Men and women planting vegetable seeds in a nursery bed in Eastern Equatoria state, South Sudan. Credit: Charlton Doki/IPS

By Adam Bemma
JUBA, Aug 28 2014 (IPS)

“What is the benefit when children are crying and people are dying due to hunger? There is no need to cry when you have the potential to dig,” sings Juba-based dancehall reggae group, the Jay Family, in their latest single “Stakal Shedit,” which means “Work Hard” in Arabic.

In the Stakal Shedit video, the three members, Jay Boi, Jonio Jay and Yuppie Jay, are seen sporting denim overalls and rubber boots with garden hoes slung over their shoulders. The objective is to motivate youth to engage in agriculture as a means to fight food insecurity in South Sudan.

“Agriculture is the backbone of this country,” 23-year-old Jay Boi told IPS. “The land in South Sudan is fertile. If you look around all you see are trucks bringing in food from outside of the country.”

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations states three-and-a-half million, or almost one in three South Sudanese, are facing a severe food crisis as the conflict-ridden nation is on the brink of starvation.

The Jay Family comes from Yei, South Sudan, 100 kms southwest of the capital, Juba. The group formed in 2010 with the objective to spread South Sudanese music to all parts of East Africa and beyond.

“Our music is influenced by hip hop, reggae and afro-dance music,” 23-year-old Yuppie Jay told IPS. “I’m also a farmer. I learned from my uncle who grows many different crops.”

The Stakal Shedit music video was shot at the Rajaf Prison farm outside of the capital, Juba. Prisoners are seen farming in the video.

“We learned from the prisoners how to distribute seeds. In the video we were cultivating maize, okra, tomatoes, carrot and cassava,” Jay Family’s manager, Stephen Lubang, told IPS.

A scene depicts a group of young men sitting at a table playing a game of cards while drinking alcohol. It then cuts to the Jay Family singing in the prison’s farm.  The song continues, “Don’t blame the government when you can do something. Cultivate!”

The group calls on South Sudanese youth to consider agriculture and agri-business, instead of violence, as a way to combat unemployment and generate income. In the song the group addresses how poor infrastructure, like roads, can frustrate people starting small business.

“The major activity for youth in this country is to sit and cry that there are no jobs. If you want the government to help you, start farming,” Lubang said. “Then you can go to the government and ask for assistance.”

Last May, a group of 12 South Sudanese artists united in calls for peace when news of British explorer and journalist Levison Wood’s 6,000 km trek along the Nile River reached Juba. “Let’s Stand Together” was recorded by South Sudan All Stars. The song urges political leaders to reconcile at the Addis Ababa, Ethiopia peace talks.

Silver X is a 26-year-old South Sudanese musician who wrote the song “Let’s Stand Together.” He was displaced from his home in Torrit, South Sudan with his family in 2000. Four years ago he returned to his birthplace from a refugee camp in Uganda to launch his music career and help jumpstart South Sudan’s burgeoning music industry.

“When the recent fighting started it affected us all in different ways. I decided to write a song with artists from different tribes,” he told IPS. “If leaders could see the youth of this country crying for peace, I thought things might start to change.”

Moro Lokombu is a radio journalist and host of The Beat, a music programme highlighting South Sudanese music, at Juba’s United Nations-run Radio Miraya.

“We need to promote peace through local music by first exposing South Sudanese to it,” Lokombu told IPS. “I play Stakal Shedit and Let’s Stand Together on my radio show because they are songs with a powerful message.”

On Jun 16, the Jay Family, along with Silver X, launched a national campaign called “Music Against Hunger” at the Juba Regency Hotel. Dates are now set in September for performances in the southern cities of Nimule and Yei with more to come.

“We are starting with free concerts in two states, but we hope to travel to all 10 states to perform,” Lubang said. “Let’s work hard to stop war and develop our country. The future of South Sudan relies on its youth. Hunger is something we can fight.”

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

By Adam Bemma
JUBA, Aug 21 2014 (IPS)

Along the fertile banks of sub-Saharan Africa’s White Nile, one of the two main tributaries of the Nile River, a war veteran’s co-op is planting for a food secure future in South Sudan, a country potentially facing famine.

Wilson Abisai Lodingareng, 65, is a peri-urban farmer and founder of Werithior Veteran’s Association, or WVA, in Juba, South Sudan. The association is a group of 15 farmers ranging in age, with the youngest being a 25-year-old veteran’s son. This group of 15 farmers tends to a garden, located six kilometres outside Juba, South Sudan’s capital, where they grow nearly 1.5 hectares of vegetables.

“I have seven active members in the group, all former SPLA [Sudan People’s Liberation Army] troops. I call them when it’s time to weed the garden,” Lodingareng told IPS. “I visit once a day, each morning, to check the health of the crops and too see what’s ready for the market.”

Some of the other WVA members have been displaced from their homes and are now living inside the UNMISS, United Nations Mission in South Sudan, Protection of Civilians camp in Juba.

Since the conflict began Dec. 15, 2013 between the government forces of South Sudan President Salva Kiir and the rebel forces of former Vice President Riek Machar, 1.5 million have been displaced from their homes. Three-and-a-half million South Sudanese are suffering from emergency levels of food insecurity, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

Lodingareng said obtaining a plot of land along the Nile River was difficult with many international investors vying for this prime agricultural real estate. It took him almost three years to acquire a lease from the community which owns the idle land.

So far this year he has transformed the field with long grass and weeds into a garden with leafy vegetables and herbs sprouting. WVA cultivates okra, kale, mulukhiyah (jute leaves) and coriander.

“These are short impact crops which grow quickly, within one to two months,” Lodingareng said. “Okra is harvested every three to four days.”

The philosophy behind the WVA garden is to see land as a resource not to be wasted. As Lodingareng looks around his garden he sees a future expansion into the surrounding land, also lying idle.

“I’m looking at expanding to grow food crops like maize, potatoes, carrots and eggplant,” he said. “The first year has been a struggle. The next year should be much better.”

Simon Agustino is the programme officer at Mennonite Central Committee, or MCC, in South Sudan.

“Wilson [Lodingareng] came to our office with a proposal asking for assistance. The veterans had no hope and no way to provide for their families,” Agustino told IPS. “People thought he was wasting his time with digging. But he didn’t give up.”

MCC provided him with some capital for leasing the land, the training of beneficiaries, fruit and vegetable production, farm supplies and tools as well to monitor WVA’s progress.

“Finally he got land and is now yielding and his crops which are being sold at the market. As a sign of improvement, more veterans are considering joining,” Agustino said.

According to Agustino, most SPLA veterans take to criminal activity after being de-commissioned, but Lodingareng wouldn’t turn to cattle raiding or using a weapon to rob and steal. He has a vision for the future of South Sudan.

“I did my part to put my country on the path to self-determination,” Lodingareng said. “Now my approach is to work hard. Me, I will do anything that can pull me out of poverty and improve my situation financially.”

Londingareng fought with the SPLA from 1985 to 2008, and when he wasn’t re-activated into the military six years ago he began to think back to his early days as an economics student at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.

“I took a course and wrote a paper on agriculture economics. I was taught that land is food and that crops share behaviour traits with humans,” he said.

While Lodingareng comes from the Toposa, a cattle-herding pastoralist tribe in the southeast of the country, his wife is Nuer, one of the country’s two biggest ethnic groups, along with Dinka, in South Sudan.

“We were hunted. I hid my wife in town and with help from MCC, I took her to Uganda.” he said. “I came back to find out people had broken into my house. It was completely ransacked.”

WVA veterans come from various tribes in South Sudan. Its work demonstrates that agriculture could be a way of bringing South Sudanese together, looking past tribal differences, and planting together this rainy season.

Lodingareng believes it’s never too late to take up the cause of agriculture, even while millions are displaced and the country is on the brink of famine.

“The political climate has discouraged many from planting this season,” he said. “But if everyone planted gardens things will improve.”

MCC is looking at ways to start a peace and reconciliation programme with the help of WVA. “He has many ideas on how to end the conflict,” Agustino said.

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

The writer can be contacted on twitter @adambemma

The Equality Effect brought together legal experts to pursue a class action lawsuit, which came to be known as the 160 Girls case, of girls who faced discriminatory police treatment, including police rape. The court ruled police must enforce the laws under the constitution, and properly investigate cases of defilement and rape. Courtesy: Fiona Sampson/Equality Effect

By Adam Bemma
MERU, Kenya, Aug 11 2014 (IPS)

Surrounded by endless rows of green tea plants, Mary carefully picked a leaf and placed it into a basket next to her. It seemed like an ordinary day at work for the 13-year-old girl from Meru, in central Kenya. After work she escaped to the adjacent farm for privacy, but was instead attacked and raped by a middle aged man. 

“My grandmother took me to the police to make a report, but they didn’t arrest him. I was told he bribed the police,” Mary* tells IPS as her 11-month-old baby girl sits on her lap.

Mary, now 14 years of age, and her daughter live at Ripples International’s Tumaini Girls’ Rescue Centre in Meru, Kenya. It houses 15 other girls like Mary, three of whom have babies of their own, all born out of the sexual violence perpetrated against them.

“Sexual abuse is known as defilement under Kenyan law. All of our girls here have been defiled by either family members, neighbours or employers. One girl was even defiled by a police officer,” Mercy Chidi, founder and director of Ripples International, the organisation which established Tumaini Girls Rescue Centre, tells IPS.

“It started over 10 years ago with abandoned babies and orphans. We gave them a home,” Chidi says. “We also provide HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention.”

A 14-year-old girl named Grace*, looking much younger than her stated age, takes a seat on the couch in front of the television at Tumaini Girls’ Rescue Centre. She is HIV-positive.

“I was raped by my father,” she tells IPS as her voice quivers. Grace has been living at the shelter for the past year, trying to keep up court appearances and her anti-retroviral medications. She’s also trying to get back into school.

Fiona Sampson is a Canadian lawyer and the executive director of Equality Effect, a human rights organisation working to advance the rights of women and girls in Kenya.

Sampson met Chidi in 2010 during a human rights course in Toronto, Canada. She calls Chidi the “Erin Brokovich of Kenya” due to her relentless pursuit of justice for Kenyan girls.

“Mercy asked if the Equality Effect would help her develop a legal advocacy solution to the defilement problem, and the failure of police to enforce existing laws, and we said ‘yes.’  The Equality Effect was already working in Kenya on other projects,” Sampson tells IPS.

Sampson brought together legal experts from Canada, Kenya, Ghana and Malawi to pursue a class action lawsuit, which came to be known as the 160 Girls case. The 160 refers to the number of girls selected, even though only 11 petitioners were named in the claim. These girls faced discriminatory police treatment, including police rape.

“We argued that the police treatment of the girls’ defilement claims was discriminatory and violated their human rights in contradiction of the equality guarantees in the Kenyan constitution and regional and international human rights law,” she says.

In 2013, the 160 Girls went from victims to victors. The judge read the verdict in a Meru, Kenya courtroom: “By failing to enforce existing defilement laws, the police have contributed to the development of a culture of tolerance for pervasive sexual violence against girl children and impunity.”

Muthomi Thiankolu is a constitutional lawyer and lead counsel on the 160 Girls case at the High Court of Kenya.

“In Kenyan law, defilement is sex with a minor. Someone under the age of 18,” Thiankolu tells IPS. “The court ruled police must enforce the laws under the constitution, and properly investigate cases of defilement and rape.”

Mary bounces the baby on her lap. She now feels the law will protect the both of them. The child starts to giggle and a smile comes over Mary’s face.

“At the time it happened, I was working to make money to pay school fees,” she says. “Now, living here at the centre, I’m arranging to go back to school.”

*Name changed to protect their identity

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

The writer can be contacted on twitter @adambemma

In 2009, nearly 5,000 Kibera residents were relocated to the KENSUP Soweto East settlement, pictured here. However many say the housing project has become a slum. Credit: George Kebaso/IPS

By Adam Bemma
NAIROBI, Jul 22 2014 (IPS)

At the eastern edge of Nairobi’s Kibera slum, children gather with large yellow jerry cans to collect water dripping out of an exposed pipe. The high-rise grey and beige Soweto East settlement towers above them. A girl lifts the can on top of her head and returns to her family’s third floor apartment.

Inside, 49-year-old mother Hilda Olali is sweeping the floor. She’s had enough. Her family of five has no running water or electricity in their two bedroom apartment.The rancid smell of refuse wafts into the apartment throughout the day. Hilda Olali's considering a move back to the slum, turning in her family's brick and mortar home for her old mud and tin shack.

“When we first arrived we really enjoyed life. But now it’s hard because we don’t have water for weeks. This forces me to go and buy water outside. I can’t afford that,” she told IPS.

Outside her kitchen window, garbage has been accumulating over the last six months. The rancid smell of refuse wafts into the apartment throughout the day. She’s considering a move back to the slum, turning in her family’s brick and mortar home for her old mud and tin shack.

“In the slum things were cheap. When we came here they took us as if we were people who could afford expensive things,” she added.

It’s been 12 years since the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme, or KENSUP, launched its pilot project in Kibera. Many residents feel the government and United Nations’ Human Settlements Programme, or U.N. Habitat, have abandoned them soon after its doors opened.

In 2009, nearly 5,000 Kibera residents were relocated to the KENSUP Soweto East settlement. The 17 five-storey buildings are home to around 1,800 families. Population estimates in Kibera range from 800,000 to 1.2 million, making it one of Africa’s largest slums.

“We were told to move and it’s like we were forced. They [KENSUP] were carrying everything for us. Transport was arranged by them. I had seven rooms in the slum. Here I only have three,” Olali said.

According to the U.N., cities are now home to half of the global population. Forty percent of Kenya’s 43 million people are living in urban areas. More than 70 percent of Nairobi’s 3.1 million people live in 200 informal settlements, or slums. A lack of affordable housing in the city makes Kibera an attractive place to settle.

Godwin Oyindo, 24, is a recent university graduate and a close friend of Olali’s son. He grew up in Kibera and was hopeful this housing project would change the lives of all its residents.

“This slum upgrading project was established to address a few things in Kibera, the security of tenure, the housing of people, accessibility to services, and also to generate economic activities. One of their main objectives is a slum free society,” Oyindo told IPS.

Back in 2003, the government of Kenya and U.N. Habitat began working together to improve housing and quality of living for residents not only in Nairobi, but in Mombasa, Mavoko Kisumu and Thika. KENSUP is mandated to improve living standards for 5.3 million urban slum dwellers by 2020.

U.N. Habitat came on board with its Participatory Slum Upgrading Programme, working alongside KENSUP providing expertise and technical advice. The officer in charge of this department, Joshua Mulandi Maviti, said objectives have been met in all projects.

“Kibera was the focus of our work with the ministry,” Maviti told IPS. “But we also coordinated infrastructure, land tenure, water and sanitation projects across Kenya, in Mombasa, Kisumu and Mavoko.”

Justus Ongera, 24, shares a room with his younger sister in a two bedroom apartment in the Soweto East settlement. The two share the apartment with another family. Ongera believes he may need to instruct residents on how to improve sanitation.

“When we first moved in the garbage outside was cleared every two weeks. Now it’s been rotting there under the sun for six months,” he told IPS. “This is a serious health hazard. Something needs to be done.”

Due to the 12 years which have elapsed since the contract began, U.N. Habitat ended its collaboration with KENSUP once contracts expired, according to Maviti. But he assures this doesn’t mean it’s the end of the relationship.

“The government of Kenya and the ministry haven’t engaged with us on the issues faced by Soweto East residents. We need to hear from them officially to be able to help,” Maviti said.

Olali is now weighing her options, whether or not she should move her three kids out of this apartment project and back into the slum. The fact that she has no running water forces to make a long trek through Kibera to visit the public toilet. This costs her five Kenya shillings each time.

“It all adds up, costing me even more money,” Olali said. “Some women didn’t even know how to flush a toilet before moving in, but now they do. We’ve all experienced a lot living here.”

Kenya’s Ministry of Land, Housing and Urban Development, along with KENSUP, turned down requests to be interviewed for this story.

Arusha hip hop producer Daudi Bakari hypes up the crowd at a Saving Underground Artists (S.U.A.) event. Credit: Loic Nogues/IPS

By Adam Bemma
ARUSHA, Tanzania, Jun 18 2014 (IPS)

Inside a dark, cramped, music studio on Arusha’s hillside slum of Kijenge Juu, a thumping hip hop beat rattles the window-less room.
A soft-spoken 26-year-old who goes by the name Raf MC steps up to the microphone. He glances down at a piece of paper in his hand. Taking a deep breath, he starts to deliver rhymes in Swahili, the unifying language of Tanzania’s 47 million people: “Hip hop game sio kama tu ma game mengine [The hip hop game is not like any other game]…”

Three other Arusha MCs stand behind the microphones: Pacha the Great, 21, Sight Mo’, 28, and Motra the Future, 20. Together they call themselves KINGS, which stands for Kijenge, Ngalimi and Sekei, three of the city’s most notorious slums.“Hip hop in Arusha has never just been about songs and beats. It’s always been about substance. It’s because of hip hop music that a lot of us avoided becoming criminals.” -- former X Plastaz member, Mohamed Yunus Rafiq

“We all grew up and live here,” Raf MC tells IPS. “I’m from Sekei, Motra is from Kijenge, Pacha and Sight Mo’ are from Ngalimi.”

KINGS are a hip hop group brought up in the nurturing environment of northern Tanzania’s underground hip hop scene. Acheni Blah Blah is the first single released by them and the group is expecting to release an album later this year.

Daudi Bakari is a music producer at Watengwa Records based in Arusha. He’s also the co-founder of Saving Underground Artists, known locally as S.U.A. For almost two years, Bakari, 25, and his colleague Biggie Shirima, 25, have hosted hip hop shows featuring aspiring artists.

“Arusha is known as a tourist city in Tanzania located near most of the countries national parks and major attractions,” Bakari tells IPS. “What people don’t know is there’s an emerging hip hop movement here that dates back to the late 1990s.”

A few years ago, Tanzanians started to fear Arusha’s hip hop scene was disappearing as more young people began turning to jobs in the burgeoning tourism industry, leaving music behind because of the lack of opportunity.

“There were some tough times that we faced trying to promote local hip hop shows,” Bakari says. “People stopped buying records and turning up to performances.”

Bakari and Shirima stepped up to the challenge and started a showcase for Tanzania’s hip hop talent. A few times so far this year, music fans have gathered outside of Watengwa recording studios in Kijenge Juu. Graffiti covers the doors and walls. Over the stage area, the words “Read more, learn more, change” are inscribed alongside a young person holding a book.

Recently, there’s been a resurgence of hip hop fans attending S.U.A. events, assures Bakari.

But S.U.A. isn’t only an event. It also acts as a support network for up-and-coming artists like KINGS. Bakari and Shirima host workshops the week before every show to select which artists get to perform.

“We always choose those eager to learn about the history of hip hop and how it took shape in Tanzania,” Shirima says. “That’s how we found KINGS. Now their music is playing on radio stations across the country.”

Swahili hip hop, still referred to as Bongo Flava, has changed dramatically since its early days when emcees and groups like X-Plastaz gained prominence internationally. It’s gone underground.

“Hip hop in Arusha has never just been about songs and beats. It’s always been about substance,” former X Plastaz member Mohamed Yunus Rafiq, 38, tells IPS. “It’s because of hip hop music that a lot of us avoided becoming criminals.”

Rafiq was a young man during the transition from socialism in Tanzania to the free market. He admits hip hop music in Tanzania is still heavily influenced by founding President Julius Nyerere’s brand of African socialism, known in Swahili as Ujamaa.

“The 1967 Arusha declaration officially made Tanzania a socialist state,” Rafiq says. “In the 1980s, there were Cuban doctors and Russian military advisors everywhere. I remember going to ANC [South Africa’s African National Congress] meetings as a boy and receiving candy from Russians.”

All of this made Arusha the international city it is lauded as today. Now it is home to many international organisations such as the United Nations. Arusha was even once referred to as “The Geneva of Africa” by former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

This all made Arusha fertile ground for a socio-political music scene to flourish. From “muziki wa dansi [Swahili jazz music]” which gained prominence in the 1960s to today’s bongo flava music popular with youth across the continent, Tanzanian hip hop seems to remain true to its roots – and in Swahili.

“The Bongo Flava you hear on the radio now is a blend of rap, dancehall music and R&B. What we do here is much different,” Shirima says. “We focus on the four pillars of hip hop: breakdancing, emceeing, DJing and graffiti. We hope by teaching the fundamentals that it will empower youth to make change in the community.”

By promoting hip hop artists to express themselves in the Swahili language also empowers Tanzanian youth to continue reaching new heights. Across East Africa, from Tanzania and Kenya to Uganda and eastern DRC, hip hop fans are taking notice.

“We’re a linguistic nation. Swahili is a creative language that adapts quite nicely to hip hop,” Rafiq says.

As the hip hop beat fades away, Raf MC takes a step back from the microphone and folds up his piece of paper. “We just want to represent our culture and our city. We do this by using music to educate youth on how to do something positive in the community,” he says.

John Daffi on his piece of land that is part of a cooperative that began in 1963 in Upper Kitete. However, recent attempts by the government to revive cooperatives have been a failure. Credit: Adam Bemma/IPS

By Adam Bemma
ARUSHA, Tanzania, Apr 4 2014 (IPS)

John Daffi climbs to the top of a hill overlooking a scenic Rift Valley wall and the Ngorongoro forest, where wildlife migrates between the world famous Ngorongoro crater and Tanzania’s Lake Manyara. Daffi, 59, looks down upon his family’s farm below and reminisces about the time his father first brought him here as a boy.

“Upper Kitete was a model farming village set up by the government of Tanzania. My father received a call while he was in Arusha from his brother in Karatu telling him to apply. We were selected as one of the first 100 families,” Daffi told IPS.

In 1962, British agriculturalist Antony Ellman came to Tanzania and from 1963 to 1966 helped establish the Upper Kitete Cooperative Society on 2,630 hectares located in the Karatu district of northern Tanzania, about 160 kilometres from the city of Arusha.“Even though the population has increased, the land hasn’t. Every inch of it is cultivated.” -- farmer, John Daffi

“It was a very exciting time as Tanzania just received independence and it was a real opportunity for aspiring farmers to have access to great land,” Ellman told IPS.

Daffi’s father, Lucas, relocated his family from Mbulu village in Manyara region to Kitete village in Arusha region. The villagers selected began a social experiment, and distinguished themselves from other nearby villages with the name Upper Kitete.

The cooperative movement pre-dates independence. Professor Amon Z. Mattee, from Tanzania’s Sokoine University of Agriculture, told IPS that the prosperity of cooperatives in the 1960s made the government want to create a level playing field for all.

“Coops started in the 1930s for some of the cash crops like coffee and cotton and for many years up to the time of independence in 1961. They were really member-based and offered excellent services in terms of research, extension, inputs, profitable markets and even social services like education for members’ children,” Mattee said.

Tanzania’s founding President ‘Mwalimu [Teacher]’ Julius Nyerere started the village settlement programme where farmers were encouraged to work cooperatively hoping they would prosper economically. Eighteen months after independence in 1963, the Upper Kitete Cooperative Society was born and it continues to this day.

“The soil was so fertile. We began farming cereal crops like wheat and barley. Now we’re much smaller scale and farm mainly maize and beans, our staple crops,” Daffi said.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), Tanzania remains primarily a rural country with an agriculture-based economy that employs the majority of the national labour force. Its economy is still highly dependent on predominantly rain-fed agriculture that contributes an estimated 30 percent to the GDP and accounts for 64 percent of all export earnings.

Its main traditional export crops are coffee, cashews, cotton, sugar, tobacco, tea, sisal and spices from Zanzibar. Maize is the main food crop alongside sorghum, millet, rice, wheat, beans, cassava, bananas and potatoes, according to the FAO.

Pius and John Daffi hold up a map of Upper Kitete, showing the original plot of land that was allocated to the farming village when it was set up by the Tanzanian government. Credit: Adam Bemma/IPS

“For the first 10 years Upper Kitete was on an upward path. People worked together willingly and life was improving for everyone. They continually had better yields, built bigger homes and the services improved as a result,” Ellman said.

In 1974, the dream faded as Nyerere forced reluctant Tanzanians from urban and rural areas to move into villages causing environmental and organisational strain to existing villages like Upper Kitete. At this time, its population ballooned from 210 to 1,200 residents.

A 2001 study by academics Rock Rohde and Thea Hilhorst called ‘A Profile of environmental change in the Lake Manyara Basin, Tanzania’ examines the stress put on the land due to government directives.

“Ujamaa [Nyerere’s brand of socialism] aimed to move the entire Tanzanian rural population into cooperative villages and achieved this under ‘Operation Vijijini’ when land was redistributed and several million peasants and pastoralists resettled in new, more compact villages, often under duress. [It] had a profound social and economic effect, especially on the highlands of Karatu where wealthy commercial farmers were deprived of their land holdings,” the study states.

Since then, Daffi has witnessed the land at Upper Kitete become scarce as it was divided into smaller portions for the growing community. This village of 500 people in 1963 is now a town of nearly 5,000. Now, the cooperative produces much less than it previously did because it has less land.

“Even though the population has increased, the land hasn’t. Every inch of it is cultivated,” Daffi said.

Mattee researches farmers’ organisations in Tanzania. He said recent attempts by the government to revive cooperatives, like the 1997 Cooperative Development Policy, were a failure.

“The government has since the 1990s tried to revive the cooperative sector by introducing new policies, but the coops were already too weak and farmers had completely lost faith in them,” Mattee said.

Ellman reflects on his time at Upper Kitete with great nostalgia. But he realises they face the problem all remaining agricultural cooperatives in Tanzania face — a lack of unity and insufficient resources to support the fast-growing population.

“I keep in touch with many people at Upper Kitete and I visited again in 2012. They’ve asked me to record its history,” Ellman said. “It’s been difficult. With such a dense population they need to adopt more intensive forms of land use and even diversify out of agriculture. Tanzanians are resourceful people. They can do it.”

Remains of some of the over 800,000 victims of Rwanda’s genocide, which will soon be relocated to a new memorial site to preserve them. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

By Adam Bemma
KIGALI , Nov 26 2013 (IPS)

“There is a saying that all Rwandans believe in. You can’t forgive if you forget, but when you remember, you know what harmed you and you can forgive and move forward,” Honore Gatera tells IPS as he walks through the grounds of the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda’s capital. 

The museum was established in 2004, 10 years after the horrific Rwanda genocide. It is estimated that 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus lost their lives in the massacre that began after a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down over Kigali in 1994.

That year the international community failed Rwanda by failing to stop the genocide. It is almost 20 years later, and Rwandans believe international justice continues to fail them.

Angela Mbabaz, 27, is a Rwandan Tutsi. She spent her entire childhood in Uganda with her two brothers and younger sister. She now has a daughter the same age she was when her mother was killed inside a Catholic Church compound alongside family members outside of Kigali."It's been 20 years and things have changed. We no longer say Hutu or Tutsi. We're all Rwandans." -- Rwandan genocide survivor Angela Mbabaz

“I heard about my mom’s death when I was seven years old,” she tells IPS. “I wouldn’t want my daughter to know the masterminds of the genocide aren’t all in prison, so I still haven’t told her.”

Community courts in Rwanda, known as “gacaca” were formed in 2001 to provide justice for victims like Mbabaz who lost family members during the genocide. In the local language, Kinyarwanda, gacaca means to sit down and discuss an issue.

Last year, gacaca courts wrapped up. Human rights groups criticised the village-based process due to its falling short of international legal standards. According to government figures, 65 percent of the two million genocide suspects were found guilty in a speedy legal process in Rwanda.

But there is almost no opposition to gacaca within Rwanda, even from law experts. Sabine Uwase is legal advisor to AVEGA Agahozo, an association of genocide widows. She found gacaca to be highly effective in prosecuting perpetrators.

“I think the country needed justice quickly, as so many victims wanted to move on toward national reconciliation,” she tells IPS. “The international court is taking too long.”

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda or ICTR was established by the United Nations following the 1994 genocide. Based in Arusha, Tanzania, the ICTR will close in 2014, once the remaining appeals are finished. ICTR spokesperson, Rolland Amoussouga, believes criticism of the tribunal is unwarranted.

“Since it started in 2003, the ICTR has indicted 93 people. Eighty-three have been arrested. Seventy-five decisions have been reached with 12 acquitted and 63 sentenced to prison,” he tells IPS.

In international law, the ICTR has set many legal precedents including the first-ever judgement on the crime of genocide by an international court. A residual mechanism was put in place last year by the U.N. It will continue in Arusha following the completion of the ICTR mandate.

“It is a normal process, a normal feeling, for genocide survivors and victims to criticise ICTR one way or another. You can’t expect to have a perfect justice,” he says.

Ten indicted Rwandan genocide suspects remain at large. To Rwandans, this is not good enough. Naphtal Ahishakiye is the executive secretary of Ibuka, which means “remember” in Kinyarwanda. Ibuka is a national organisation representing genocide survivors and the most powerful civil society group in Rwanda.

“These perpetrators of the genocide need to be caught and brought to justice here in Rwanda, not taken to the ICTR or The Hague,” he says. “Gacaca was participative justice. Everybody in Rwanda came together to hear how the genocide was planned and executed.”

Mbabaz wants Rwanda to move on from the genocide, as she has. She believes the international community will apprehend the remaining perpetrators and let them face justice.

“It’s been 20 years and things have changed. We no longer say Hutu or Tutsi. We’re all Rwandans,” she says. “I want my daughter to understand what happened in the past, and be willing to forgive what happened to our family.”

The national day of remembrance is on Apr. 4. Next year’s event will mark 20 years since the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus took place. National reconciliation efforts have worked to erase tribal affiliations, officially replacing them with a modern, post-genocide Rwandan identity.

Gatera concludes his tour of the Kigali genocide memorial. He says he would like to put an end to this terrible chapter in the country’s history.

“It’s been so long. The ICTR is closing next year and there are still many open cases, there are still many other perpetrators running around the world,” he says. “Once these figures are caught, they must be brought to Rwanda, as we’ve shown the international community we can treat everyone fairly.”

Even if these fugitives are arrested and sent to Rwanda to face justice, there is no telling if they will, in fact, receive a fair trial by international standards. But according to Rwandans, they believe real justice can, and must, be demonstrated to the international community to show they do not need outside help any longer.