craved the company of white Hollywood close to his alma mater, University of Southern California.

He worked assiduously to cleanse himself of his blackness. Soon enough, his white mentors acknowledged the success of his efforts.

Looking proud of himself, one of them oozed: He looks almost like us! He had that winning smile that could melt a steely heart. He was cool, calm, and collected. He was allwhite. The night that Watts, across from the USC campus, was burning, the great OJ was on the college stage clowning around with the great Bob Hope and they and the enthusiastic crowd were totally ignorant of the tragedy unfolding a few yards away. OJ had eyes for

beauty and did not waste time before pouncing upon his prey. Unlike Cosby, OJ was interested in the real deal of nuptials and long-term commitment. We would not spend time delving into those two circumstances; however, it need be stated that the OJ brand provided the opportunity for murder that, in the final analysis, marked the marriage to his sweet, sexy Nicole.

Everyone in America remembers the great tale of the killing of Nicole and her friend. CNN became the darling of all, including Nigerians that stayed awake hours on end just to witness the comedy or drama, depending on how one perceived the show.

When the not guilty verdict came down, it was generally agreed that Blacks had drawn their pound of flesh from white America.

Vengeance, that was the word. Really? Maybe it was more a question of throwing mud at the master's face, for a change, reminding him and his cohort of bigots and lynching mob that a black man can get away with the murder of the White's precious jewel.

Significantly, OJ, as stupid as he could be, believed that his brothers and sisters truly loved him whatever he did. Of course, he hated them.

He treated them with his usual disdain. He returned to his shallow roots in white. He refused to learn. Hence, he naturally fell into the trap laid down for him.

That is why he is getting old and ugly in jail today.

Back to Cosby, one would be willing to sympathize with him for a certain commitment to blackness: He and his wife Camille gave $20 million to her alma

mater, Spelman College.

He spoke the hard, unpalatable truth (tough love), particularly on the plight of young black men and their duties, at such fora as the NAACP. Pity he could not resist being a fly in the milk.

A brief look at the black and white c o u p l i n g , miscegenation, would help us to fully understand the OJ psyche. Marrying across races, to anyone of your choice, without any restrictions, is certainly desirable and expected, theoretically. Love is free; love is beyond bounds and boundaries; love is human, Restriction came as part of the program and process of racism that sought to enhance the quality of one race, white, to the level of superiority and supremacy, and keep the other, black, as endemically inferior, and unworthy of sharing space with the former.

While White is perched on top of the proverbial human tree, Black is relegated to the bottom.

White woman, apple on her man's eyes, became symbol of that supremacy. White man took on the task of protecting her from the lecherous, savage Black.

Notwithstanding the single-mindedness of the protectors of their sacred lily, mixed couples still came to be. I know such couples steeped in the honey of love, living a life of joy and harmony.

On the other hand, I know other such couples driven by a confused notion of love as they try to make an unnecessary point without understanding the nature of their commitment.

And, for a black man seeking to attain white paradise on earth,

marrying a white woman is a natural act of affirmation. O.J. Simpson falls into that category. The movie, Loving, delves into the harrowing challenges of miscegenation.

We have stated above that, contrary to his shallow belief, OJ was not loved by black people. So, the claim that Blacks were happy to have achieved vengeance with the notguilty murder verdict is untenable. Historically Blacks are not known for being vengeful, even though Vengeance is mine, says the Lord of Hosts. Foolishness or wisdom? We were kind to our conquerors who gave us the good Black Book and seized our land. To teach us how to use guns, they directed our kings to take aim at themselves; they did, and died. In the OJ case, the real avengers were Whites enraged that the nigger got away with murder. They hounded and hunted down the criminal as did dogs of the plantation smelling out runaways and shredding them to pieces. In the civil suit after the murder case, the kind judge asked OJ to pay his wife's family the paltry sum of 33 million dollars. OJ used his football skills to dance and dodge. But they finally got him: As delusional as ever, he took it upon himself to go and seize his memorabilia from socalled thieves. He paid the price; the judge gave him a sentence of 33 years, one for each million he should have paid. That is vengeance simple and civilized.

Remember Rodney King? Battered and beaten down by cops in Lalaland, he murmured the new ode to injustice

and xenophobic disharmony: Why can't we all just get along? We cannot get along when love is a lie waiting to be exposed; when you love those that hate to love you' when, for them, love is restricted by the reality of race and racism. King is caught in the dilemma of a ghost in the wrong place at the right time. The body is buried in the cemetery reserved for Blacks. The ghost is seeking solace in the Big House The master magnanimously opens the kitchen door.

Imagine.

N o w, P o w e r Americana has seized the opportunity to make a statement that Blacks cannot get away with murder. The Oj saga has b e c o m e a money0spinning b l o c k b u s t e r. T h e documentary, OJ: An American Story, is proof definitive that Capitalism will always win out in democratic heaven. An American or African American story?

Of course, it is the former: Blacks have no voice when it comes to the essentials of life in paradise. And the driving force behind the narrative is the media. In spite of President Trump's virulent attack on the press and media, the fact, not alternative but basic and anchored in truth, is that the Fourth Estate is working on his behalf. The media are the enemy of America. They are evil. They are liars, liars, liars, believe me.

On the contrary, they are driving the dump-truck carrying the bodies of Blacks and other nonWhites to the border of alienation. Xenophobia is the new normal and all the media are doing is to murmur opposition, robotic and roiling in a society supposedly symbolic of the best in human fortune now turned mis-fortune.

Note that, in good times when there is little controversy and Power is not hell-bent on running the Other into the ditch, when true democracy has not been o v e r c o m e b y dictatorship, the media are the conscience of society, demanding probity and integrity from one and all, insisting on the principles of equality before the law and truth in every detail, and standing up to anyone, no matter how high and mighty. In short, the media are not supposed to be biased. They act not out of fear or favor. With Trump, the opposite of those essential qualities has been the rule, not the exception. There are three standards of action: black, white, and Trump. White represents

the norm, the best; black, the worst; Trump, the unique, off the charts, accepted as outrageously different and unchangeable because that’s who he is, that’s what he does. We may describe the black condition as the fringe factor in which, by all accounts, Black would remain stuck at the bottom, vertically and horizontally.

Vertically, he is backward and bad. Horizontally, he is always last on the queue, and lazy. He stands on the outside looking in; or in the kitchen smelling the aroma of the delicious that he would only taste as leftovers and crumbs dropping from Massa's table. The old stigma of stereotypy is forever alive and well with images of Sambo, Coon, Aunty Jemima, Uncle Tom and others clogging the rotten air. On the fringe where they have abandoned us, we are yet to face the task of escaping, forcing our way through and back to full-fledged status as citizens and humans. The main issue is lack of leadership.

We h a v e a l r e a d y remarked how Trump gets away with anything, not less the claim that he could commit murder on a New York street and nothing would happen; he would remain a hero to his rampaging followers to whose ears everything and anything he says or does is an ode to the great America taken back from you know who. You! And one thinks of Blacks not given a second chance in hell.

Think of Michael Vick, potentially one of the greats of American football, once with the highest salary package and quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons. Suddenly, the bubble burst.

Vick became a villain when it was discovered that he had become a dog hater by funding dog fights with his family and friends. He went from the Big House to the backyard shack. The media turned on him.

Niggers, that's how they are; never capable of getting the ghetto out of their system. Vick went to jail for a while. He came out renewed in spirit and character. He became a dog lover. Dogs, privileged, from the sweet days of slavery when they were fed and fawned upon in preparation for tracking down and tearing to shreds runaway slaves seeking freedom, to modern society where they compete with, and trump children, for human love. A dog is Vick’s best friend. It would be interesting to know how much the man spends on his cherished, redemptiondriven kernel. His newfound love and mission never earned him a genuine Read more on www.thepathfinderinterna tional.com

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Somalia: The Watson Files (3) Contd. from last edition he environmental work headed up by the National Range Agency has long since come to a halt. Karani fled Mogadishu in 1991.

He made his way to a refugee camp in Kenya and eventually on to India, where his children re-enrolled in school. Ali also ended up in a refugee camp in Kenya, resigned to the fact that environmental work wouldn’t be a priority.

“These people were just a bunch of gangs,” he said of the various factions vying for control of Mogadishu throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. They were not interested in land management. Watson stayed in Somalia until 1992, working on a nutrition survey as the country was wracked by famine. Finally, when it became clear his scientific expertise was being ignored, he moved to Laos and restarted his surveying business there under the name Resource Management and Research. Several of his devoted researchers went with him.

As the years passed and Somalia descended further into chaos, no one enforced the ban on charcoal production that was designed to halt deforestation. No one monitored pasturelands to prevent overgrazing.

And no one noticed when an old Barre-era project aimed at stopping erosion — by introducing an invasive species of mesquite — went haywire and snuffed out indigenous plants across hundreds of thousands of acres. Most large mammals migrated or died, as war and environmental degradation ravaged their habitats. Illegal fishing and toxic waste dumping increased as foreign companies took advantage of Somalia's lawless waters.

In a punishing confluence, climate scientists also recorded a persistent drop in rainfall during these years, especially the spring gu rains that are vital for agriculture.

Meanwhile, the warming of water and atmospheric currents in and over the Indian and western Pacific Ocean contributed to more frequent drought across East Africa. Somalia’s relatively flat landscape

T

“What if there were a blueprint for climate adaptation that could end a civil war? An English scientist spent his life developing one — then he vanished without a trace.”

Watson and his researchers stand on a tarmac in Somalia. Right: Watson stands beside one of his company’s vehicles at the Qardho airstrip in 1980. (Courtesy of a friend to the Watson family) documents had survived. trusted researchers Watson carried out the leaves it even worse off The road through the stored them in her attic. most daring mission of than its neighbors, Cal Madow Mountains, For more than a quarterhis career — and perhaps Kenya and Ethiopia, home to the highest century, Watson's work his greatest service to wh ich can reliab ly peaks in Somalia, snakes sat there gathering dust, S o m a l i a . Wi t h t h e expect to get at least untouched in carefully s o m e r a i n i n through highland juniper wholesale looting of forests bounded by labeled boxes and government agencies mountainous areas dramatic limestone binders. Over the years, underway, and much of where clouds get trapped cliffs. When Watson word of their existence Mogadishu in ruins, he among the peaks. traveled along this route spread to a small group quietly packed up the The link between in 1981, likely in his of environmental records of his land climate change and gray Land Rover, the researchers, most of surveys — photographs conflict is still poorly junipers were intersthem employed by the and slides, maps, field understood. But last persed with abundant United Nations, but few notes, and natural year, the African Union's candelabra trees, their inside Somalia knew that resource reports, Peace and Security thick, succulent the blueprint for thousands of documents Council held a session on branches reaching understanding how and in total — and spirited climate change, warning skyward, as captured in why the environment them out of the country. that the warming of the the slides he took that was changing — and, He let Karani in on the planet was a potential day. But as I drove along possibly, for reversing plan, but few outside his t r i g g e r f o r the escarpment 35 years the damage — had i n n e r c i r c l e k n e w. intercommunal violence. later, I couldn’t find a survived.

Exfiltrating state U.N. experts have single candelabra tree.

On an unusually sunny documents would have reached a similar Most had died out long morning in 2015, I been a serious offense conclusion, as has the before, locals said, as the visited Watson's former had the government still U . S . D e f e n s e earth dried up and people researcher at her home in been functioning, and Department, which in a fed branches from the the British countryside. doing so meant 2014 strategy document remaining trees to their (She asked not to be traversing territory referred to climate camels. Near a cluster of named.) We spent hours controlled by change as a “threat houses made from in her study flipping unpredictable warlords. multiplier” because of its skinny logs and blue through Watson's field “Watson was telling potential to exacerbate corrugated metal, I notes, poring over his me that he was saving everything “from stopped to ask if even a maps and photographs. something important to infectious disease to single candelabra Held up to a light, his old Somalia, something very terrorism.” In Somalia, remained: A man selling slides offer a glimpse valuable,” Karani where fishermen-turnedcoffee pointed toward into another time: broad, recalled a quarterpirates troll the coastline two trees in the distance, hundred-year-old trees century later. “I told him looking for cargo ships to one of which had lost all in southern Somalia, I felt safe knowing those hold hostage and of its branches. Those vines creating a thick documents were with farmers-turnedwere the very last, he canopy over the road, him. Otherwise, like insurgents menace said.

Mogadishu's cathedral everything, all other civilians on land, these But it wasn’t candela— now an iconic ruin — documents — nothing reports simply confirm bras that had drawn me intact and majestic. would have been left.” the obvious. “The fact to the Cal Madow Months later, at a café How exactly Watson [is] that many of our Mountains; it was a in the Somali city of moved the survey youth have lost jobs murder. In the plains that Garowe, I told Ali what documents out of because of desertificaslope gently down from I'd seen. He was quiet at Somalia remains a tion, deforestation,” said the range, where the first as the news set in. mystery, though it seems Buri Hamza, who served deep jangle of handThen he spent the rest of likely he flew them into a s S o m a l i a ’s t o p carved wooden bells our interview quizzing Kenya in a bush plane. environmental official. announces roving herds me about the contents of E v e n t u a l l y, Wa t s o n “This is one of the major of camels, violent the attic, almost as if he brought them to Britain, causes of radicalization.” clashes have grown didn’t believe the survey where one of his most Before he left in 1992,

more frequent as pastoralists increasingly abandon their traditional migration routes in search of water and pasture. When they encroach on the lands of settled farmers, as they did near the town of Aynabo about two weeks before I arrived, bloodshed often follows.

The community there is built around a single well.

A few small farms — each just several rows of beanstalks, watermelon, and tomatoes — pump their water from it through hoses connected to a central generator, which the farmers invested in together. The population, which for most of the year is small enough to squeeze into a handful of domeshaped houses made of wood, reeds, and cloth, swells slightly when nomads arrive in anticipation of the rains.

Last year, a pastoralist named Mohamed sought to graze his herd on a patch of land claimed by another member of the community.

With most of the pastures barren and the rains still weeks away, both men knew the survival of their animals hung in the balance.

“Both men lived in the same area. They’d had a fight before, and the shooter went to the victim’s family to resolve the conflict, but none acknowledged his arguments,” said Ali Yusef Adan, a muscular farmer in a white tank top and loosely laced boots.

Adan is a cousin of both the shooter and the victim.

“The shooting came from that direction,” he said, gesturing to a desolate clearing still strewn with empty cartridges. “He fired four bullets, and two of them hit the man.”

Adan’s father was a nomad, but as he grew older, persistent lack of rainfall made that lifestyle increasingly difficult.

When Adan inherited his father’s livestock after his death, he decided to settle and start a farm. It wasn’t an easy decision. Claiming plots of land goes against tradition in many Somali communities, and Adan realized that doing so might cause friction with members of his own family. “Fencing of land and [claiming of] water are the major factors that start conflict,” he said.

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