Africa

UPDATED 31/03 at 2:00pm (below)

The Prime Minister Julia Gillard yesterday issued a statement “warmly” welcoming an influential foreign dignitary to Kirribilli House: President Bongo of Gabon. The Punch was immediately taken with the headline potential of this visit from the leader of our third-largest two-way trading partner in sub-Saharan Africa.

But there’s more than a funny headline to this story. It turns out the PM was hanging out with a rather dodgy character yesterday.

If you somehow haven’t heard of Gabon, it’s an oil and resources rich nation in West Africa. It’s next to Equatorial Guinea, the Republic of Congo, and a number of other countries you haven’t heard of.

Continue reading "PM gabs on, drumming up support for the dodgy Bongo" »

When Grace Arach was 12 she was kidnapped, raped, tortured, and forced to become the wife of one of Joseph Kony’s commanders. She escaped when she was 17. Since then she’s been working to help other child soldiers. Now she’s 25 and has been living in Australia for almost a year. Her family is still in Uganda.

I was in a vehicle with five others, including a Catholic priest, when we were ambushed by the Lord’s Resistance Army. They stopped the vehicle and got us out. There were five men and me. I was a little girl, 12 years old. It was 1996.

We went to a centre where the soldiers looted food and some drinks, then the priest asked the commander that was leading the group that arrested us, he asked: “What about the little girl?”. He said: “I want to take her back to her mother”.

The answer he got was: “Have you ever seen blood flowing?”, meaning if the priest insisted they would kill me.

Continue reading "At 12, I was forced to marry into Kony’s army" »

“Have you heard about Kony?” is a question that I was astounded to have addressed to me by a 14-year-old urbanite girl in a café in New York City. 

“Joseph Kony?” I asked, incredulous.

“The man who forces children to kill each other and uses girls as sex slaves,” she clarified in a remarkably matter-of-fact way. I was astounded.

I do know Kony. At least, I know of Kony. There are very few people who can truly claim to know him. Even the child soldiers who grew to men in his army, or the captive young girls who came traumatically to womanhood bearing his children have been brainwashed by the self-created mythology of the man. When I spoke to those who knew him intimately most still believed that Kony possessed magical powers.>

Continue reading "I’ve hunted Joseph Kony. Catching him won’t be easy." »

So, we all know about Kony 2012, right?

It’s rather extraordinary to think that you’re probably reading this just five days after the Invisible Children campaign exploded over the internet, and yet you’re probably already thinking “I’m so over it!”  A week really is an age in internet time.

And yet, I still don’t quite know what to make of it all. On the one hand, the motives of the campaign are very simple: stop an evil bastard. And, of course, it’s hard to argue against that in any way.

Continue reading "A campaign that gives us reason to be optimistic" »

The massive YouTube viewing of Invisible Children’s film “Kony 2012” is nothing short of phenomenal. People are engaged, outraged and quite rightly calling on the International community to do something - in this case, arrest, charge and try Kony in the Hague. People have found their voice against one of the world’s cruelest, most evil men and his regime of hate and terror.

The call for justice is both reasoned and reasonable. I go to Uganda almost every year and see firsthand the impact of Kony’s violence and terror. He should be brought to justice and it should be now.

People quite rightly are asking what Africa is doing about it. Uganda’s inaction against Kony should be seen through the lens of lack of capability not will, though the inaction of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a lack of will not capability. Kony has a following and a degree of Government protection within the DRC and the country’s civil war with estimates of some 6 million killed simply makes Kony another part of the nation’s woes. It is a tragic part of the world where human life is often cheap. However, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Continue reading "Kony 2012: Just DO something. Anything." »

Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit. Today we’re looking at the super-viral Kony 2012 campaign by Invisible Children, a group dedicated to stopping African warlord Joseph Kony.

Doesn’t it feel good, battling evil African terrorists with your Facebook, your Twitter, maybe even your credit card? The Kony story is such a good yarn. It has the perfect villain, who eats small children for breakfast. Then with all the trappings of modern-day warfare – that is, a viral video and social media campaign – we can all be keyboard heroes marching to save the poor kids.

Millions of people have now seen the Kony 2012 film by NGO Invisible Children. When I started writing this piece it was around 7.3 million, right now it’s almost at 10 million. And that’s just on YouTube. It’s on Vimeo and a bunch of other sites as well.

Continue reading "ICB: Playing heroes and villains with Kony 2012" »

In 10 days I’m going to get on a plane and go to Kenya. I’ve packed my clothes, my sunscreen, my wide-brimmed hat and my mosquito net. I’ve also packed the $7,000 dollars I raised to fund the building of an orphanage in Mangu – the project I’ll be working on.

I’ve also packed another $1,000 of my own money to spend at the local market on gifts, books, schoolbags, pens and paper for the kids. So with this in mind, you can imagine my surprise when this bold opinion piece was emailed to me: “Hands-on help can be harmful”.

There are always rotten apples in the barrel and clearly there are some overseas volunteer projects that are not set up with the best of intentions. And I agree that for many overseas projects there should be formal checks on those working with children.

Continue reading "What could be better than hands-on experience?" »

What happened
For at least the fourth time since the “Band Aid” famine of the 1980s , the beleaguered citizens of the Horn of Africa endured famine, as a result of ongoing drought, desertification and civil strife.

Refugee camps in northern Kenya swelled massively, the Dadaab camp bursting with half a million people. As the crisis unfolded, a British newspaper warned that if the West failed to act appropriately, it would be as complicit as the warlords exacerbating the situation in Africa.

What happened next
The West did indeed open its pockets. The UK government’s initial AID package was the equivalent of $60 million. By the first week of December, Australians had donated $12.7 million, and the government matched the donations under their dollar-for-dollar aid scheme. The crisis continues.

Continue reading "Biggest moments of 2011 #7 Africa goes hungry" »

When I told my Australian friends that I was moving to Kenya to work as an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development many of them told me not to have sex while I was here because of the country’s high HIV prevalence. Some 280 people are infected with HIV every day in Kenya.

The theme for this year’s World AIDS Day is getting to zero, but getting to zero doesn’t mean zero sex.  Along with zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS related deaths it also means zero unprotected sex with someone whose HIV status you don’t know.

Knowing your HIV status is the first step in prevention; if you are negative then you can take measures to ensure that you stay negative and if you are positive then you can access treatment, care and support services.

Continue reading "A HIV test, like sex, is best enjoyed with your partner" »

Unless you have been hiding under a rock for some months, you will realise that people are starving in the Horn of Africa.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation considers 12 million people at risk in a region that includes Ethiopia (82m), Kenya (39m), Somalia (9m), Uganda (32m) and little Djibouti (1m). The figures in brackets are national populations and imply that 12 million is only only about 7 per cent of people in the region.

But you know the risk to each and every one of them is serious when Bob Geldof is wheeled out in a suit. Geldof, in a recent press conference, felt compelled to remind people that those at risk are intelligent, creative and resilient people who are suffering enormously.

Continue reading "Make boverty history" »

A little over two months ago, on 9 July 2011, the world celebrated in unison at the birth of the world’s newest nation, the Republic of South Sudan.

As the Prime Minister’s Special Representative, I was privileged to represent Australia at the independence celebrations in Juba, South Sudan’s largest city and the capital of the newly independent country.

It was an historic moment, and the elation was palpable and infectious. With an Australian Akubra hat protecting me from the hot African sun, I shared in the joy and celebrations of thousands of South Sudanese.

Continue reading "Cautious hope for the world’s newest nation" »

Neuroscientists have found that over 80 per cent of calories that newborns ingest fuel their brains. The colossal statistic accounts for how rapidly the young brain grows and develops.

It paints us a new picture of malnutrition. It tells us that babies caught up in the developing famine in East Africa will almost certainly suffer starvation-induced damage that will have long-term developmental effects on their minds.

Babies are arriving in field hospitals in Dadaab, Kenya, too weak to cry. Many weigh a third of what they should.

Continue reading "Won’t someone, please, think of the African children" »

Once again Africa is gripped by a catastrophic famine.  As developed countries and NGOs scramble to mobilise aid, we are told incomprehensible numbers of people face a ghastly death by starvation, including hundreds of thousands of children.

It can make you despair.  Sometimes we feel like turning away, we seem so powerless and the problems so entrenched and repetitive. Giving money can feel pointless; commercial TV news hardly mentions the crisis, guessing it will have viewers reaching for the remote control.

But there’s another story about Africa many Australians might find very surprising.

Continue reading "Africa: now the good news" »

Here’s a question – why are people rioting in Britain but not in Africa?

Why are we seeing violence and vandalism on the streets of London, where an entire government bureaucracy has been built up around giving money to the poor, but not on the streets of Mogadishu, where there is no government assistance at all, barely a government, and whatever aid is provided by other countries is often pilfered by unscrupulous local officials?

Here’s another question. Why are we seeing more panic and hysteria on the floors of the western world’s stock exchanges and among investors than we are in the Somalian camps, where according to the latest figures one in every 10 children under the age of five will be dead by November?

Continue reading "First world problems and the crisis in Africa" »

Want to know how Australia’s $4.836 billion in Australian overseas aid will be spent in 2011-12? Finding out is not easy of you are a journalist or documentary filmmaker and do not want to rely only on Department of Foreign Affairs press releases and what is to be found on the DFAT and AusAID websites.

“I am committed to enhancing the transparency of our aid program,” writes Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd on the DFAT website. “When people are able to access information, they are better able to hold those who are managing their money — whether AusAID, partner governments, or international organisations — to account.”

Noble sentiments - but how does Rudd’s professed commitment to transparency and accountability stack up when it comes to providing media access to the aid programs on which this money is being spent?

Continue reading "We need to know whether aid is helping in Africa" »

A lot of people, when they look at pictures on the television about the unfolding famine in Somalia, say “we’ve seen it all before. What’s different about this one? And why haven’t they fixed it up by now?”

I understand some of the cynicism but if you have been to this region as I have just been, you cannot be indifferent to what is happening there. This is the worst drought in the Horn of Africa in 60 years.

Famine has been declared in a significant slice of Somalia and by Christmas it is anticipated that the famine will extend to the southern half of the entire country.

Continue reading "A plea for Africa: Now is the time for global action" »

A couple of weeks ago Ant Sharwood gave me a call and started talking about the Horn of Africa. He was pretty fired up, and talking about various types of excrement hitting various types of oscillating devices.

I was pretty distracted. There’d been a lot going on. That tax thing had just been announced, sharia law was in the news – you know, all the hot button stuff. Africa was not in the news. Well, it was, but back in the World section, the bit you don’t always manage to get to. That’s the hollow ring of self justification you can hear there, folks.

Anyhoo, Ant wrote this great piece. And he was right. The shit has really hit the fan, and it was a terrible surprise for many who probably should have seen it coming. Should have seen it coming for not just years, but decades.

Continue reading "Africa’s perfect storm is the world’s responsibility" »

It is 27 years since a bunch of do-gooding musicians, led by Bob Geldof, banded together to alert the world to a North African famine. We need more than a Band Aid solution this time.

Since the 1984 famine, the so-called “horn” of Africa – which includes Somalia, Ethiopia, the tiny nation of Djibouti and northern Kenya – has had several crippling droughts which have led to famines. The last really bad one was in 2006. But there were several between then and the Band Aid era.

And now, the curse of famine is descending upon the region again, due to a combination of the usual suspects of drought, desertification, crop failure and military conflicts. Early estimates suggest that 10 million people are at risk of starvation.

Continue reading "Band Aids not enough as Africa faces famine" »

In 2010 Bishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa declared that the time had come, particularly for Africans, to stop the “wave of hate” and to stand up “against wrong”.

He was referring to the wrong to “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people” who are “part of the African family” and who “are living in fear.”

This news from Africa would be bad enough. But the same fear extends far beyond that continent.

Continue reading "Religion is helping the spread of AIDS" »

“I am a concerned Ugandan citizen because I…am worried that my children will be recruited to be homosexuals …I am worried that the future of Ugandan children is at stake.”

WARNING: THIS VIDEO IS EXTREMELY GRAPHIC. The Punch, not the author, chose it to illustrate the disgraceful stance of some Ugandans on this issue.

In October 2009, an Anti-Homosexuality Bill, or what has been internationally dubbed as the “Kill the gays” Bill, was introduced by David Bahati MP in Ugandan Parliament. The Bill strengthened the existing criminal penalties while increasing the sentences for certain kinds of consensual sexual “offences” between people of the same-sex.

Much of the social and political obsession with the idea of “homosexuality” in Uganda disparately emerged as a product of British colonialism. “Sodomy” offences or “acts against the order of nature”, as they are commonly referred to, were introduced through colonialism as a way of policing all non-heterosexual or non-reproductive relationships.

Continue reading "What’s bad for the gays is bad for Uganda" »

Here’s a great story in the spirit of the festive season.

Melbourne-based academic and human rights advocate Sekai Shand has spent the majority of the last 25 years working in various international disaster zones.

But she recently returned home to the African village where she was raised to perform her most important mission yet - helping the women of her village overcome poverty and violence through self-sufficiency.

Continue reading "A real story about self-sufficiency" »

Note: While technically this piece qualifies as nepotism I am sick of writing about the election and Uncle Ken is a top bloke who has done a great thing.

Furniture is not commonly associated with politics. Bob Geldof did not try to feed the world with a chair.

My Uncle Ken Pfitzner is a gifted Adelaide cabinetmaker who spent a life-changing year of his adolescence travelling through Africa where, among other things, he was memorably attacked by a baboon.

Since then he has led a quieter life creating and restoring amazing pieces of furniture from his shambolic workshop in Edwardstown.

Continue reading "My uncle’s tribute in timber to the people of Africa" »

Tony Abbott wants to stop the boats.  Can we do this?

I was recently in Djibouti, a small country that is very important in the world of people smuggling because of its location.  Djibouti is wedged between Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea, some of the most conflict-ridden countries in the world.  In contrast, Djibouti is relatively stable. Importantly it has a long coastline in the Gulf of Aden.  A fishing boat can reach Yemen in under two hours.

Despite its peace, Djibouti is a very poor country.  Women still cart water on their backs. The CIA Fact-book describes the country as “mostly wasteland”.

Continue reading "The boats can be stopped, if war and hunger are too" »

“Please tell everyone South Africa’s not as dangerous as they think.” That’s how most of my conversations have started over the past 10 days as I travelled around the country that will host next month’s World Cup.

It’s just 16 years since Nelson Mandela’s election as president signalled the end of the apartheid era, and like a teenager going to her deb ball, South Africa is nervous about being the centre of attention.

Worried that the roads won’t be ready. Worried that the national team, known to all as Bfana Bfana, won’t perform well. But most of all, worried that the country’s reputation for violence will be the ever-lasting memory of this World Cup.

Continue reading "Nervous wait for World Cup in rainbow republic" »

I missed the last week of Parliament during the ongoing debate concerning boat people.

I was in Uganda at a board meeting of my favorite charity Watoto, a charity that rescues abandoned children and babies and gives them hope and a future.

I’ve been going to Africa every year for many years working with some of the poorest people on earth.

Continue reading "Refugees are dying while they wait in the queue" »