UNESCO: Africans Urge Cancellation of Obiang Prize

Prize is an Affront to Efforts to Promote Human Rights and Good Governance in the Continent

(Paris., October 11, 2010) – Citizens of Equatorial Guinea and prominent African figures including Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, Graça Machel, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, and author Chinua Achebe wrote to UNESCO’s Executive Board today urging them to cancel definitively the UNESCO-Obiang Nguema Mbasogo Prize for Research in the Life Sciences.

The letter, signed by 125 African laureates, scholars, human rights defenders, and citizens of Equatorial Guinea, cited the record of serious abuses and mismanagement of the country’s wealth by the eponymous funder of the prize, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea.

“The continued existence of this prize is inimical to UNESCO’s mission and an affront to Africans everywhere who work for the betterment of our countries,” the letter said.

Equatorial Guinea has the highest GDP per capita on the continent, yet 3 out of 4 Equatoguineans live in poverty. There are no research centers in Equatorial Guinea that would enable a citizen of the country to qualify for the UNESCO-Obiang award, and even basic education and health care remain unattainable for the vast majority. Civil liberties are heavily curtailed: in August, four Equatoguinean refugees were abducted from neighboring Benin, tortured for months and then summarily tried and executed.

“While Equatorial Guinea’s government has tried to characterize opposition to this prize as racist and colonialist, in fact many Africans have been vocal opponents of the prize,” said Tutu Alicante, an Equatoguinean and Executive Director of the human rights organization EG Justice. “Not all Africans believe that a dictator should be able to purchase legitimacy through a prize created in Paris. Many recognize that this prize harms Africans.”

UNESCO’s Executive Board has a responsibility to protect the organization’s integrity, which this prize places in jeopardy. “[T]he diversion of wealth that should benefit Equatoguineans to finance a prize honoring President Obiang runs counter to the objective of improving human dignity that underpins the mission of UNESCO,” the letter said.

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EG Justice is a non-governmental organization that promotes human rights and the rule of law, transparency and civil society participation to build a just Equatorial Guinea.

From the Mail & Guardian, here’s a bit of beautiful writing for you from the Malawian poet, Frank Chipasula:

I will pierce the silence around our land with sharp metaphors/And I will point the light of my poems into the dark/nooks where our people are pounded to pulp

Some of the feedback we’ve received from members of the Kubatana community:

I’m very much worried about the so called ZESA load shedding especially in the area I live, Hatfield. Usually the cutoff is at 5.30pm and will be back at around 10pm and will also be off as early as 4.30am. We hardly use electricity. To my surprise the bills are just too much as we hardly use electricity. One wonders why such load shedding is like that in this area which is along the airport road. This road is usually used by government officials, diplomats, tourists, and investors. How can we have tourists and investors to this country when they are driving in the dark from the airport? This will obviously turn most of our potential investors and tourists away. Their first sight to the country of hope is just darkness and they will feel they will be throwing their money in the dark. My suggestion to this load shedding is that, cut offs should be done during the day, lets say from 9am to 4pm. Lets market our country for potential investors in light. I feel ZESA authorities should look into this matter with broad minds which are full of sales and marketing ideas. Lets market Zimbabwe to rebuild our economy.

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I am getting very agitated with the way Ruwa Local Board is managing the service delivery in the otherwise very quiet and potentially well managed surburb. For starters the board has simply resigned on the water provision aspect, they sit back and relax while the residents go for months on end without water. Awhile ago they used to provide water from a couple of boreholes located on the USAID side but those days are way behind us. Residents resorted to sink wells in their yards but due to the poor rainfall last season the watertable is now miserably low and all you get from the well is mud . . . is this not precipitating a cholera outbreak!!!! To add insult the board has the audacity to dispatch water meter readers for the drops that drip out of the taps once in a blue moon. The drips are so brown from the rusted pipes that you do not even dare use them for flushing the toilet because you will stain it forever. The refuse collection side is even more disappointing. They have a known schedule that the residents know and early in the morning on the particular day all households bring out the refuse outside their yards to be picked up . . . this is a mirage, the refuse is never collected for weeks on end. I just wish the Board could use their municipal police to announce in advance that they will not be picking up the refuse anytime soon and it stays hidden in the yards. I am so fed up of officials who sit in the office and do nothing except grow big tummies from the rates that we fork out every month.

The banning of SMS messaging in Mozambique is but one of several signs that both SMS (short message service) and the internet are changing the way media creates a national conversation in African countries, writes Russell Southwood on Pambazuka.

Read this very interesting article on the use of new media here but take note that Kubatana did not provide the MDC with an interactive voice response system for its phone in information service.

“Enemy Number One,” featured a panel comprised of Zimbabwean writer Christopher Mlalaz and USC English professor Michelle Gordon and Wolf Gruner, a USC professor of history who holds the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies. Speaking of his experiences with media censorship under the government of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, Mlalazi’s experience was skillfully included within the context of Feuchtwanger’s 1940 internment and escape from Nazi-occupied France.

Mlalazi, the recipient of the 2010 Villa Aurora Feuchtwanger Fellowship, gave the audience frightening accounts of Mugabe’s censorship tactics — including a description of the torture that the production manager of his satirical play, The Crocodile of Zambezi, endured after the show’s second night.

Mlalazi himself has received ominous phone calls since announcing his excitement for winning the Feuchtwanger Fellowship on Facebook. Just like Feuchwanger, Mlalazi lives in a constant state of fear.

Fear, however, is a double-edged sword: Although it paralyzes, it also motivates. Despite some apprehension, Mlalazi will return to Zimbabwe in December so that he can be with his friends and family — and to continue helping his people answer questions about themselves and their country.

Mlalazi is careful, however, to mask his social and political critique behind a veil of abstraction and metaphor.

“We will never be silenced,” he said.

More here