South Sudan clashes block aid to 60,000 malnourished children
Fighting along the Nile River in South Sudan has prevented humanitarian aid reaching more than 60,000 malnourished children in the northeast of the country for almost a month, two UN agencies said on Thursday.
The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) and agency for children (Unicef) said they expect nutrition supplies for Upper Nile State, which has some of the highest rates of malnutrition in the country, to run out by the end of May.
'Children are already the first to suffer during emergencies. If we can't get nutrition supplies through, we are likely to see escalating malnutrition in areas already at breaking point,' Mary-Ellen McGroarty, WFP's representative in South Sudan, said in a joint WFP-Unicef statement.
The Nile is a crucial transport artery in South Sudan because the impoverished country has few paved roads and a lot of challenging terrain, particularly during the rainy season when many roads become impassable.
The agencies did not say which fighting had disrupted the route of their aid barges, but government forces have been fighting an ethnic Nuer militia known as the White Army in areas near the Nile since March.
The battles led to the arrest of First Vice-President Riek Machar and a spiralling political crisis, which the UN has warned could reignite the brutal civil war that ended in 2018.
In mid-April, barges carrying 1,000 tonnes of food and nutrition supplies bound for Upper Nile State were forced to return due to insecurity, WFP and Unicef said.
The agencies decided against pre-positioning supplies in health centres and warehouses in insecure areas because they could have become targets for looting, they said.
'We have reluctantly taken the unprecedented step of holding back supplies for fear that they will not reach the children that so desperately need them, due to the ongoing fighting, looting and disruption of the river route,' said Obia Achieng, Unicef's representative.
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Daily Maverick
6 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
Focusing on our formal colonial past obscures the inconvenient present (Part 1)
The corporate takeover of South African universities is the living legacy of Cecil John Rhodes, the mining magnate/politician. This ought to be a prime focus of students who describe themselves as radical, instead of dividing themselves on 'racial' lines. Part 1 in a two-part series. This year is the 10th anniversary of the student rebellion in South Africa and the explosion of the new concepts in popular discussion of colonialism and decolonisation. Forming a related group of ideas are decolonising the mind; a homogenous Africa, along with a similarly homogeneous Global South; and settler colonialism. Other than settler colonialism, which is for another time, this two-part series seeks to show why each of them is problematic. Decolonising the mind is arguably the most obfuscating, while also the most open to question. 1 Colonialism Colonialism is commonly understood as one country establishing and maintaining political and economic control over another territory and its people. Leading dictionaries, encyclopaedias and even the UN agree on this. The Oxford English Dictionary (2014) offers: 'The policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country… and exploiting it economically.' The Encyclopedia Britannica's version is more succinct: 'The control by one country over another area and its people.' For the UN's General Assembly, Resolution 1514, of 1960, colonialism is 'The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination, and exploitation.' 2 Decolonisation It might surprise knowing that this term has conservative, anti-decolonisation origins, having been coined by the British and French 20th century administrations confronted by nationalist movements and anticolonial liberation struggles sweeping across Asia and Africa. The strategic aim of these colonial administrations was the orderly and prolonged transfer of political control to already established native elites who would minimise changes to the existing colonial architecture. In the 21st century, the term — now widely expanded — is still evoked by the elites in the former colonies. In many ways, sections of the broad left support versions of this conservative understanding of decolonisation, as Pranay Somayajula, a Washington DC-based writer, demonstrates. I shall be drawing on him in some of what follows. In many ways, this expanded use of decolonisation reflects the influence of 'coloniality', a school of thought that emerged in the 1990s in Latin America. Coloniality, in its critique of modernity, emphasises colonialism's importance in shaping modernity. Indeed, decolonial theorists often combine 'modernity' and 'coloniality' as a single term: modernity/coloniality. As two leading exponents of coloniality, Walter Mignolo and Catherine Walsh, write: The 'horizon' of decoloniality is not limited to 'the political independence of nation-states' or 'the confrontation with capitalism and the West,' but rather with 'the habits that modernity/coloniality implanted in all of us; with how modernity/coloniality has worked and continues to work to negate, disavow, distort and deny knowledges, subjectivities, world senses, and life visions'. Framing decolonisation in this way transforms it into a need for psychological liberation, a process of unlearning colonial ideology and reclaiming identity, dignity, and agency. The need to 'delink' from these Eurocentric systems of knowledge and power is, for them, a task whose goal is 'no longer to 'take hold of the state' but to engage in epistemic and subjective reconstitution' [On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018)] Such disavowals of modernity make it appealing to conservativism, in all its manifestations. Before suggesting what lies behind this development of decoloniality, which embraces all the major, current forms of Identity worldwide — be they racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, language or nation — held by the formerly colonised non-white people, it is important to recognise that Identity, regardless of which particular one, is a social construct. It follows from the rejection of biological essentialism as being without any scientific basis that there is nothing for the supposedly inferior people to prove. This applies to Identity, irrespective of which one different people choose. The challenge is to ensure that the prejudices of the most jaundiced of jingoists are not internalised. There is thus no need to invent cultural histories or celebrate the achievements by, specifically, members of former colonised people. Yet, it is precisely this need to disprove all the dogmas that is daily on display. Hindu nationalism is a prime example of this from Asia. Pranay Somayajula reminds us that, in their calls for a return to an imagined Hindu civilisational glory, a 'golden age', current Hindu leaders frequently invoke the language of overcoming a 'colonised mindset' and reviving so-called 'Indic consciousness' — the array of 'indigenous' philosophies, cosmologies, and epistemologies supposedly suppressed by centuries of Islamic and British colonisation alike. In its most exaggerated form, this atavism can be observed in the viral memes claiming that ancient Indians invented everything from aircraft to nuclear weapons to the internet. This need to invent their own culture or achievements resulted in Afro-Americans inventing their own Christmas, Kwanzaa, in 1966, with twenty-first century estimates of the number of Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa being between 500,000 and 2,000,000. Expressing the same need, African nationalists claimed — some still do — that the Pyramids and the Sphinx were built by black Africans, not Egyptian Arabs, with the Sphinx having been deliberately bombed in order to remove a characteristically African nose. Some black Africans, including those of African descent worldwide, of the Christian faith argue that Jesus was black. Moving on to South Africa, decolonisation hit us, from seemingly nowhere, when a few students at the University of Cape Town threw shit at a statue of Cecil John Rhodes in March 2015. Since then, it has blown across the whole of South Africa to be inhaled as fresh air. Conferences on the subject are big business; there's even a Decolonisation Foundation. To be anything less than exhilarated by the whirlwind is to run the risk of being roughly attacked as racist or reactionary. The gale has especially shaken universities: their need for a thoroughly decolonised makeover, including what is taught and by whom, is the new orthodoxy. During the student rebellion of 2015-17, those who shouted the loudest often made fools of themselves. The proposed rejection of science as a non-African, white Eurocentric imposition was reported across the world. Less well known but in the same league were the medical students who rejected a practical on ankle injuries because the lecturer, attempting to make it real life, had linked the injury to football and football was deemed to be an alien, non-African colonial import. In a similar vein was — and is — the automatic rejection of reading lists on technical subjects purely because the authors are from Europe or the US. Subjects such as architecture have been disavowed for being non-African. Expressions of this same drive for constantly disproving white prejudice was recognised, along with its implicit rebuke, by Mamphela Ramphele, a noted academic, besides being Steve Biko's one-time partner, who said 'we have largely bought into the lie that black people do not have the capacity to excel'. Exposing the lie is manifested in things such as: The need for street names to show that black people are capable of having their own heroes. The rejection of the Homo Naledi fossils because black people have not evolved from baboons. The national celebration following the first black South African to have climbed Mount Everest, a feat which, according to then president Thabo Mbeki, made all South Africans 'stick out our chests in justifiable pride and wonder'. The ANC Women's League's celebration (without any irony) that President Jacob Zuma had used a 'wholly black-owned' bank to pay his Public Prosecutor-ordered, maleficence-laden Nkandla bill. The league's secretary-general noted that the president's 'confidence in supporting black-owned businesses is humbling'. This bank subsequently turned out to be the notorious VBS! The celebration of 'Ubuntu' as a uniquely black South African contribution to world philosophy and ethics. The then minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, Thoko Didiza, who in 2000 announced that the government wanted to build 'a core of successful black farmers in this country. We want to move away from a perception that only white farmers can make it commercially, and that subsistence farming is only for Africans'. For then president Jacob Zuma it was a case of: 'Let us solve African problems the African way, not the white man's way. Let us not be influenced by other cultures…' The need for black people to be rich to prove black ability and the consequent — and often unconscionable — conspicuous consumption to display black achievement. Thabo Mbeki, the urbane, cosmopolitan, British university-educated intellectual, surprised many by his evident internalisation of the most extreme views of supposedly biologically determined black behaviour. His denial of Aids stands testimony to his fear that the worst of white racism is accurate. Consider the following, for instance, from 11 August 2000: 'The white politician (a reference to Tony Leon who had attacked his Aids denialism) makes bold to speak openly of his disdain and contempt for African solutions to the challenges that face the peoples of our continent. According to him… these solutions, because they are African, could not but consist of pagan, savage, superstitious and unscientific responses typical of the African people, described by the white politician as resorting 'to snake-oil cures and quackery'… This racism has defined us who are African and black as primitive, pagan, slaves to the most irrational superstitions and inherently prone to brute violence.' Or, after referring to medical schools where black people were 'reminded of their role as germ carriers', Mbeki said: 'Thus does it happen that others who consider themselves to be our leaders take to the streets carrying their placards (evidently referring to trade union leaders and Aids activists) to demand that because we are germ carriers, and human beings of a lower order that cannot subject its (sic) passions to reason, we must perforce adopt strange opinions, to save a depraved and diseased people from perishing from self-inflicted disease… Convinced that we are but natural-born, promiscuous carriers of germs, unique in the world, they proclaim that our continent is doomed to an inevitable mortal end because of our unconquerable devotion to the sin of lust.' The gruesome reality of Aids rules out any irony in Mbeki's comments. Let me further make explicit and unequivocal that, notwithstanding the above, colonialism was both real and a primary determinant in shaping our history and socioeconomic architecture. In addition, the rediscovery of colonialism is essential to the final burial of the idea that apartheid — the racial organisation and structure of South Africa — began only in 1948, when the Calvinist Afrikaners, unlike the nice, liberal English, took over the running of South Africa. 3 The colonisation supposedly in need of decolonising the mind The left in South Africa, Europe and the US were/are leading advocates of a decolonisation centred on universities and what is taught there. With South Africa this time being the unusual vanguard, meant Britain and the US — particularly since the Black Lives Matter uprisings of summer 2020 — catching up with the demands made by South African students five years earlier. 'Among the most visible targets' of this catching up, Pranay Somayajula notes, 'were intellectual and cultural institutions — universities, museums, archives, and the like — which came under pressure to 'decolonise' through gestures such as land acknowledgments, renaming buildings, repatriating looted artifacts, and reworking curricula to more adequately 'centre' black and indigenous voices.' This forced European institutions to reckon with their complicity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century empires, North American institutions to reckon with their complicity in settler-colonial violence against the continent's indigenous peoples, and institutions to reckon with their complicity in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Somayajula's conclusion is that this focus 'on the institutions that function as pillars of Western knowledge production constitutes in many ways an indictment of Western epistemology itself… Implicit in this critique of dominant forms of knowledge production is a call to uplift in their place the indigenous ways of knowing and being that have been suppressed by the same processes of colonial violence and dispossession in which these institutions were (and are) complicit.' South Africa's student rebellion of 2015-17 provides a case study of what this means in practice. The student who threw the poo at Rhodes' statue that sparked the rebellion came dressed as a mine worker. The Marikana Massacre of 2012 is a stark reminder that the problem is not colonialism, or Rhodes' dead legacy, but the awful power of his very-much-alive mining descendants, for whom colonialism is rightly history. The exclusive focusing on the colonial insult symbolised by Rhodes' statue leaves this living legacy untouched. Shouting for the removal of other 'white colonial' names — like in 'Jameson' Hall — makes it very easy for the university authorities to agree. It is easy for them to do so for it serves as a distractive anachronism. Focusing on our formal colonial past obscures the inconvenient present and its truth that UCT is heavily reliant on the various post-colonial forms of Rhodes' legacy for its current funding; a reliance reflected in so many of the corporate names that now festoon supposed 'academic' buildings. Indeed, the entire corporate takeover of all universities, not just UCT, is the living legacy of Rhodes, the mining magnate/politician. This ought to be a prime focus of students who describe themselves as radical. Instead, they divided themselves on so-called 'racial' lines and, as a final mocking irony, did so using the 'races' Rhodes did so much to institutionalise as part of his divide-and-rule legacy. His contribution to the forced creation of an African working class with a ready and self-replenishing supply of dirt-cheap labour for his gold mines is a prominent feature of his legacy. The supposedly 'black students' demanding the removal of the offending statue bring warmth to the coffins containing the heroes of the apartheid pantheon, beginning with Dr Hendrik Verwoerd. These apartheid architects argued that the four 'races' of apartheid South Africa reflected a natural order in which each 'race' had to live separate from the others because of their natural differences and in-born wishes. 'Coloureds' and 'Indians' are not black, according to the students who accused the formerly white universities of still being predominately 'white'. Students were not welcome at some of the student gatherings because of their 'whiteness', even though they fully supported the 'black' campaign to remove Rhodes from UCT as part of the decolonisation campaign that swept the country. Rhodes, too, would have greatly enjoyed this spectacle of how students allowed the 'races' he helped manufacture to divide themselves, even while campaigning against his 'colonial' legacy of dispossession and subjugation. Colour-coding access to scarce resources is the main hallmark of the new, post-apartheid, non-racial South Africa. We'll be returning to this issue in due course. The right wing has also been prolific in its understanding of what decolonising means. The well-known academic, Professor William Gumede, of Wits University, provides one such example in his 2022 Daily Maverick article, ' African economic transformation demands a radical shock to failed post-colonial system '. His article begins: 'Several types of collective mindset changes drove the astonishing industrial transformation of the East Asian developmental states from similar poverty levels to their African and developing country peers, to levels of development similar to or better than those of their former colonial occupiers.' And ends: 'If… South Africa and other African and developing countries want to mimic the extraordinary and radical economic transformation of the East Asian tiger economies, (they) will have to undergo drastic individual and collective mindset changes, and overhaul old institutions, behaviours and customs. Without such a shock to thinking patterns, they will stay locked in mass underdevelopment, poverty and instability.' A single word defines his remedy: entrepreneurship. It is this, he contends, that has transformed all four of the countries he mentions: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. What he singularly fails to mention is that the first three countries all owe their good fortune to the privileges the US allowed them as an integral part of the post-World War 2 challenge posed by both the Soviet Union and the then China. Highly selective perception is required to see Singapore as a success story, as detailed in 'Singapore — little to sing about despite Greg Mills' call for encores', my January 2024 response to a Daily Maverick article by Greg Mills. (This response is the only one never published by the Daily Maverick but is available on request.) Franz Fanon now enters the story with his seminal book, first published in 1952, Black Skin, White Masks. Many worldwide have long attributed the need to decolonise the mind to this book. Yet 'decolonise' does not appear in the book, not even once. It is, indeed, part of his book, The Wretched of the Earth. This difference is not an academic quibble. It alerts us to the confusions caused by the misuse of colonialism and why that matters. Considerably.
eNCA
10 hours ago
- eNCA
US-backed group suspends Gaza aid operations
A US and Israeli-backed group operating aid sites in the Gaza Strip announced the temporary closure of the facilities on Wednesday, with the Israeli army warning that roads leading to distribution centres were "considered combat zones". The announcement by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) follows a string of deadly incidents near the distribution sites it operates that have sparked condemnation from the United Nations. Israeli bombardment on Wednesday killed at least 16 people in the Gaza Strip, including 12 in a single strike on a tent housing displaced people, the Palestinian territory's civil defence agency told AFP. On Tuesday, 27 people were killed in southern Gaza when Israeli troops opened fire near a GHF aid site, with the military saying the incident was under investigation. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the deaths of people seeking food aid as "unacceptable", and the world body's rights chief condemned attacks on civilians as "a war crime" following a similar incident near the same site on Sunday. Israel recently eased its blockade of Gaza, but the UN says the territory's entire population remains at risk of famine. - UN vote - AFP | - The GHF said its "distribution centres will be closed for renovation, reorganisation and efficiency improvement work" on Wednesday and would resume operations on Thursday. The Israeli army, which confirmed the temporary closure, warned against travelling "on roads leading to the distribution centres, which are considered combat zones". The GHF, officially a private effort with opaque funding, began operations a week ago but the UN and major aid groups have refused to cooperate with it over concerns it was designed to cater to Israeli military objectives. Israeli authorities and the GHF, which uses contracted US security, have denied allegations that the Israeli army shot at civilians rushing to pick up aid packages. Food shortages in Gaza have propelled fresh international calls for an end to the war, but a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas remains elusive. The UN Security Council will vote Wednesday on a resolution calling for a ceasefire and humanitarian access to Gaza, a measure expected to be vetoed by key Israel backer the United States. - 'A trap' - At a hospital in southern Gaza, the family of Reem al-Akhras, who was killed in Tuesday's shooting near GHF's facility, were beside themselves with grief. AFP | - "She went to bring us some food, and this is what happened to her," her son Zain Zidan said, his face streaked with tears. Akhras's husband, Mohamed Zidan, said "every day unarmed people" were being killed. "This is not humanitarian aid -- it's a trap." The Israeli military maintains that its forces do not prevent Gazans from collecting aid. AFP | Eyad BABA Army spokesperson Effie Defrin said the Israeli soldiers had fired towards suspects who "were approaching in a way that endangered" the troops, adding that the "incident is being investigated". UN human rights chief Volker Turk called attacks against civilians "unconscionable" and said they "constitute a grave breach of international law and a war crime". The International Committee of the Red Cross meanwhile said "Gazans face an "unprecedented scale and frequency of recent mass casualty incidents". - Activists' boat - AFP | Eyad BABA Scenes of hunger in Gaza have also sparked fresh solidarity with Palestinians, and a boat organised by an international activist coalition was sailing toward Gaza, aiming to deliver aid. The boat from the Freedom Flotilla Coalition departed Sicily Sunday carrying a dozen people, including environmental activist Greta Thunberg, along with fruit juices, milk, tinned food and protein bars. "Together, we can open a people's sea corridor to Gaza," the coalition said. But Israel's military said Tuesday it was ready to "protect" the country's maritime space. When asked about the Freedom Flotilla vessel, army spokesman Defrin said "for this case as well, we are prepared", declining to go into detail. AFP | Eyad BABA Israel has stepped up its offensive in Gaza in what it says is a renewed push to defeat the Palestinian group Hamas, whose October 2023 attack sparked the war. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said at least 4,335 people have been killed since Israel resumed its offensive on March 18, taking the war's overall toll to 54,607, mostly civilians. Hamas's 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, also mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. The army said three of its soldiers had been killed in northern Gaza, bringing the number of Israeli troops killed in the territory since the start of the war to 424. By Afp Team In Gaza City With Louis Baudoin-laarman In Ramallah
Daily Maverick
14 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
Somalia's stance on peace missions — interference or local ownership?
Threats to the independence of peace support missions call for clarity on their relationship with host countries. The Federal Government of Somalia has repeatedly used the 'persona non grata' principle to expel senior representatives of African Union (AU) and United Nations (UN) missions, citing 'misconduct' and 'interference in internal affairs'. Somalia is also playing a more pronounced but contested role in planning, deploying and repatriating AU peace support operations (PSOs) in the country. These moves undermine missions' independence and hamper their ability to carry out mandated tasks. They also question host nations' increasing role in shaping mission strategy and operations. As the UN and AU explore the future of PSOs, the implications for existing and future peace missions must be considered. The UN and AU have long supported Somalia through peace missions to help deal with the country's protracted civil war. For almost 20 years the AU has deployed three consecutive PSOs – the latest being the AU Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (Aussom) – with a mandate to help defeat violent extremist groups, including al-Shabaab, protect civilians and rebuild the country's governance capacity. The UN has provided special political missions to support state-building, rule of law, justice and human rights. It also authorised the AU PSOs and provided them with logistical assistance. Despite their many challenges and the persistent al-Shabaab threat, these missions have helped stabilise the country. Somalia has consolidated its government structures at federal and state levels, and an increasing number of regions have been liberated from al-Shabaab. Thousands of peacekeepers have died for the cause of peace. The 3,500 AU mission personnel killed in Somalia between 2007 and 2023 nears the total deaths of all UN peacekeeping missions in 75 years worldwide. Mission leaders walk a fine political line as they operate in Somalia. According to recent media reports, diplomatic concerns among Somali federal authorities resulted in Aussom acting head Sivuyile Bam being declared 'persona non grata'. Bam is also a deputy special representative to AU Commission chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf. Neither side has issued an official statement, but Somalia reportedly accused Bam of sympathising with al-Shabaab, and the government hinted at 'misconduct' when announcing Bam's replacement. This announcement appears false since the AU Commission has yet to appoint a head and deputy head of Aussom. Anonymous AU sources told ISS Today that the AU Commission withdrew Bam from the mission before Somalia expelled him. They said the reason was his briefing to the UN Security Council in April, which highlighted Aussom's funding and capabilities challenges, and the rise in al-Shabaab attacks. Somalia has used these tactics before, when senior leaders of AU and UN missions were forced to leave the country for similar reasons. In 2022, former AU Commission chairperson special representative and head of the first two AU PSOs, ambassador Francisco Madeira, was ejected. Somalia accused Madeira of 'engaging in acts that are incompatible with his status as representative of the AU Commission'. Former AU Commission chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat rejected the accusation, expressing his 'trust and confidence' in Madeira. In 2019, Somalia expelled the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy and Mission Head Nicholas Haysom, accusing him of 'interfering with the country's internal affairs.' However, other sources said he was expelled because he was defending human rights in the country. In recent years Somalia's government has increasingly contested the planning, deployment and repatriation of AU PSOs. For example, Burundi – one of the largest contributors to AU PSOs since 2008 – has said it will withdraw its forces from Somalia following disagreement with the government on the number of troops to be deployed. These decisions were not Somalia's to make. Burundi's troop contribution was planned under the AU framework, and any decisions on expert and troop numbers deployed should have been made by the AU Commission. Local and national ownership is generally recognised as key to a mission's effectiveness. In 2001, the UN endorsed the concept as a way to empower local actors and communities in the peacebuilding process. In principle though, this was not intended to compromise the strategic and operational independence of missions. Tensions between host nations and peace missions are not new and are not restricted to Somalia. When Sudan, Mali, and Kosovo expelled UN mission leaders, the UN condemned their actions because the 'doctrine of 'persona non grata' is not applicable to UN personnel'. While the legality of 'persona non grata' in the context of UN and AU peace missions is still debatable, the implications for peace missions of using this tactic are evident. At the very least, the threat of expulsion undermines the morale of mission personnel and their ability to act independently according to their mandates. Operational independence is vital to a mission's legitimacy in the eyes of host nation communities and the world. For Aussom, having an 'acting' head of mission since mid-April will limit its effectiveness. The Somali government's direct dealings with Burundi on troop contributions to Aussom not only compromise mission independence but undermine troop-contributing countries' confidence in the AU Commission's decision-making. This highlights the dilemma of state sovereignty and how to manage the principle of local ownership in peace operations. But once a country signs an agreement consenting to international support, it cedes some sovereignty in line with the mandate of UN and AU peace missions. Local ownership is important, but so too is ensuring missions' strategic and operational independence. The latest developments in Somalia call for a rethink of how these relationships are structured and managed. The UN and AU should jointly define the role of host nations to ensure the independence of existing and future peace missions as part of a larger conversation about the relationship between host countries and peace missions. DM
