Mugabe being sworn in after his amazing come-from-behind win.

In an unprecedented sequence of events, Robert Mugabe has come out of nowhere to reclaim the presidency of his beloved Zimbabwe. His unlikely victory is a huge step toward dispelling the myth around the world that the African nations cannot successfully incorporate true democracy.
Mugabe has shown once and for all that the African continent has within herself the ability to move toward more and more democratic and peaceful resolutions within the political arena.

Absolutely beloved by his people, Mugabe once feared the process would not be able to run its true course after threats of violence and intimidation by the usurper, Tsvangirai.
Of course, all that worry was for naught as UN and African Union leaders and election officials ensured a truly fair and unbiased voting process.

This is indeed the absolute best that the African continent could have hoped for. People from all over the globe are flooding Harare, in what Sociologists are calling the “reverse-refugee” effect; those who once fled, now return bringing with them more and more family members and friends as they look to bask in the glory of a free and liberated nation.

Mugabe’s arch-rival, Tsvangirai, now seeks refuge in foreign diplomat domain.

Critics of the UN and the African Union, such as Mugabe’s own Minister of Overseer’s, Fule Acrappe, now have switched sides in full support of both humanitarian groups, pointing to the tremendous effort of a uniting force of Truth, Fairness and Dignity that both organizations stand, live and die for.

Elsewhere in Harare, people flood the streets in jubilation, beating pots and pans, and traditional skin drums in a joyous cry that rises to the heavens.

“Justice has won in the end,” a proud supporter of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party exclaims, “We are the people who have suffered for so long, and finally Mugabe with the help of the the powerful forces of the UN and AU, have done the right thing by the people….we look forward to prosperity and the fatness of our cattle, in the years to come.”

The world waits with held breath as the new jewel of mother Africa rises…

What can the elections process in Zimbabwe teach the West?
“Nothing” you say? I beg to differ.
The Zimbabwe elections have several ingredients to them that the West would be wise to learn from and model after:

1) Don’t confuse democracy with capitalism: democracy brings corruption

As we are on the verge of witnessing potential democracy in action in Zim, we also see blatant capitalsim taking place in the food stands and market for bread; fluctuating prices every second; 7mil to 20mil by the time it takes you to walk to the checkout queue…or is it?
Evidence that capitalism and democracy are synonymous is circumstantial at best, and we must not make the mistake of assuming democracy = capitalistic marketplaces. From Zim (and the blatant price rigging of bread) to a more subtle yet equally (if not more so) deviant commodities trading up and downs during the U.S. election year.
Someone is making money in a corrupt fashion; and its not capitalism…shall we instead say corruptibility perhaps?….a key component to democracy, of course…

2) Stick with the Truth:

One of the detestable things about Western politics is the propensity of political figures to exaggerate, make false claims, take credit for things that aren’t theirs and prophetically speak in victorious terms throughout the campaign and elections process.
Zim’s answer? A Mugabe spokesperson said it best, on claiming something not yet proven to be true: “it would be called a coup d’etat and we all know how coups are handled.”
This is poetic. Imagine, if western politicians were held to the same standard? Every single one would be held for treason, every single one would be guilty of figurative “coup d’etat” and would be summarily handled; which would be even better if they were handled by the means insinuated by the spokesperson quoted above: take them out back, surround them with military artillery vehicles and blast the holy shyte out of them…this would truly shape up Western politics a bit, and we wouldn’t have to hear any more false and empty claims of “victory” spewing out of the mouths of these “public servants”…

3) Loyalty:

“We will serve no one else,” claims Mugabe’s cabinet and advisers in the event of a loss of elections.
This sort of loyalty can be found where in the west? Um, nowhere.
In fact, in western culture, perhaps we could use a little more TIA attitude than CYA.
As soon as something goes wrong in the West, there is always someone to blame, always a fall guy, always a flip-flop of policy or position; its disgusting.
What we see in Zim however, is a loyalty unto death attitude. An attitude that we will bring death to us before flipping sides; something unheard of in the West, where people tend to believe death will never come for them, let alone ever make a commitment that would ever lead them to death…

“Ushahidi.com is a tool for people who witness acts of violence in Kenya in these post-election times. You can report the incident that you have seen, and it will appear on a map-based view for others to see. We are working with local Kenyan NGO’s to get information and to verify each incident.

What you can do is get the word out about Ushahidi so that it’s utilized to it’s full potential. This especially extends to talking to the people that you know who have seen things in Kenya and getting them to the site as well. You can also help by using the contact form to volunteer to help with the tracking and verifying of each incident.”

Report Acts Of Violence In Kenya

To send reports via SMS, send your SMS to 6007 on your phone (Safaricom/Celtel).

Ushahidi is a citizens tool where anyone can
submit an incident report via SMS, email or the website. Here’s a
short BBC interview of the project:

http://www.theworld.org/?q=node/15330

By Helen Coster, Forbes.com

Cell mogul Mohammed Ibrahim offers a radical solution to solving Africa’s ills.

Mohammed (Mo) Ibrahim, 61, is a Sudanese-born billionaire who made his fortune building Celtel, a mobile phone company that serves 15 African countries. He sold it in 2005 for $3.4 billion and is worth an estimated $2.5 billion today. Now he has a philanthropic idea that is as novel as it is potentially naive. On Oct. 22 his Mo Ibrahim Foundation will award its first $5 million annual prize to a former African head of state who has shown exemplary leadership in things like political freedom and promoting the rule of law. The prize, which dwarfs the $1.5 million Nobel Prize, will be spread out over ten years, with $200,000 a year after that.

The catch: The leader is eligible for the prize only after he or she has left office and has no plans to return to public service. The idea is to give African politicians an incentive to remain honest in office–and to leave after their terms are up. On that continent prime ministers can’t expect lucrative book deals or speaking tours after leaving office and, faced with dismal opportunities, often cling to power. Ibrahim, who lives in London, talked recently to FORBES.

Can’t a corrupt politician embezzle a lot more than $5 million?

This is too cynical. It assumes that all people coming to office are thieves. That’s not true. It also assumes that we are trying to lure a thief out of a job. And that’s not our intention. It’s our intention to honor all the good men and women who serve with dignity and leave with dignity. We’re not in the business of buying off thieves.

Don’t you want the good politicians to stay in office?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. What we have learned is that power corrupts. If people stay longer in office, things start to go wrong. You should give people who have fresh ideas the chance to lead.

How bad is corruption in Africa?

I’m a little bit puzzled and annoyed when my friends in the West start to lecture me about corruption in Africa. Who are the partners in corruption? Are the Africans corrupting each other? I don’t think so. It’s utter hypocrisy.

Have you ever been asked to pay a bribe?

Of course. I have been asked a few times. But when I started Celtel we said we would not pay bribes, and we did not pay a single dollar. It is possible to do business in Africa without paying bribes, and we have demonstrated that.

Why isn’t there more foreign development in Africa?

Infrastructure and education. We also have a problem presenting a balanced view of Africa. The media by its nature is a hostage of time. Africa has its 15 seconds. And that 15 seconds is Mugabe, a dictator.

Africa seems to be the cause du jour among many U.S. celebrities and politicians.

What’s wrong with that? Celebrities are exploiting the media for Africa’s good, and that’s wonderful.

What should U.S. chief executives do?

Think of Africa as a normal place. There are 15 times more analysts covering Indian companies than covering African companies, and 11 times more analysts covering Chinese companies than African companies. Can someone please switch on the light and enhance our knowledge of this place a little bit?

How does it feel to have made your fortune in Africa while witnessing the people’s poverty?

It’s terrible. I could be one of those. It’s just a matter of luck. I managed to get education. I am not better than any of those unfortunate people.

We’ve always had non-profit theater - David Selby

There are thousands upon thousands of non-profit and NGO groups operating in Africa.

Most are concerned with headline items: HIV/AIDS, famine, depletion of natural resources, health issues, poverty, war, starvation, and on and on.

These hot-button topics have creates such a stir in the international community that its no wonder that there is an estimated annual intake of over 200 Trillion US dollars pumped into these non-profits by foundations, philanthropists and other private sources.

And yet, we still see things like NPR’s 2006 series on Africa’s Lagging Development and Africa: Portraits of Poverty.

So where’s all the money going? Operating income? Project Funding?

With all that money and all those resources being put into Africa, surely Mother Africa would slowly come around and start curbing the trend of being the bane of humanity……

Yet the West, in classic self fulfilling, Messiah complex, band-aid wielding fashion insists upon even MORE of the same.

Like one who claims ailments for the sole purpose of attention, the international AID community, the non-profit sector fulfills only one thing: the promise to keep creating a reason for them to be where they are.

In fact, what if all those resources were invested into the economies of African nations? What if the non-profit sector, with all their romantic ideals and language of self-importance, their catchphrases for cash (happens to still be around AIDS right now; start talking up some sort of AIDS education program and you are sure to get millions thrown your way) all got deported back to the opiates they came from?

Where were the non-profits (include the UN here) during Rwanda 1994? Where were they during the Kosovo conflict? Sudan?

Yeah, yeah, I know Jimmy Carter was unceremoniously stopped from “visiting” and “comforting” refugees recently, but come on. Really? Jimmy Carter? Please don’t insult the people of Africa with such nonsense.

Self-fulfilling prophecy is the most powerful of its kind. Preach the wars, famines, diseases all you can, and sure enough someone will pick it up, start funneling money in, all the while missing the whole point of African development.

Get investment into African Economy and you will, in turn, though indirectly, address the issues that you would have the world believe affect all of Africa.

But you don’t really want to be indirectly involved in anything sustainable do you? You’d rather have the self-sacrificing glory all to yourself, and in doing so completely subvert that which you claim to be addressing with such heartfelt cries: Africa.

So how about helping change the world…?

Matt Flannery CEO of Kiva.org is doing just that, one loan at a time.

Matt began developing Kiva.org in late 2004 as a side-project while working as a computer programmer at TiVo Inc. In December 2005 Matt left TiVo to devote himself to Kiva.org full-time. As CEO, Matt has led Kiva.org’s growth from a pilot project to an established online service with partnerships across the globe a dedicated band of staff and supporters closer to home. Prior to starting Kiva.org, Matt spent time in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya filming stories of micro-businesses started by Village Enterprise Fund. It was this time in East Africa that inspired him to develop Kiva.org. (Stay in touch with Kiva Chronicles)

HOW IT WORKS

OPEN INVESTMENT IN AFRICA

John Kadonge has a business selling menswear in Kampala, Uganda.

Kodjo Yomenou is a photographer in Togo.

Check out Kiva.org for full details.
Its an interesting idea, and not the only one I’ve heard about. There are pilot programs of a similar type taking place in West Africa as well. Can economic investment help build a susained Africa?

TUESDAY, June 19 (HealthDay News) — Giving two doses of malaria-preventing drugs to HIV-negative women in Africa during pregnancy offers them and their babies substantial protection against the mosquito-borne illness, a new review of the data shows.

Pregnant women with HIV will require more doses for the same effect, the researchers add.

About 50 million women living in malaria-endemic areas of Africa become pregnant each year, the authors noted.

In their review, scientists in the U.K. analyzed four previous studies that compared two-dose intermittent preventive therapy (IPT) using sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine versus case management of malaria illness/anemia, or a placebo, in African women during their first or second pregnancy.

The data, published in the June 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed that IPT reduced the risk of placental malaria by 52 percent, the risk of low birth weight by 29 percent, and the risk of anemia by 10 percent.

The review authors also concluded that monthly IPT reduced rates of placental malaria and low birth rate in HIV-negative women but did not appear to benefit HIV-positive women.

“The deleterious effects of malaria during pregnancy can be substantially reduced by using IPT in pregnant women. Sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine is currently the only single-dose long-acting antimalarial drug that has ideal properties (low cost, documented safety, and ease of use) for use as an IPT during pregnancy,” wrote a team led by Dr. Feiko ter Kuile, of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in England.

“Reserving the use of sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine for IPT during pregnancy and for infants may reduce drug pressure and may prolong longevity of this valuable drug,” the researchers added. “Almost all countries in Africa are taking this course and have either implemented or are in the process of implementing the use of combination therapy for first-line treatment in the population, mostly with artemisinin-based (another type of antimalarial drug) combinations.”

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about malaria.