Here’s some ideas how you can help (via Imani Countess of TransAfrica Forum).

The UN World Food Program
“Not only are they the major distributor of food in the region, but they are obligated to respect recipient country requests regarding non-GMO seeds and grains.” You can donate online to the WFP and you can designate Southern Africa.

Zimbabwe Solidarity Fund
Hosted by Africa Action, and supported by the San Francisco Bay Area Priority Africa Network and TransAfrica Forum. 100% of money raised on this campaign will go to supporting civil society in Zimbabwe. Proceeds from this fund are “disbursed in Zimbabwe and accounted for by a Zimbabwe-based committee that includes representatives of Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions , Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition , and the Zimbabwe National Students Union — organizations courageously at the forefront of advancing democracy in Zimbabwe under the most difficult conditions and fully deserving of our support.” There are no administrative costs and the funds are used to support the victims of violence. Donate here.

USAID
USAID contributes large amounts of food aid to Zimbabwe. Imani suggests writing your US Member of Congress to encourage USAID to increase its donation to the WFP.

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Today the Association of Concerned African Scholars (ACAS) is proud to publish a new series of timely essays tackling the ongoing political crisis in Zimbabwe.

Edited by Timothy Scarnecchia and Wendy Urban-Mead, the ten analyses presented here delve deep behind the headlines to expose the deeper realities of this protracted issue.

‘Our last Special Issue on the Zimbabwe Elections* came out two weeks before the June 27th run-off presidential election. This was before opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC announced his decision not to contest the run-off election because of the extreme violence used against the MDC candidates, supporters, and alleged supporters,’ writes Scarnecchia and Urban-Mead.

‘This issue of the ACAS bulletin is concerned with the aftermath of the elections of 2008, offering analysis of the outcome of the parliamentary election results of the March elections, the ways in which the political violence during May and June have fundamentally altered the possibility of a non-violent political dispensation in Zimbabwe, and, perhaps of most current interest for readers, the unfolding of “power sharing” negotiations that began with the September 11, 2008 signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Mugabe’s ZANU(PF), Tsvangirai’s MDC-T, and a smaller splinter group led by Arthur Mutambara, (the MDC-M).’

ACAS Bulletin N°80 - Winter 2008
Special Issue on Zimbabwe (II)
Table of Contents

Entire Issue in PDF (4MB)

Introduction: Special Issue on Zimbabwe 2
Tim Scarnecchia (Kent State University)
Wendy Urban-Mead (Bard College)

A Tale of Two Elections: Zimbabwe at the Polls in 2008
Jocelyn Alexander (University of Oxford)
Blessing-Miles Tendi (University of Oxford)

Waiting for Power-sharing: A False Promise?
Norma Kriger (University of KwaZulu/Natal)

The Glass Fortress: Zimbabwe’s Cyber-Guerrilla Warfare
Clapperton Mavhunga (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Reflections on Displacement in Zimbabwe
Amanda Hammar (Nordic Africa Institute)

Zimbabweans Living in the South African Border-Zone: Negotiating, Suffering, and Surviving
Blair Rutherford (Carleton University)

Anti-Imperialism and Schizophrenic revolutionaries in Zimbabwe
Tamuka Chirimambowa

The Zimbabwean Working Peoples: Between a Political Rock and an Economic Hard Place
Horace G. Campbell (Syracuse University)

Zimbabwe: Failing Better?
David Moore (University of Johannesburg)

Review: Heidi Holland’s Dinner with Mugabe
Sean Jacobs (University of Michigan)

Editorial: In the Shadow of Gukurahundi
Timothy Scarnecchia (Kent State University)

A fragile ceasefire in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo is under threat from fighting in some villages. There have been outbreaks of violence between government troops and rebel fighters around the towns of Rutshuru and Kiwangja. Thousands of people have been fleeing the fighting, but the region’s main city of Goma is still relatively calm. Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Adow reports from Goma.

Original

The International Crisis Group summarizes recent developments in the Congo, lays out what is at stake and makes the case for more forceful foreign intervention:

“The Congo Re-erupts”,
Francois Grignon and Fabienne Hara in The Wall Street Journal Europe
4 November 2008

Years of peace-building are at stake.

The war that claimed millions of lives and involved six African armies is close to being reignited in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. For the third time in 12 years, a Tutsi-led rebel group is on the offensive and threatening to take Goma, the capital of the North Kivu province, with the support of next-door Rwanda.

Once again, Kinshasa is calling on Angola for help in resisting what it perceives as Rwandan aggression. Once again, the fighting has created a humanitarian crisis, with more than 200,000 new displaced persons adding to the 1.2 million already in camps. And once again, the United Nations peacekeeping force, though 17,000-strong and the biggest of all U.N. missions, seems unprepared to confront the crisis and fulfill its mandate to protect civilians. There have been calls to reinforce it or even to send yet another multinational force into eastern Congo.

But in the current fighting between the Kinshasa government under President Joseph Kabila and Congolese Tutsi insurgents under rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, not everything is evolving according to an old script. Mr. Nkunda’s claims that Congo’s government is run by perpetrators of the genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda are ludicrous. President Kabila, although a major disappointment to the Congolese and the country’s international partners, is far from committing such crimes. He has also come to power by far more democratic elections than those held in neighboring Rwanda, where opposition politicians tend to be put in jail before presidential polls are held.

Mr. Kabila’s legitimate election in November 2006 — heavily supported by Western powers, South Africa and Angola — closed the national chapter of the Congo peace process. Its wider Central African chapter had made clear progress by spring 2003, with the withdrawal of the last foreign troops from Congolese territory. Yet it was never really fully settled. There was no successful disarmament of the Rwandan Hutu rebels who live in Congo and whose leaders had been involved in the Rwanda genocide, and North Kivu has remained the crucible of a deadly conflict. Some of the former Tutsi rebels refused to integrate with the regular Congolese army, claiming the Congolese Tutsi minority needed protection from the government, and started a new insurgency soon after the beginning of the transition in August 2003.

Two main factors explain Kinshasa’s continued military collaboration with the Rwandan Hutu rebels, despite the untold suffering they are inflicting on Congolese civilians in the territories they control. First, there is a strong thirst for revenge against the government of Rwanda and its former proxies. This thirst exists in the Congolese high command and Mr. Kabila’s inner circle after the humiliations suffered following the two regional wars initiated by Rwanda, as well as among his Kivutian and North Katangan political base, who suffered from four years of brutal Rwandan occupation.

Second, there is simply no national Congolese army to speak of which can contain Mr. Nkunda’s Tutsi insurgency or force it to disarm and demobilize. The attempted 2006 army integration process for Mr. Nkunda’s troops collapsed within a couple of months, sabotaged both by the lack of support and rampant corruption within the high command of the Congolese army and by Mr. Nkunda’s intransigence. Unless Mr. Kabila reins in his extremists and accepts direct international supervision of the Congolese army in the province, there will be no decisive progress on the dismantlement and disarmament of the Rwandan Hutu rebels and no successful integration with Mr. Nkunda’s men — the only way for the sustainable restoration of state authority.

The U.N.-negotiated Nairobi declaration of November 2007 and the January 2008 Goma peace agreement provided a fairly comprehensive political framework for the disarmament of all militias. But the implementation of these accords fell through.

Dealing with the Tutsi insurgents will require a radical shift of international attitude toward Mr. Nkunda and Rwanda. Mr. Nkunda is confident in his military superiority, which has been sustained thanks to his access to Rwandan and Ugandan territories, where he gets medical and military supplies. Mr. Nkunda also actively recruits young men within Tutsi refugee camps and among the demobilized contingents of the Rwandan army. Last but not least, Mr. Nkunda knows he can still easily and efficiently manipulate Western guilt over the early 1990s genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda by flagging the fears of similar Tutsi victimization in eastern Congo, even though his troops have been among the worst human-right abusers in the province since 2004 — every bit as bad as the national army. Rwanda is motivated not only by a desire to protect ethnic Tutsis but by a desire to control mineral interests in Congo. Unless it comes under heavy pressure by Western powers and South Africa to strictly prohibit the free movements and operations of Mr. Nkunda’s insurgents and their backers on its territory, as per its commitment under the Nairobi declaration, Mr. Nkunda will have no incentive to disarm.

It would not be wise for U.N. Security Council members to expect the U.N. mission to solve all these problems. Ending this latest chapter of the Congo war will require sustained and significant pressure by the U.S., China, France, the U.K., South Africa and Belgium, the former colonial power. Specifically, they must demand that Kigali and Kinshasa implement the Nairobi declaration; insist that Mr. Nkunda retreat to his previous deployment points; and require Mr. Kabila to remove all army commanders collaborating with the Hutu extremists.

The international community has already invested billions of dollars to build and maintain peace in the Congo. To not invest hugely in diplomatic terms right now would risk it all.

Mr. Grignon is Africa program director, and Ms. Hara vice president, of the International Crisis Group.

Read the original

In Business Week:

Many experts are critical of the contractors working in Africa and of the rising U.S. military presence there. “If you look at the record for these programs in terms of teaching respect for human rights, professionalizing militaries, and preparing African armies for peacekeeping operations—all of which are perfectly laudable goals—the end result of the programs doesn’t contribute very much to those,” says Daniel Volman, who directs the African Security Research Project in Washington. “It’s much more likely to be used for purposes not intended by the U.S. government: counter-insurgency warfare, terrorizing populations, repressing internal dissent, etc.”

Read the rest in Business Week

NIGERIA: Second U.S.-based Nigerian blogger held

New York, October 31, 2008—Nigeria’s national security agency today confirmed it is holding a U.S.-based Nigerian blogger in the capital, Abuja. This is the second online journalist held for questioning in the past two weeks.

Local journalists told CPJ that the detentions are part of a government crackdown on foreign-based Nigerian political Web sites ever since controversial photos of President Umaru Yar’Adua’s son were published on a popular news blog.

Emmanuel Emeka Asiwe, editor of the Arlington, Mass.-based HuhuOnline, was being “questioned over matters of national security,” according to State Security Service (SSS) spokesman Kenechukwu Onyeogu. The SSS took the blogger into custody today after he arrived from the U.S., he said. But defense lawyer Babalola Akinwumi told CPJ Asiwe was arrested on Tuesday at Lagos’ airport. Asiwe has been held incommunicado and without charge in Abuja ever since, the lawyer said. Nigerian law allows authorities to hold people for up to 48 hours without charge.

“We are concerned that Nigerian authorities are detaining journalists in an attempt to intimidate foreign-based online journalists from reporting on Nigeria,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Tom Rhodes. “We call on President Yar’Adua to ensure that the SSS respects due process and stop these actions that undermine Nigeria’s democratic gains and harken back to the era of military rule.”

Jonathan Elendu of the Lansing, Michigan-based ElenduReports was detained for 10 days and was provisionally released without charge on Wednesday. ElenduReports published often controversial reports on corruption among Nigerian politicians. New York-based SaharaReporters recently published exclusive photos of Yar’Adua’s teenage son, Musa, posing with an AK-47 assault rifle and holding cash.

Speaking to CPJ shortly after his release, Elendu said security agents questioned him for five days over his alleged links to SaharaReporters, his sources of information and funding as well as his opinions of the president. Agents also quizzed him about stories discussing Yar’Adua’s health.

Elendu’s travel documents remain confiscated, defense lawyer Ugo Muoma told CPJ. Speaking to CPJ on October 22, SSS spokesman Onyeogu said the journalist had been “invited for questioning on matters of national security” in relations to several of his stories.

In recent months, coverage of sensitive topics, including unrest in the oil-rich southern Niger Delta and Yar’Adua’s health and family, have often resulted in arrests and raids by the SSS, which reports directly to the Nigerian presidency, according to CPJ research. At least seven journalists, including Asiwa and Elendu, have been detained in SSS custody this year alone without charge for days or weeks, according to CPJ research.

To the Editor:

Re “The Great Iceland Meltdown” (column, Oct. 19):

Writing about the current financial debacle, Thomas L. Friedman holds that in a globalizing world, “we are all partners now.” He hopes that “globalization will saveth.”

More than 20 years ago, a global commission headed by Willy Brandt, the former chancellor of West Germany, called for a partnership in international development. What have been the results?

At this month’s civil society forum (in which I participated), held just before the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings, representatives of grass-roots movements complained that the United States and other major powers still doggedly refuse to negotiate their lifestyles.

The market-driven form of globalization cannot “saveth” in the absence of democratic accountability and without restructuring the debt sustainability framework for developing countries.

James H. Mittelman
Bethesda, Md., Oct. 19, 2008
The writer, a professor of international affairs at American University, is the author of books about globalization.

From Africa Action:

Dear Friend,

Please take action today in solidarity with the people of Darfur whose lives have been torn apart by genocide for the last five years. To date over 450,000 lives have been lost and over 2.5 million people have been rendered homeless. We cannot be silent witnesses to this atrocious abuse of human rights and outrageous violation of the very sanctity of life! With a new administration coming into the White House in the next few months, we have a historic opportunity to put pressure on the next U.S. president to lead the international community in bringing peace and justice to Darfur and all Sudan.

In June 08, both Barrack Obama and John McCain signed a pledge promising “unstinting resolve” to end genocide in Darfur. Please add your voice in demanding that the next president fulfills this pledge by achieving:

* Protection of civilians from violence, starvation and disease;

* Sustainable peace for all Sudan, including upholding the Comprehensive Peace Agreement; and

* Justice for victims and accountability for perpetrators.

We invite you to join our JUST L.E.A.D campaign by signing a postcard to the next president today in support of peace and justice in Darfur and all Sudan. This campaign not only calls for leadership from the U.S. government but also challenges all of us to meet our collective responsibility as ordinary individuals to LEARN. EDUCATE. and ACT. DAILY on the most important moral and solidarity question of our time. Together with other organizations we are collecting one million postcards urging the next president to make peace and justice in Darfur and all Sudan a Day-One priority.

Please Sign your postcard now!

For more ways in which you can take part in this campaign contact outreach@africaaction.org or 202-546-7961

Sincerely,

Staff @ Africa Action