Association of Concerned Africa Scholars
Analysis and Action on Policies Impacting Africa

What next in South Africa

Sean Jacobs (Concerned Africa Scholars co-chair), writes about the end of the Mbeki-era and its aftermath at The Guardian Online.

Bush administration Security Assistance Programs for Africa

For Fiscal Year 2009 (which begins on 1 October 2008), the Bush administration is asking Congress to approve the delivery of some $500 million worth of military equipment and training to Africa (including both sub-Saharan Africa and north Africa) in the budget request for the State Department for Fiscal Year (FY) 2009. The administration is also asking for up to $400 million for deliveries of equipment and training for Africa funded through the Defense Department budget and another $400 million to establish the headquarters for the Pentagon’s new Africa Command (Africom).

AFRICOM: The New U.S. Military Command for Africa

On 6 February 2007, President Bush announced that the United States would create a new military command for Africa, to be known as Africa Command or Africom. Throughout the Cold War and for more than a decade afterwards, the U.S. did not have a military command for Africa; instead, U.S. military activities on the African continent were conducted by three separate military commands: the European Command, which had responsibility for most of the continent; the Central Command, which oversaw Egypt and the Horn of Africa region along with the Middle East and Central Asia; and the Pacific Command, which administered military ties with Madagascar and other islands in the Indian Ocean.

An Open Letter to South African President Thabo Mbeki

The motivation behind this issue originates in our dismay at the growing urgency of the situation in Zimbabwe. Human rights are being violated with increasing frequency. See, for one example, a report recently published by the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR). Please read it; a link to the report appears at the end of this issue. We also have personal friends in Zimbabwe who have confirmed that such violations are indeed taking place, and at the hands of people acting in the name of the state. Such a development is in direct violation of all that the liberation struggles against colonialism in southern Africa stood for. We call for all speed and urgency from every agency acting to influence the government of Zimbabwe to allow for the run-off election to be free and fair. Additionally, we insist upon a halt to the intimidation, murder, and beating of persons deemed opposition supporters.

The parallels between Zimbabwean and South African trade unionism

The early 1990s in Southern Africa saw the emergence of a exhilarating and esoteric phenomena-the embryonic rise of what I will call ‘trade unions-turned- political parties’, with Zambia providing the inaugural prototype in the successful metamorphosis of aspects of the Zambian Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU-Zambia) into the first labor-based political party in Southern Africa, the gaudy Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD). The MMD was led by the former Secretary General of ZCTU (Zambia), the nebulous Frederick Chiluba. The MMD won the subsequent key 1991 presidential election in Zambia which ended 27 of Kenneth ‘KK’ Kaunda’s increasingly tempestuous presidency in Zambia.Chiluba succeeded the inherently pertinacious Kaunda in this watershed election in Zambia. Kenneth Kaunda’s United National Independence Party (UNIP) had been in power since Zambia gained its independence from Britain in 1964.

The Case Against the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act

Since the end of the Cold War, US policy toward Africa has drifted and become increasingly erratic. ACAS thus welcomes new thinking and initiatives. Unfortunately our analysis suggests that the new Africa Growth and Opportunity Act does not represent a step forward in US-African relations. And many Africans agree.