Category: News & Politics

Towards freedom: Somali pirates in a Kenyan prison

Once upon a time, they terrorised the Indian Ocean, seizing dozens of ships every year, extorting millions of dollars in ransom money, and eventually drawing a military response from the international community.

Now the pirates of the Horn of Africa are in danger of becoming extinct. It’s not just that warships patrol the waters with a 30-minute response time and that many target vessels now carry armed guards. It’s that many of the pirates are currently enjoying a transformative stint in jail.

There are more than 100 convicted and suspected pirates incarcerated at the Shimo la Tewa maximum security prison on the Kenyan coast. “They like it here,” a warden says.

The residential quarters of the prison’s piracy wing is behind a heavy metal door. The 111 convicted and suspected pirates don’t call themselves pirates; they prefer “fishermen”. Of them, as many as 30 have never had their cases heard in court, according to prison staff. Some have been on remand since 2009. Asked whether they feel abandoned or dissatisfied with the legal system, most said no. “It’s fine here,” said one.

Suspected Somali pirates wait for the start of their trial on June 24 2010 at the Shimo la Tewa maximum prison in Mombasa. (Pic: AFP)

The objective at Shimo la Tewa prison is that inmates leave with the means to earn a living and do not fall back into piracy, the warden says. Inmates are taught to read and write, given free healthcare and adequate food, and taught new skills. They are encouraged to retain links with their families in Somalia through regular phone calls. When it comes to recreation, they play football and sing. The prison feels more like a technical college. There are classrooms, a barber, a furniture workshop and a paralegal service run by volunteers. The walls are painted in bright blocks of colour reminiscent of primary school. “Most [Somali inmates] were illiterate. Some now have even taken exams,” says the warden, who preferred not to be named.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has poured funding into counter-piracy measures such as this one.

“We are extremely careful to ensure that our support also benefits the rest of the prison population and the staff of prisons holding Somali pirates, to ensure that the Somalis are not resented,” says Shamus Mangan, a maritime crime expert. Mangan has assisted with the repatriation of a number of Somalis and notes that the provision of education, food and healthcare is no substitute for freedom. “Each time I go to the prison in the Seychelles, all the Somalis there ask me when they will be able to transfer to Somalia,” he said.

The UNODC says that, ultimately, the problem needs to be remedied on Somali soil, addressing the root causes and not the symptoms.

Somalia expert Mary Harper warned recently that the pirates are “sleeping”, but have not gone away. Speaking at a maritime security event, she said: “Somalia is becoming more politically fragmented with many different groups seeking to gain dominance, which potentially creates a favourable environment for piracy.” Risk factors such as high youth unemployment and a lack of alternative livelihoods prevail. The UN’s Development Programme runs rehabilitation programmes in Somalia. One former piracy suspect who spent three years in jail, Mohamed Ahmed Jama, took classes in business and social skills. “I believe now I have a chance for a brighter future,” he says.

The former pirates are in sharp contrast to other inmates at the prison. “The other inmates escape,” says Samuel Tonui, acting head of the Shimo la Tewa prison. A handful of Kenyan inmates have given prison guards the slip this year. Last month, two inmates escaped, using a homemade ladder, the second prison break in four weeks at the facility. There is an escapee wall of shame where the faces of a dozen men are displayed. None are Somali pirates.

Jessica Hatcher for the Guardian

12 years ago

The Ethiopian nun whose music enraptured the Holy Land

From a small, spartan room in the courtyard of the Ethiopian church off a narrow street in Jerusalem, a 90-year-old musical genius is emerging into the spotlight.

For almost three decades, Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam Guebrù has been closeted at the church, devoting herself to her life’s twin themes – faith and music. The Ethiopian nun, whose piano compositions have enthralled those who have stumbled across a handful of recordings in existence, has lived a simple life, rarely venturing beyond the monastery’s gates.

But this month the nonagenarian’s scribbled musical scores have been published as a book, ensuring the long-term survival of her music. And on Tuesday, the composer will hear her work played in concert for the first time, at three performances in Jerusalem. Guebrù may even play a little.

Her music has been acclaimed by critics and devotees. Maya Dunietz, a young Israeli musician who worked with Guebrù on the publication of her scores, says in her introduction to the book that the composer has “developed her own musical language”.

“It is classical music, with a very special sense of time, space, scenery,” Dunietz told the Guardian. “It’s not grand; it’s intimate, natural, honest and very feminine. She has a magical touch on the piano. It’s delicate but deep. And all her compositions tell stories of time and place.”

Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam Guebrù. (Pic: emahoymusicfoundation.org)

Guebrù’s inspiration comes not only from her faith, but from her life: an extraordinary journey from an aristocratic family in Addis Ababa, with strong links to Emperor Haile Selassie, to a monastery in the historic centre of Jerusalem .

She was born Yewubdar Guebrù on December 12 1923 and lived in the Ethiopian capital until, aged six, she and her sister were sent to boarding school in Switzerland. In one of two seminal moments of her life, there she heard her first piano concert, and began to play and study music.

After her return to Addis Ababa, and a period of exile for her family followed by yet another return, Guebrù was awarded a scholarship to study music in London. But she was unexpectedly denied permission to leave by the Ethiopian authorities.

In the bleak days following this calamity, Guebrù refused food until, close to death, she requested holy communion. Embracing God was the second seminal moment of her life. She abandoned music to devote herself to prayer, and after several years joined a monastery in northern Ethiopia. She spent 10 years there, barefoot and living in a mud and stone hut.

It was here she changed her name to Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam. It was only after rejoining her mother in Addis Ababa that Guebrù resumed playing and composing and even recorded a few albums.

Guebrù and her mother later spent six years in Jerusalem, and she returned to the Holy Land to take up permanent residence after her mother’s death in 1984. She has remained at the imposing circular Ethiopian church ever since.

Dunietz came across her music eight years ago when her husband, the conductor Ilan Volkov, brought home a CD he had bought in London. “We listened and were amazed by the strange combination of classical, Ethiopian and blues,” said Dunietz. “And then we read the sleeve notes and discovered she lives right here in Jerusalem.”

The couple found Guebrù sitting at the piano in her room at the church, and began a series of visits. “In the beginning there was a lot of silence. We felt there was a lot of longing and sorrow and loneliness, but slowly a connection started,” said Dunietz.

Guebrù was still playing and composing in her room, but she had not performed in public for several years, and her music was “not much appreciated” within the monastery. Dunietz immediately understood the importance of publishing the nun’s scores to create and preserve a musical legacy, but the project did not get off the ground until two years ago.

“She handed over four plastic bags — old wrinkled Air Ethiopia bags — containing hundreds of pages, all muddled up, a big mess, written in pencil, some of them 60 or 70 years old. It was all the pages of her music that she had found in her room. ‘Make a book’, she said.” It was, added Dunietz, “like an archaeological dig” to piece together the scores.

Daunted by the task, Dunietz sought the help of the Jerusalem Season of Culture, which organises an annual summer festival of art, music and food in the city. As well as the book, the three concerts have a huge significance for Guebrù.

“This is the first time she will hear her own music performed in concert by professional artists,” said Duenitz, who will play the piano. “It is what every composer wants.” Guebrù, she says, is feeling overwhelmed by the attention and has largely withdrawn into the solitude of her monastery room, declining requests for interviews and meetings.

In the book accompanying Guebrù’s music, Meytal Ofer, a regular visitor over recent months, describes her: “I enter a darkened room and catch my first glimpse of her, an elderly woman, not a wrinkle on her face, lying in bed. It is a modest room with a small window. In the room is a bed, a piano, piles of musical scores and a picture of Haile Selassie and the Empress Menen hung above the papers.”

Guebrù is wrapped in a blanket against the winter cold, writes Ofer. “Emahoy Tsegue-Mariam is in her own world; she speaks slowly with an inner peace, her soothing voice caresses the listener and her infectious smile sneaks into the conversation every now and then … The disparity between the room’s sparseness and Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam’s spiritual richness reaches deep down into my soul.”

Harriet Sherwood for the Guardian

12 years ago

‘Life goes on’ for women in Mugabe-led Zimbabwe

Everyday Tendai Phiri* (32) wakes up early to set up her cardboard stall along one of Mabelreign suburb’s main roads where she sells airtime, biscuits, cigarettes and savoury snacks to passing motorists and pedestrians.

Beside her makeshift stand, she unwraps the swathing she uses to bind her nine-month-old daughter to her back. She then lays a sheet of canvas onto the ground before carefully placing her baby onto it. Wrapping the child in thick fleece blankets, Phiri attempts to cushion her from the remnants of a winter cold laced with uncertainty about Zimbabwe’s future.

With more than a week having passed since the announcement of Zimbabwe’s election results, reality is now sinking in for Phiri and many other Zimbabweans: another guaranteed term of office for 89-year-old President Robert Mugabe. While Phiri won’t say which party or presidential candidate she supported or voted for, her general fears of a return to economic mayhem point to dissatisfaction with the outcome of the polls.

“The things we lived through all those years back are just painful to remember,” she states softly. “We have already been through too much.”

Harare West, the constituency in which Phiri lives and voted, was an electoral anomaly for many reasons. It was one of the few that fielded two female candidates from the main contesting parties of Zanu-PF and MDC-T; one of the few in which a female candidate – Fungayi Jessie Majome – won a contested seat; one in which the MDC won one of its 49 seats in Parliament, and also a constituency with one of the youngest parliamentary candidates, 25-year-old Varaidzo Mupunga, representing Zanu-PF.

Posters of two female candidates in the Harare West constituency. (Pic: Fungai Machirori)

With Zanu-PF having amassed a majority of more than two thirds within the incoming Parliament, the party has gained the authority to make amendments to the new Constitution that Zimbabweans voted into power in March this year.

“It’s most unlikely that the Zanu-PF party will use its two thirds majority to enhance women’s rights by, for example, inserting a proviso to the effect that the quota for women’s seats should only fall way when gender parity will have been attained in the seats that are up for contestation,” said Majome who also served as deputy minister of Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community Development in government’s previous term.

Quotas for female parliamentarians are one of the gendered reforms within Zimbabwe’s new Constitution that were promoted by the women’s lobby prior to the constitutional vote. Sixty seats – distributed via proportional representation based on votes won by parties within Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces – have been allocated to female politicians for the life of Zimbabwe’s next two Parliaments.

Another key reform put forward in the new Constitution is the establishment of the Zimbabwe Gender Commission to investigate and secure redress for gender-related rights violations. Also, the new Constitution dismantles a patriarchal legality that previously made it impossible for a woman to apply for a birth certificate and/or passport for her child without the consent of the child’s father.

President Robert Mugabe speaks at a rally on July 28 2013. (Pic: AFP)

In the run-up to the presidential elections, Zanu-PF attempted to appeal to the female electorate by highlighting the sexual misadventures of main opposition candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, through an advertisement broadcast on national television. In it, a woman recounts her story of being dumped via SMS by the former prime minister who is referred to as “a bad example” with “a lack of decency”.

But Mugabe himself has not recently endeared himself to women.

Last year at the official announcement of Zimbabwe’s census results, the president attracted critical commentary for blaming women for the nation’s slowing population growth rate. In his speech, he asked why women had been given wombs if they were not utilising them and implored them to give the nation more children. In the run-up to the elections, Mugabe again drew large criticism internationally for referring to SADC’s facilitation team spokesperson, Lindiwe Zulu, as a “stupid” and “idiotic” “street woman” for raising concerns about Zimbabwe’s readiness for elections on July 31, a date only confirmed weeks before the polls.

Read Zim elections: Give us fresh ideas, not insults

But discussions such as these still speak little to the immediate needs of women like Phiri.

To earn a profit on her bulk airtime purchases, she needs to sell at least US$92 worth of stocks daily. For now she is making, at best, US$50 a day. With her limited mobility – owing to the baby she has to bring to work and tend to – she is not as vigorous in selling as some of her male peers who often venture into the middle of the road to entice drivers to buy their wares. And so Phiri is now looking for a job as a maid.

Like Phiri, Angela Dhewa (28), a sales consultant with a local manufacturing company, is more concerned about the decisions she has to make about her immediate future.

“Does the fact that I can get a birth certificate for my child without my partner protect me from dying in a labour ward with no electricity, water, medication and birth attendants?” asks Dhewa who has no children and is considering the prospect of leaving the country for fear of what may follow. “If those sorts of matters are not first taken care of, there will be no child for me to register, whether or not I have a partner.”

A poster of Tsvangirai, still clings to the broad-necked tree that Phiri sits under for shade at lunchtime. Some sections of the glossy paper with Tsvangirai’s face have peeled away from the hold of the plastic tape and are tattering away on the same wind that seems to have blown all hope of his assuming leadership of the nation.

I make this observation to Phiri.

“What can we do?” she asks rhetorically. “Life goes on.”

*not her real name

Fungai Machirori is a blogger, editor, poet and researcher. She runs Zimbabwe’s first web-based platform for women, Her Zimbabwe, and is an advocate for using social media for consciousness-building among Zimbabweans. Connect with her on Twitter.

12 years ago

Tackling mycetoma: A medical success story in Sudan

Behind the brick walls of the Mycetoma Research Centre trying to unravel the mysteries of the infection is a rare story of medical success in impoverished Sudan.

With bandages on their swollen, deformed feet, patients from across the vast country arrive at the spotless facility set in a garden in the southern Khartoum district of Soba.

For more than 40 years, British-educated researcher Elsheikh Mahgoub has been searching for answers to the mysteries of mycetoma, a bacterial and fungal infection which can spread throughout the body resulting in gross deformity and even death.

Sudan is particularly affected by mycetoma, which is also endemic in a geographic belt including regional neighbours Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Somalia, parts of Saudi Arabia and Yemen, experts say.

The belt also stretches to India and parts of Latin America.

Mycetoma is “a badly neglected disease”, the United Nations’ World Health Organisation (WHO) says on its website.

Yet in Sudan, researchers have been studying the condition since British colonial times, and the Khartoum centre has been globally recognised for its work.

Such acknowledgement in the health field is unusual for a country which ranks near the bottom of a UN human development index measuring income, health and education.

Mycetoma is characterised by swelling of the feet but it can eat away bone and spread throughout the body, causing grotesque barnacle-like growths, club-like hands and bulging eyes.

The traditional treatment was amputation – something the Sudanese centre tries to avoid.

Elsheikh Mahgoub, supervisor of Sudan’s Mycetoma Research Centre, shows a picture of an infected foot on his computer. (Pic: AFP)

“Most patients who get it are farmers, or animal herders, and these are poor people,” says Mahgoub (78).

“They are poor, and they get poorer.”

Mahgoub says he established Sudan’s first mycetoma centre in 1968, working with a British nurse and a British technician.

“Many people thought: Why should I be concerned about this disease which is not common, which is difficult to diagnose, and difficult to treat?” he told reporters on a tour of the facility, which opened at its current location in the 1990s.

The centre offers diagnosis, treatment, training and research as part of Soba University Hospital under the University of Khartoum, which funds it along with some donors.

It has its own laboratory, two wards, and is served by seven part-time doctors as well as Mahgoub, the research supervisor, and its director A.H. Fahal, a professor of surgery.

Though its resources are limited, they have been used effectively, Fahal has written.

Patients come and go – with 6 400 registered so far – but Fahal remains and so does Mahgoub, challenged by the puzzle of why mycetoma is so prevalent in Sudan and neighbouring countries.

“I think there’s two things,” Mahgoub explains, pointing first to the organism’s presence in soil.

He says people who make their living from the land are more likely to get pricked by thorns, for example, from the Acacia trees which are widespread in the mycetoma-prone region and provide a route for infection.

Secondly, the patients have been found with weakened immune systems. Some not only have mycetoma but also Aids, leprosy, tuberculosis or other conditions, Mahgoub says.

“Why? Why these people? Is it nutritional, because of malnutrition? Is it because of the other diseases they get at the same time?”

He does not yet have the answers.

“But we know that they have got some deficiency in their cell-mediated immunity.”

Thorn jab 20 years ago
Mohammed al-Amien Ahmad is a typical case.

The farmer tells Mahgoub that a thorn jabbed him about 20 years ago.

“This thorn came out and it seemed to be OK. Later on the swelling came up. It was a bit itchy,” says the goateed farmer, who is in his 60s and wears a traditional white jalabiya robe.

Ahmad, his enlarged left foot oozing pus, has travelled more than 500 kilometres by bus from Umm Rawaba where he farms about 70 acres of sorghum.

His condition worsened over the past two years, he says, forcing him to reduce the amount of land he can work, and cutting into his annual income of 30 000 – 40 000 Sudanese pounds ($4 300 – $5 700).

In a majority of cases mycetoma is painless, meaning patients like Ahmad delay seeking medical care.

This makes treatment more difficult, Mahgoub says.

“The main thing we tell them is to come early… Because if the swelling is small it can be excised in total,” with follow-up medication, he says.

A patient’s infected foot. (Pic: AFP)

The Mycetoma Research Centre provides diagnosis and any surgery patients may need for free. But patients may require months of anti-fungal medication, which they must buy themselves.

Some who cannot bear the financial burden stop taking their medicine, Mahgoub says.

“In that case the disease will just go back to where it started. That’s a real problem,” he says.

Drug prices in Sudan have climbed over the past two years as Sudan’s currency plunged in value and inflation soared.

Sudan’s health ministry has expressed concern about the emigration of doctors and other health professionals seeking better salaries and working conditions abroad.

Nationwide, there were 1.3 health workers per 1 000 people in 2011, against the WHO benchmark of 2.3.

Many primary health care facilities in Sudan “lack appropriate medical equipment and supplies, have inadequate infrastructure or are understaffed,” the United Nations said this year.

In contrast, the Mycetoma Research Centre “is recognised globally as a world leader”, an informal group of experts on the disease wrote after their first meeting this year in Geneva.

Ian Timberlake for AFP.

12 years ago

Welshman Ncube votes in Bulawayo

In Makokoba’s Stanley Square in Bulawayo, voters braved chilly morning temperatures to cast their vote in Zimbabwe’s election on Wednesday. A long winding queue of men and women snaked outside the fenced polling station as voters patiently waited for their turn. There is very little conversation that goes on in the queues – perhaps it’s the cold or perhaps voters are wary of the next person’s political affiliations.

Despite widely held anticipation that this election would draw scores of young voters – the youth make up 60% of Zimbabwe’s population – the elderly were in the majority in the queue here at Makokoba.

About five policemen were been deployed at the Stanley Square polling station. Across the road, St Patricks – another polling station – was deserted as voters came to “the square” to cast their ballot.

One officer with bloodshot eyes scanned the crowd of voters with a menacing look. Another, who appeared to be the head of the police deployed here, told journalists to join the police force so they too can wear long grey winter coats. He proudly showed off his to the reporters shivering in the cold. A few laughed, but he was largely ignored as they were more concerned with the arrival of Welshman Ncube, the leader of a smaller faction of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Welshman Ncube (Pic: Shepherd Tozvireva)

Ncube’s office had earlier sent out text messages saying he would cast his vote at 9.30am at the square. This is also where he addressed thousands of his supporters at his final rally in Bulawayo last Sunday. By 10am, Ncube had still not arrived. Reporters muttered that politicians are never on time, that they’re ever eager to make a grand entrance while everyone’s eyes are on them. While they waited, a few cars passed through with officials from the MDC inside.

Finally, at 10.20am a three-car convoy pulled up at the polling station. Ncube stepped out. Voters in the queue watched curiously as the opposition leader was hounded by reporters eager to get pictures and a comment.

Read Will Welshman Ncube emerge as kingmaker in the Zimbabwe elections?

Makokoba, the oldest township in Bulawayo, has been a stronghold of the MDC led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai for the past 13 years. All parliamentary candidates vying for the Makokoba seat are confident that they have strong chances of winning.

After a short wait inside, Ncube cast his vote as officials from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission watched.

Speaking to the media afterwards, he gave the entire election process his stamp of approval despite the concerns raised by the MDC over the past few weeks. “If everyone who turns up to vote is allowed to vote and the peaceful environment prevails, that’s what matters at the end of the day,” Ncube said before bidding everyone goodbye.

Cold and hungry, I jumped into the car for warmth and got ready to leave. There was still a queue of voters waiting to cast their ballot. Despite the biting cold, their determination was clearly visible on their faces – they’ll soldier on and exercise their democratic right.

Ray Ndlovu has been a correspondent for the Mail & Guardian in Zimbabwe since 2009. His areas of interest include politics and business. With a BSc honours degree in journalism and media studies, he aspires to become a media mogul.