Month: August 2013

Still Stuck in the Mud

Still Stuck in the Mud

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Tremendous new natural resources have been discovered in Tanzania; some say that’s why Obama visited there recently. Isn’t this good news?

Many including myself have lamented African development over the last half century, flipping from feeling totally pessimistic to totally optimistic in the course of a few elections or natural catastrophes.

But always the bugaboo has been the culture of dependency presumed intrinsic to any society deft of natural resources and not yet matured of any of its own technology or innovations.

That has changed dramatically in the last decade with the discovery of so many now extractable resources that were either not known or too deep or complicated to collect in the past.

Almost 20 years ago the world’s second largest gold reserve was discovered in Tanzania near Lake Victoria. And for twenty years we’ve watched the Tanzanians botch one mining deal after another, screw up every national taxing proposal that’s reached the legislature, and kill and main hundreds if not thousands of mine workers.

And now, enormous new natural resources are being discovered in Tanzania almost daily.

The most impressive are new uranium deposits. In fact, such huge reserves have been found that the Tanzanian government quickly created a “Tanzania Atomic Energy Commission.”

(Sad that its website, thrown up in a few days, is better than for the national parks.)

In Arusha recently, President Jakaya Kikwete said, “If all the reserves we have are fully exploited, Tanzania can become the seventh leading uranium producers in the world,” said Kikwete.

Already Mantra Resources and a Russian firm ARMZ have entered into a joint venture to mine uranium. Tanzania has so far confirmed the presence of multiple thick zones of sandstone-hosted uranium mineralization at shallow depths at the “Nyota Prospect” where it is presumed there are 35.9 million pounds of extractable uranium.

That’s a lot.

But there’s more. Coal, and (good grief!), diamonds.

But even more, still:

Unimaginable numbers of deaths and disabilities from the local Tanzanians so far employed to extract these resources. The latest was only several weeks ago. I don’t understand why progressives are livid with the sweat shops supplying Walmart and Nike, but shrug at the horrific deaths and disabilities Tanzanians suffer every single day.

Last week the estates of numerous gold miners who died at the horrendous Barrick Gold mine near Mwanza filed suit for shameful work practices.

Yet there was more support in the media for the mining company than for the miners. Well, I guess it can make sense: After all, gold has declined in value, and the owner of the mines just took a $700 million writeoff on the quarter’s earnings.

Tanzania isn’t handling all of this very well.

I suppose that’s understandable, since the government of Tanzanian doesn’t handle anything very well. But this is, literally, a “gold mine” for the population, if the government can get its act together.

So far, it hasn’t, and it’s incredibly depressing.

Mining licenses are being given out willy nilly at the entire discretion of President Kikwete; there is no vetting process, and currently, there is no national policy regarding taxing or royalties.

Current Tanzanian law, which enshrined local control of local lands (sometimes to a ridiculous extent, see my blogs on WMAs and other big game related lands), is being completely ignored.

Near the capital, Dodoma, a mining company several months ago began digging giant wells without even advising the local community at Bahi Makulo what they were digging for and who they were. An expert has surmised it was Mantra Tanzania, a subsidiary of a Russian mining group.

When confronted by local officials, the management offered a handful of jobs instead of explanations, which were readily accepted. These jobs included handling chemicals that weren’t identified, and without any training.

It’s likely that at least one of the chemicals was mercury. Human Rights Watch has consistently bashed Tanzania for being one of the lone countries that has refused to sign a mercury chemical standard treaty.

Numerous human rights violations by multiple mining companies in Tanzania, and the refusal of the Tanzanian government to enforce its even poor but existing laws, has left the population completely unprotected.

Feeling totally marginalized, many Tanzanians are now desperately trying to mine gold on their own, like the original gold rushers of the 1850s. It’s dangerous and mostly unproductive, and the government is doing nothing to either regulate or discourage it.

It’s a crying shame Tanzania’s been unable to get its act together over the last two decades since Lake Victoria gold was discovered. Now with uranium, diamonds and more, that sadness has turned to desperation.

Better Brazil

Better Brazil

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

brazilchinainafricaChina’s striking involvement in Africa is well documented, including a growing African skepticism of it. Capitalizing on this tension, Brazil may become a bigger player than China in the next decade.

China’s interest in Africa is transparently its need for the continent’s considerable natural resources. This transparency was sold with total noninterference in local politics and government. It didn’t matter if you were lily white or deadly dark, a despot or a human rights hero. If you had oil, a deal’s a deal.

This was attractive to Africans in the beginning, a refreshing change from the centuries of Machiavellian dealing by the west which began with the earliest days of colonization.

But Africa and China are growing increasingly at odds with one another.

Africans are starting to realize the bad thing about “non-interference” is that bad African governments and policies are propped up by the Chinese philosophy. And throughout especially sub-Saharan Africa a truly new political awakening is occurring.

“China’s indiscriminate investments in good and bad governments alike, with its particular affinity for corrupt and dictatorial governments, [is] undermining peace and security in the region,” writes African scholar Alula A. Iyasu, an Ethiopian who holds prominent expert positions in the African Union and United Nations.

East African governments were particularly angered this year by Chinese positions in the UN Security Council that stalled much needed action in The Congo.

And there is a growing concern with Chinese immigrants. Call it xenophobic if you want, but large-scale Chinese immigration – which is part and parcel of Chinese policy for African development – has recently challenged traditional African tolerances.

This May Ghanian President Mahama launched a crackdown on illegal gold mining that resulted in 169 individual Chinese arrested.

In East Africa increasing numbers of Chinese are being arrested for ivory smuggling, a distinct change from the recent past when authorities looked the other way.

And particularly in South Africa, Chinese companies have built manufacturing and mining factories with work conditions that are inferior to similar South African companies.

It’s a doubly whammy to South Africans who are in the first incidence harmed by Chinese preference to hire Chinese immigrants, and then when South Africans are hired, discover that the working conditions are so bad.

China, Russia, South Africa, India and Brazil formed a trade and political association in 2005 called BRICS, intended to coordinate political, economic and cultural development. BRICS ostensible policies would facilitate an integration and ease of cooperation that is quite impressive by most trade pact standards.

But Russia and India have yet to show any serious enthusiasm for the new association, and with Africans’ new ambivalence towards China, Brazil has immediately stepped up to the plate.

Not without controversy similar to the Chinese, Brazil is striking forward positions in Mozambique mining and Angolan manufacturing, two potential powerhouses with which it shares a native language.

But as Kenyan Julius Okoth of the social movement “People’s Parliament”
explains, Brazil comes to the table with a distinct advantage China lacks:

Humanitarism.

Recent, successful socialist policies to reduce poverty, including ‘Bolsa Familia’ (“Family Fund”), have resulted in a major redistribution of wealth in Brazil under its last president, Lula da Silva. Okoth and others believe that these social/political models would work well in Africa.

China in complete contrast has no desire to export its social or political policies. In fact, there is every indication the Chinese don’t want outsiders to fully understand exactly what policies the government has for such major social problems as poverty, much less try to copy them.

As the world’s sixth largest economy, Brazil is in a highly competitive situation with China, the world’s second. Brazil’s culture is much more similar to many in Africa than China’s culture is, and its stated humanitarian and social positions strike a higher moral bar than China’s that is especially attractive to African youth.

It’s far too early to say for certain, but I for one think that African tolerance of Chinese involvement – however financially beneficial – is growing increasingly raw.

Brazil is much better fit.

The Demons of Democracy

The Demons of Democracy

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

democracyfailesmorsiwinsTwo African elections this week clearly show how democracy fails in societies with powerful chief executives.

Like the U.S. But more about that after discussing Africa.

This week’s elections in Zimbabwe and Mali have failed both their societies, for different reasons, and the result is arguably worse than had there not been elections at all.

In Zimbabwe the rigged election process reaffirmed the country’s despot, Robert Mugabe, and ensures the country will continue to slide into poverty and greater dependency upon its neighbors desperate that it doesn’t totally fail.

It’s interesting that Mugabe and thugs mastered the democratic process so well that despite this week’s travesty of popular expression, observers from as divergent organizations as the African Union and reporters for Reuters gave the process a pass.

It absolutely wasn’t fair. Imagine an election – officially stated – with 99.97% of the rural population voting, and only 68.2% of the urban population voting.

Get it?

What Robert Mugabe has become is an evil despot. This is pretty easily defined as an individual who concentrates power around himself and his thugs, and distributes whatever wealth can be extracted from the country into this small core of individuals.

At the expense of everyone else in the population, even those who supposedly voted for him.

He absolutely does have solid support from Zimbabwe’s poor and rural populations, who are thrown pieces of bread (the land of white farms) just like Marie Antoinette did to stave the French revolution.

And essentially uneducated and untrained, a piece of land is a gold mine, but what it means for the tens of thousands of rural Zimbabweans who have benefitted from this policy, is that they will never have tractors, will never have schools, will never have hospitals or roads or a better life beyond their tiny plot of land.

Yet their ecstacy at this gift from Daddy is profound. And their xenophobia and racism is ripe for plucking. And even so, even with 99.97% of them “voting,” they wouldn’t have been the majority if the more educated urban populations were given their voice.

And, of course, 99.97% of them didn’t vote. Many of them can’t read and there weren’t enough polling stations in the country to handle that number of actual voters. The irregularities in this “election” were profound.

Yet it was “democratic.” Zimbabwe’s urban population rolls were restricted by techniques strikingly similar to dozens of new American voter registration laws. If it’s democracy in Texas, it’s democracy in Zimbabwe.

In Mali – often championed as a model for democracy by westerners – another near perfect election process has resulted in an effective tie. This is something democracy can’t handle. It screwed it up in Bush v. Gore, and it screwed it up in Kenya’s recent election, and now Mali’s future becomes terribly problematic.

Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (IBK), a former prime minister in better times, seems to have received 50.+% of the vote, which would effectively make him the chief executive without a second run-off election.

This, by the way, is the identical situation that occurred in Kenya in March, where the victors were ultimately declared the winners with 50.07% of the vote.

In Mali, the election process was truly fair in my opinion. If there was any fault to the process, it was that the serious opposition from the desert peoples and those involved in the recent insurgency was not voiced. In part, because the insurgency continues and the insurgents didn’t want to participate.

But of the society held together by the French Foreign Legion, a sort of muscular gerrymandering, the elections were remarkably free and transparent.

But now what? Within the margin of error of any scientific study, no one really won, but democracy mandates that someone win. If this were in Europe or Israel, it wouldn’t matter so much, because the chief executive for whom the election was held is not so powerful.

But in executive democracies, where the chief executive like President Obama holds so much power, one of the sides wins and one of the sides loses. Definitively.

And down the road that leads to polarization, friction and radicalization of power blocks that might otherwise be able to compromise.

Had America had a parliamentary democracy rather than an executive presidency, I believe that we would never have gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The challenge of modern democracy is to create workable amalgams of power in societies with large and nearly equally opposing views. That’s not possible in societies with a powerful chief executive.

This is the case as well in Kenya, where ethnicity and corruption is now on the rise after decades of decline, and where Mali is likely now doomed to become a war zone for generations.

Neither Kenya or Mali will be able to traumatize the world as much as America did after Bush v. Gore. But all three examples show how ineffective, perhaps counterproductive, democracy is when the society has a powerful chief executive.

The analysis seems much simpler with Mugabe. When evil masters the process, in this case democracy, the ends justify the means and essentially emasculates the idealists who proclaim the process. Yet on closer reflection it’s clear had Zimbabwe not had a powerful chief executive style government, Mugabe may not have lasted.

The lesson seems starkly obvious to me. Democracy is a bad idea for societies with a powerful chief executive. Parliamentary democracies may be good; presidential democracies are not.