October - 2001

EDITORIAL

September 11, 2001 is a date that will forever be etched onto the world’s memory. The after-effects of the terrorist attacks in the United States and particularly the subsequent U.S. air strikes against specified targets in Afghanistan have reverberated in communities and countries all across Africa, threatening to destabilise the many-times already fragile and rocky relationship between Christians and Muslims. Witness the mid-October clashes between rival Christian and Muslim gangs in Kano, northern Nigeria: sparked by protests against the U.S. strikes in Afghanistan, the mayhem eventually claimed 200 lives. But in a way, this turbulence in northern Nigeria does not come as a surprise the stage has been set for such a deadly confrontation since at least 1999, when Ahmed Sani, Governor of Zamfara State, was the first of twelve northern governors to incorporate Sharia (Islamic law) into their states’ legal codes. The imposition of Sharia law has caused a lot of tension and violence between and inside Christian and Muslim communities in Nigeria, reports Africanews associate editor Matthias Muindi. If this imposition goes further, there could be a violent backlash from Nigeria’s southern and central states that are inhabited by Christian and other non-Muslim majorities.

The opposite situation seems to be happening in Zambia. In the years after the country was declared a Christian nation at its independence in 1964, Muslims have been feeling increasingly isolated and repressed. The September 11 tragedy has only made things worse, reports Africanews correspondent Benedict Tembo… What the world should really be looking at are the key factors that cause or provide a breeding ground for terrorism, at least one speaker said at a recent World Council of Churches meeting in Tanzania. It all boils down to the issue of dire poverty, caused and perpetuated by unfavourable lending and aid conditionalities to poor nations, discriminative terms of trade for commodities, and trade imbalances between rich and poor countries, among other factors, reports Africanews correspondent Zephaniah Musendo.

Poverty, peace, and pluralism are on the mind of Dr. Kizza Besigye, a founding member of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and a retired colonel in the Ugandan Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF). He was in Washington last month after fleeing Uganda in fear of his life. Africanews correspondent Linda Frommer met up with Besigye and asked him some probing questions on the longer-term aspects of his fight for democracy and peace in Uganda.

No premarital sex, trousers, or handshakes with men allowed, 33-year-old King Mswati of Swaziland has decreed to the girls and young women residing in his kingdom. In an attempt to encourage Swazi maidens to obey traditional authority, King Mswati has set up some rules for the young women, including the requirement that they only be allowed to eat the inner portion of a loaf of bread. But as Africanews correspondent James Hall has found, the maidens are not taking this lying down. Retorts one such maiden: “I personally have no intention of abandoning fashion because some polygamous old chief wants to add more virgins to his collection of wives.”