Going Platinum: Lonmin and the Marikana

The precious metal platinum is what catalytic converters use to convert the toxic by-products of petrol combustion to something less poisonous.  Platinum is not easy to find in the Earth’s crust and 80% of it is found in South African nickel and copper mines.  One of the earlier companies to see the value in these mines was Tiny Rowlands’ Lonrho. Rowlands was a classic self-made 20^th century capitalist who turned Lonrho from an obscure farming and mining company into a multinational conglomerate.

Rowlands had no compunction with dealing with apartheid era South Africa for which hypocrite Prime Minister Ted Heath called Lonrho “the unacceptable face of capitalism." But while Rowland was making enemies in London, he knew how to do business in Africa. He made many friends among black African leaders including Nelson Mandela, Kenneth Kaunda and Muammar Gadhafi. When Mandela came to power, he didn’t throw out Lonrho but instead bestowed on Rowlands South Africa’s highest honour the Order of Good Hope in 1996. 

By then Rowlands was on the outer at Lonrho after he financed a film exonerating the Libyans of Lockerbie.  In 1999 Lonrho refocussed on its mining core business and renamed itself as Lonmin. The focus of that mining was the wealthy Bushveld Complex of northern South Africa around Johannesburg, home to the world’s largest collection of platinum group metals. It was a money-spinning venture as platinum prices soared. Xstrata saw the value and bought up 30% of the company. Of the 245 tonnes of platinum sold in 2010, almost half was used for vehicle emission control devices.

But by then the bottom was starting to fall out of Lonmin’s market. In March 2008 the global financial crisis was about to strike and platinum was one of the first casualties. The price started to plummet. Lonmin were never big fans of unions and suffered constant safety stoppages because of accidents, numerous labour strikes, and unplanned plant and equipment shutdowns. Yet they were also protected by an ANC-backed National Union of Mineworkers whose leader Cyril Ramaphosa ended up on the board of Lonmin.

But as the NUM flirted with management, its membership fled to more radical unions. There was also simmering resentment from locals who felt they were not getting their fair share of the mining boom. Social welfare organisation Bench Marks Foundation said low wages and social disintegration, crime, murder, rape and prostitution, unemployment and poverty amid the third richest platinum mine in the world, created an incubator rife for worker and community discontent.

On August 16, Lonmin shares plummeted 7 percent on news an illegal strike had paralysed all its South African operations. At its flagship operation in Marikana near Rustenburg, 100km north of Johannesburg,  Lonmin threatened to sack 3,000 rock drill operators if they fail to end a wildcat pay strike.  Clashes between unions claimed nine lives, including two police officers. 

Jeffrey Matunjwa of the Mineworkers and Construction Union defended the strike action. He told Al Jazeera they couldn’t stand by while bosses and senior management were getting fat cheques. "And these workers are subjected to poverty for life,” Matunjwa said. He said despite 18 years of post-apartheid democracy, most of the 28,000 mineworkers were still earning $360 a week “under those harsh conditions underground."

Matters came to a head on August 16. Members of an elite South African police unit were called into Marikana. They opened fire killing 34 strikers and wounding 78 others.  It was the largest single massacre on South African soil since Sharpeville in 1960 and a bloody reminder South African police had never departed from their apartheid-era role “as the brute enforcer of state power.” 

Police claim the strikers shot first, for which there is some evidence and many strikers were armed. But there is also evidence the return fire from police wasn’t indiscriminate. The Daily Maverick  estimated the majority of those who died were killed beyond the view of cameras at a nondescript collection of boulders some 300 metres away from the protest. They said heavily armed police hunted down and killed the miners in cold blood.

The only charges laid have been against 270 strikers initially charged with public violence and later murder. These charges were laid under the doctrine of ‘common purpose”, an apartheid era conceit kept by the new rulers.  Their lawyers write to Prime Minister Zuma saying it was inconceivable the strikers would have killed their own people.  Last Sunday the Director of Public Prosecutions for the North West dropped the common purpose charges.  They didn’t explain why but defended the initial decision on “a sound legal principle” and a “prosecution duty” to go for the highest charges. 

Yesterday a court released 100 of the 270 miners as most of the unions signed a peace pact with a Lonmin desperate to rid itself of the unwanted international attention. One union and non-union workers have not signed up to the deal so it remains a worrying time.  Lonmin has been losing 2,500 ounces of daily production since the strike started a month ago. With the price of platinum recovering since July to the point where only silver has gained more this year among precious metals, every day of lost production is costing them a lot of money.  The company will be looking for its state links to do whatever it takes to get their mines operational again.

Dark night rising

Photo: Barry Gutierrez/AP

It was impossible not to think of the Denver shootings as I attended the new Batman movie at the local cinema tonight. This latest random mass murder could have been scripted in the film itself, though it would have been the work of a cardboard-evil mastermind rather than just an unhinged student. While I'm a fan of the work of director Christopher Nolan, this latest effort was turgid twaddle. The plot was so predictable I left after an hour of tedious violence, with the hero in a bit of pickle but assured that the good guys would "win" in the end. 

I came away thinking it was folly to believe there is no connection between the film and the murders.  Guns and the power they confer are at the heart of the Batman movies – as they are at the heart of most Hollywood blockbusters. Guns are the ultimate deus ex machina plot device. Whoever is holding one, calls the shots. The drama moves towards the pivot where either the tables are turned or someone is shot. In the Dark Knight Rises, guns were everywhere and only “superhero” powers can overcome them. When the real murderer went loose in the cinema, many in the dark assumed the noise was from the film and paid no attention.  James Holmes called himself The Joker for the stock Batman villain. He painted his hair red and used tear gas before opening fire.  There was no superhero to stop him.

The film producers’ coy reaction showed they are part of the problem. Warner Bros said they took “the unprecedented step” of delaying revealing “eagerly awaited weekend box office figures for Dark Knight out of respect for the victims and their families."  How the box office news would affect grieving families is beyond immediate comprehension, though there was no sign any of the record takings would be used to compensate victims or be put to a campaign against weapons.

America’s “foremost defender of Second Amendment rights”, the National Rifle Association were as quick as I was to blame the culture.  The problem was caused, they said, by “violent imaginary movies", many of them like Batman having, perish the thought, “absolutely no patriotic value”.  As NRA’s Wayne Lapierre deadpanned when wheeled out to defend their position, "Guns don't kill -Batman kills.  Had someone in the audience been armed, this tragedy could have been averted."  Multiplexes, were according to Lapierre, death traps.  Lapierre may have preferred a good old fashioned saloon shoot out where everyone could have taken a pop at the dark knight.

Lapierre is of course right on the point of violent movies, though somewhat muddled about multiplexes and patriotism.  The culture promotes death and violence, as do the movies of many other countries  But there is one big difference about America compared to nearly every other first world country. There, guns and weapons are as easy to get as movie tickets and popcorn.  The major reason the unhinged Holmes had no difficulty in acting out his fantasy was because he was able to accumulate a formidable collection of weapons and 6,000 rounds of ammunition.  None of the journalists baying at Lapierre for answers picked him up on his glib lie: Guns do kill and the tragedy would have been averted had no one in the audience been armed.

As the New York Daily News said, Holmes did not act alone. Lapierre was at his side as were Obama and Romney both cowed into silence over gun control for fear of unleashing NRA’s mighty political wrath.  “(Also) Standing at Holmes’ side as he murdered 12 and wounded 59, were the millions of zealots who would sooner see blood flow and lives end than have to check a box on a gun registration form,” the Daily News said. It wasn’t just about the occasional newsworthy massacre but the “day-to-to-day mayhem of street-crime shootings, responsible for more deaths than all the mass carnage combined, (that only) makes it to the police blotter, the courts, the newspapers, the emergency rooms and the cemeteries.” 

The Daily Beast's Adam Winkler said mass shootings don’t lead to gun control. Colorado has some of the weakest laws in the land despite the Columbine High School massacre 13 years ago. Winkler said the radicalisation of the NRA in the 1970s stalled American gun reform. He quotes Bill Clinton as saying the Brady Bill (named for Reagan aide shot in the 1981 assassination attempt) cost the Democrats the control of the House of Reps in 1994 and neither party has mounted any gun control since, despite America having five murders for every 100,000 people. 

The NRA vigorously defends its stance at every opportunity against every perceived threat to its clout. This week they attacked Obama signing a UN Arms Treaties because they might “trample our Constitutional right to bear arms.”  The 18^th century need for a well-regulated militia remains a holy cow despite bearing arms now sounding as ridiculous as arming bears.  America deserves a referendum on the “right” but in the unlikely event it happened, the majority of Batman watchers across the land would probably vote against change. Violence is endemic in the culture. Unless one of the dead in Colorado had a well-connected senior operative in the Republican Party for a relative, this latest massacre won’t change anything after all the hand-wringing is completed. Superheroes are as thin on the ground in Washington as they are in Aurora.

Nigeria executes Islamist leader

Nigerian police have shot dead the leader of the Islamist sect responsible for the spate of deadly violence across the north of the country for the last week. According to police Mohammed Yusuf was killed on Thursday as he attempted to escape from a compound in the city of Maiduguri which had been attacked for the previous 48 hours. However Reuters and local journalists say he had been captured alive and unhurt which suggest it was probably an execution style killing.

These claims are backed up by Colonel Ben Ahanotu, commander of the military operation against the compound who said he personally captured Yusuf who was unarmed and had given himself up willingly. "All I know is that in the attack, I was able to pick him up from his hideout and hand him over to police," he told the BBC. "I asked him why he did what he has done and his response was that he would explain to me later. But he was OK. As I got him alive, I handed him over to the authorities."

While the Nigerian government has promised to investigate the killing, there is little doubt that they are happy to see Yusuf removed from the picture. What is less clear is whether his death will end the violence that has beset the north all week. At least 300 people have died so far and another 4,000 have been forced to flee the area. The violence started in Bauchi before spreading to the neighbouring states of Yobe and Borno. It began on Sunday when Boko Haram, a group often called the Nigerian Taliban, launched a series of attacks on police stations across the north of the country. In retaliation, the army shelled Yusuf’s compound in the town of Maiduguri, Borno state, on Tuesday. Yusuf managed to escape with about 300 followers, some of them armed. His deputy, Bukar Shekau, was killed in the attack,

Mohammed Yusuf was 39 years old with four wives and 12 children. He had considerable private wealth with Western-style schooling. However, he completed his education in Iran. Yusuf, a self-proclaimed Islamic scholar, formed the group in 2002 with the intention of imposing Shari’a law across the rest of the country and removing Western influences. Based in Maiduguri, capital of Borno, his followers are a mix of former university lecturers and students and illiterate, jobless youths. The name Boko Haram means "western education is a sin” in the Hausa language common across the north.

Roughly half of Nigeria’s 140 million are Muslim. 19 states in the north are predominately Muslim with the remaining 15 states in the south Christian. In 2000 and 2001, 12 of the Northern states re-Islamised their legal system which added new Koranic offences related to theft, sex, robbery, defamation and alcohol. The Shari’a law also brought in the concept of retaliation or monetary compensation. The move alienated Christian minorities in the north and helped spark sectarian clashes that killed thousands. Meanwhile groups such as Boko Haram wanted to spread Shari’a to the other 24 states.

There is no evidence to infer from the fighting that Boko Haram or the other fundamentalist Islamist groups owe allegiance to al-Qaeda. And Nigeria’s Muslim president Umaru Yar'Adua has been trying to play down the violence. But he is only too aware that Yusuf tapped into widespread disaffection and the perception that liberal economic policies have benefited the south while entrenching poverty in the north. Unemployment, official corruption and injustice have also alienated many in the north. American Africa expert and author Douglas Farah says there is now a large and radical Muslim population in the north. "The radicalisation is mixed with a deep sense of grievance against the south and the central government, as well as antagonism towards the sizeable Christian minority," said Farah. "Not all Muslims in the north are…seeking a violent change. But those in the lead of the new Taliban want to push Shari'a law to a more extreme form."

Tiananmen Square massacre: 20 years on

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre that ended the student revolt and the 1980s fragile Chinese experiments with democracy. The event will be studiously ignored in China which makes it all the more important the subject gets a good airing elsewhere in the world. Yesterday I looked at how China used the media to control the message it wanted to get out to deny the massacre ever took place. Today I want to look at the events of June 1989.

The massacre was the culmination of a 50 day long stand-off between the government and demonstrators from 15 April to 4 June 1989. The proximate cause of the protests was the death of Hu Yaobang on 15 April. Hu was a youth icon and a former General-Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party dismissed in 1987 due to his sympathy for the growing student democracy movement. Hu was well respected as a party liberal and reformist. Some said he died of a “broken heart”. Whatever the cause, his death ignited student anger and frustration at the lack of progress. The anger began at Beijing University and spread to the streets.

Tiananmen Square was an obvious fulcrum for the protest. It is the largest plaza in central Beijing and got its name from the Tian’anmen the “Gate of Heavenly Peace" - the entrance to the Forbidden City. It was also a significant landmark in Chinese history. In the 36-hectare square stood the massive monument to China's revolutionary martyrs - the Monument to the People's Heroes - and also the mausoleum containing the embalmed remains of Mao Zedong. It was here 40 years earlier Mao had proclaimed the People’s Republic and it was here where students gathered in 1976 to protest the decision to end the mourning of popular Premier Zhou Enlai who died that year.

13 years later, the students were back to occupy the square and were joined by hundreds of thousands of professors, writers, journalists, workers, residents and government employees. The people were proclaiming a new version of the republic. In the square, marchers laid white flowers mourning the death of Hu Yaobang. Each march was larger than the last. Many went on hunger strike as momentum grew. More than a million demonstrated in Beijing and thousands more in dozens of other cities. All openly challenged CCP rule and demanded political reform to go with the economic reform. At the end of May, a ten-metre tall replica of the Statue of Liberty appeared in the Square near the defaced portrait of Mao.

Sensing a serious threat to their power, Deng Xiaoping and the old guard adopted a hard-line attitude. On 26 April, party mouthpiece The People’s Daily condemned the marches and branded them “turmoil”. The students responded on a placard, 'Pleading on behalf of the people is absolutely not turmoil'. A week later, the party imposed martial law. Students and residents commandeered 270 buses for barricades to keep the army out. By the middle of May students were arriving from all over China. The party was forced to cancel a ceremonial welcome for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev planned for the grandeur of the Great Hall overlooking the square. At Beijing University posters compared Deng Xiaoping, the party's de facto leader, to the hated Dowager Empress.

On 31 May, the government made the first arrests of the protest. The 11 arrested were leaders of a motorcycle club that played an important role in the demonstrations. Several hundred bikers had become one of the most vivid features of the protests, screeching around the city. According to the official New China News Agency they were arrested for “disturbing the public order” and the motorcycle club was disbanded. It was an ominous precursor for what was to happen four days later.

According to the New York Times on 5 June, the two month long demonstration was crushed the day when the government decided “to teach the students a bloody lesson”. On 2 June, Communist Party elders approved the decision to put down the "counter-revolutionary riot" by force. Some 150,000 troops with tanks and machineguns were in the city facing 5,000 students in the square.

Age writer Peter Ellingsen was a Tiananmen eye-witness. Watching the marches, he said it felt like someone had pulled the cork out of the bottle. The genie of democracy was loose but after seven weeks the army was about to destroy the cork, bottle and all. He saw the fightback on the night of the 4th: “On top of the tanks, soldiers in full battle gear fired into the shadows. The noise was deafening. I heard the flat thud of people being hit before I saw them fall. The tanks rolled over bodies in their way. One young man was squashed into the bitumen; his organs fanned out around his corpse."

By 2am, hundreds were dead. The troops and tanks had massed on the northern apron of the square and rolled over the tent city of 3,000 unarmed student protestors and half a dozen hunger strikers. The soldiers kept firing, hitting those standing well away from the square. Student leaders urged their followers to flee while they could. Many walked out singing the national anthem; others were killed where they stood. No-one knows the full death tally, it may be in the thousands. According to the government, 300 soldiers and “law-breaking criminals” died.

By the morning of the 5th, the army had regained control of the square leaving only the memory of the anonymous act of defiance by the “tank man of Tiananmen”. A British tabloid named the tank man as Wang Weilin, aged 19, but this is not verified. Nobody knows what happened to him. And yet his bailing up of seventeen tanks while carrying his shopping was captured forever as the iconic moment of Tiananmen.


But most of the story has been lost. An incensed Hong Kong built a Pillar of Shame to mourn the victims. China blithely moved on. As James Fallows wrote last week, Tiananmen is a lost memory. Chinese history students can recite chapter and verse of the Japanese cruelties in China from the 1930s onwards but most will not have any idea what happened in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989. This is the ultimate success of the Chinese government in repressing the memory. “For a minority of people in China, the upcoming date of June 4 has tremendous significance,” said Fallows. “For most young people, it's just another day.”

RIRA and CIRA bring grief back to the front pages in Northern Ireland

Northern Irish police arrested two men, aged 17 and 37, yesterday in connection with Monday’s killing of a police officer blamed on IRA dissidents. Constable Stephen Carroll was shot dead in Craigavon, Co Armagh and his death followed the murder of two British soldiers as they collected pizzas at their army base northwest of Belfast. The incidents have rocked the province which has not seen violence on this scale in ten years. Two different IRA splinter groups claimed responsibility for the attacks; the Real IRA (RIRA) for the soldiers and the Continuity IRA (CIRA) for the policeman.

Stephen Carroll was shot in the back of the head when he responded to a distress call from a woman in the Lismore Manor area of Craigavon. A sniper in nearby Drumbeg estate executed him with a single bullet to the head. Drumbeg is a staunchly republican estate and the Northern Irish boom has largely passed by the place. On the walls nearby is a mural of a tricolour decorated with the letters CIRA and graffiti which reads “Don't join the Sinn Fein sell-out”. More graffiti announces that the Continuity IRA are “still at war”. The victim of their war, 48 year old Catholic Stephen Carroll was just two years away from his retirement.

Carroll’s death came just 48 hours after army sappers Mark Quinsey, 23, and Patrick Azimkar, 21, were gunned down in an attack on Massareene Barracks in Antrim on Saturday. Four others were injured when gunmen attacked members of 38 Engineer Regiment waiting at the front gate. The regiment was due to leave for Afghanistan within hours when the ambush occurred. The pair were the first British soldiers to be killed in Northern Ireland since 23-year-old Stephen Restorick was shot dead by a sniper as he manned a checkpoint in South Armagh in February 1997.

The Times claims that RIRA and CIRA co-operated over the two killings but offered no evidence to back up the claim other than a throwaway quote from an unnamed security official. The paper says the rifles used to murder the soldiers are newer, more sophisticated weapons imported illegally into the province. Of more interest was the fact that security forces have very little intelligence about the renegade organisations but do say there is “no unified command structure” linking the two groups.

The Real IRA are the most well-known of the two and were responsible for the 1998 Omagh bombing which killed 29 people. The group was born out of a split in the mainstream Provisional IRA in October 1997 over the direction of the peace process. The Continuity IRA is the smaller but older of the two. The group has a few dozen active members with its leadership based in Limerick. They split from the Provisional IRA in 1986 but did not come out in the open until the Provos declared a ceasefire in 1994. The day-to-day modus operandi of both groups is criminal activity such as assaults, drug dealing, robbery, kidnapping, extortion, and smuggling.

The Independent said the trigger for the latest burst of violence was the announcement the Armed Forces Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) was returning to Northern Ireland. Founded in 2005 the SRR has a specific aim of targeting international terrorism. It is the inheritor force of the notorious secret 14 Intelligence Company known as “The Det” (for detachment) which was instrumental in undermining IRA activity in the 1980s and 1990s. According to the SocialistWorkeronline the SRR was involved in the 2005 London killing of Jean Charles de Menezes (mistakenly believed to be a 7/7 tube bomber) and also “ran death squads in Iraq targeting supporters of the resistance to the US-British occupation.”

The two incidents have spawned a series of rallies across the province of people determined to show their revulsion at the murders. A peace vigil will to be held in Craigavon and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions are organising silent protests in Belfast, Derry, Lisburn, Newry, and Downpatrick. Peter Bunting, the congress's assistant general secretary, said workers had to unite to ensure the peace process was not derailed by a sectarian agenda. "They must be faced down with a massive display of the unity of the people of Northern Ireland,” he said. “We are determined not to be assigned into tight sectarian boxes.”

Johannesburg beset by a wave of xenophobic attacks

A wave of attacks on mostly Zimbabwean immigrants has left at least 22 dead in the last three days in Johannesburg, South Africa. Another 6,000 have fled to the safety of churches, police stations and community halls. Townships have become no-go areas as mobs go on a xenophobic rampage targeting foreigners without provocation. The refugees have become scapegoats for South Africa’s growing economic problems such as unemployment, crime and a lack of housing.

The scale of the violence has caught South Africa’s politicians and security forces off-guard. On the weekend, central Johannesburg resembled a war-zone, as armed police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse angry crowds. 200 people have been arrested and police reinforcements have been sent into the worst affected parts of the city calming the situation in the last 24 hours. One day earlier, a church where about one thousand Zimbabweans were taking refuge was attacked by a large mob. Bishop Paul Veryn of the Central Methodist Church told SABC radio: “We consider that the situation is getting so serious that the police can no longer control it.”

The violence began last week in the Johannesburg townships of Alexandra and Diepsloot due to perceptions that foreigners were behind robberies in the area. Local anger sparked vigilante justice and foreigners were assaulted and driven from their homes. The violence spread to other areas over the weekend. Men with guns and iron bars chanted “kick the foreigners out” and set upon immigrants from neighbouring African countries. In the last three days hundreds of people from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi and elsewhere have been injured. Thousands more have been left homeless and many raped as the attacks on foreigners spread to the whole of the Johannesburg area. Gangs of youths, up to a hundred strong, attacked the homes of refugees over the weekend.

The cause is simmering resentment against successive waves of immigration. Since the end of apartheid in the early 1990s, millions of African immigrants have poured into South Africa seeking jobs and sanctuary. But recent high inflation has eroded the value of wages and social benefits and recent sharp increases in food and fuel prices has also adding to pressure on low-income families. Unemployment in South Africa currently stands at 40 per cent. Frans Cronje, deputy director of think-tank The South African Institute for Race Relations believes a number of factors have all come together to create the problem. He says the key issues are inflation, food and fuel prices “which put the squeeze on poor communities and then we were waiting for the spark.”

The attacks have been concentrated in Johannesburg's poorest areas and Zimbabweans have borne the brunt of the violence. Up to three million Zimbabweans are estimated to be in South Africa. Most of these have fled their homeland on South Africa's northern border due to the Robert Mugabe’s repressive policies and the current political crisis. Archbishop Desmond Tutu condemned the violence and urged South Africans to remember the help neighbouring countries offered during the apartheid era. "Although they were poor,” he said, “they welcomed us South Africans as refugees, and allowed our liberation movements to have bases in their territory even if it meant those countries were going to be attacked by the SADF (South African Defence Forces).”

One Ugandan victim of the violence in Johannesburg spoke of his experiences. “Hassan” said he saw a mob breaking into the next-door residence where many Somalis live. He heard an exchange of gunfire and later saw a crowd setting a man alight before police sprayed him with a fire extinguisher to put the fire out. He said gangs were stopping vehicles on the street and pulling foreign nationals out so they can beat them. Foreign-owned businesses have now closed. It's quiet now but very tense. He said he was staying with some South African friends who were protecting him. Hassan thought the violence was orchestrated from “quite high up” as a result of the rivalry between President Thabo Mbeki and his likely successor Jacob Zuma (though both men have publicly condemned the attacks).

Uganda bears the brunt of Kenyan crisis

Uganda is losing over a million dollars a day in revenues and exports as a result of the post-election violence in Kenya. The Uganda government and its farmers and traders are suffering as the landlocked country is unable to get its products out. Uganda is heavily reliant on the Kenyan port of Mombasa for the import of fuel and heavy goods, such as machinery, cars and generators, and also for the export of coffee, tea and tobacco.

In the fortnight since the violence began Ugandan government revenues have dropped by 78 per cent in the three border points with Kenya. Exporters too are feeling the pinch. "We have not been able to deliver our goods to the port since December 27 because of the violence", says David Barry of Kyagulanyi Coffee. "It is definitely a big loss for us, also in terms of fines and penalties for late delivery." Ugandan hopes of an early end to the Kenyan impasse following the collapse of efforts by Ghanaian president and AU mediator John Kufuor to secure a deal between President Mwai Kibaki and his opposition rival Raila Odinga.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni may now be regretting his early endorsement of a Kibaki victory. There have been allegations that the Ugandan government may have had a hand in securing the contested win. One week after the election on 2 January Museveni, in his capacity as current chairman of the East African Community, offered congratulations to Kibaki on his re-election. Other than Uganda, only Somalia, Kuwait and Swaziland have so far recognised the election result. Museveni was criticised internally for this move on the basis that his message could provoke attacks on Ugandans and Ugandan interests in Kenya. Others say he was “forced” to recognise the result to facilitate the movement of Ugandan goods in and out of the country.

If that was Museveni's plan, it has not proved successful. The only traffic coming into Uganda at the moment is a human one. According to the UN over 6,000 Kenyans have fled to eastern Uganda to flee the violence. They are finding shelter in school buildings, hospitals and in open places and UN agencies, government and the Uganda Red Cross are providing them food and other relief items. Over 500 have been registered at Bukwo and Kapchorwa districts. The Ugandan Red Cross has assessed another 3,500 refugees camped at the border towns of at Malaba, Busia and Lwakahkah. Red Cross official Alice Uwase Anukur said sanitation was the major challenge at the camps. "The only pit latrine at St. Jude Malaba Primary School is filled up," she said. She also said there was an urgent need for sanitary towels.

The general population is also suffering. Uganda continues to face shortages, and fuel prices have more than doubled since last week. In the longer term Uganda is hoping to reduce its dependency on road and rail for importing fuel products from Kenya by building an oil pipeline. The project will initially involve a $110 million 340-kilometer pipeline from Eldoret in western Kenya to the Uganda capital Kampala. The pipeline would subsequently be extended to Kigali and Bujumbura, the capitals of Rwanda and Burundi, respectively. Fuel supplies to all three countries have been erratic since the violence started.

But matters are unlikely to improve in the short term with Kenyan opposition forces planning further rounds of protest next week. The impact on the surrounding region is potentially devastating with the agricultural economies of Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi all “throttled” by the violence. A quarter of the gross domestic product of Uganda and Rwanda and a third of Burundi's pass through Kenya. None of them have found a suitable alternative to the bottleneck port of Mombasa. According to Robert Shaw, a businessman and economic analyst, "If Kenya has got a cold, these countries get pneumonia.”

regulation of violence on TV: an essay

Television violence has been a public concern ever since the small screen first dominated living rooms in the 1950s. While the argument mostly bubbles under, it comes to the fore whenever someone apportions blame to television for a real life violent incident. What is the relationship between on-screen violence and brutality in real life? Does television require more regulation? Or is it merely a convenient target of blame? This paper will examine the arguments for and against more regulation of television violence and analyse some of the research done on the subject in the US, Britain, Canada and Australia.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is the American federal agency charged with consumer protection and competition jurisdiction. After the Columbine massacre, the FTC conducted a review of self-regulation and industry practices in the motion picture, music recording and game industries. Their 2000 study has implications for television as a transmission medium for these industries. The study acknowledged that exposure to violence in entertainment media is not necessarily the most important factor in violent crime but did find a high correlation between them. The commission examined the self-regulatory programs of the entertainment industries and found them wanting. It recommended three actions: 1) the establishment of a code to prohibit target marketing to children 2) increased compliance at the retail level and 3) parental education about ratings and labels. The report advocated strong penalties for non-compliance and continued vigilance by Congress to monitor progress.

The FCC findings corroborate research done by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. L. Rowell Huessman’s team examined the longitudinal relations between TV violence viewing at ages 6 to 10 and adult aggressive behaviour 15 years later for a sample growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. Their results suggested males and females from all social strata are placed at increased risk for the development of aggressive behaviour in adulthood if exposed to high levels of violent television in early childhood. The study argues that prevention programs aimed at reducing exposure are more easily targeted at the viewer rather than the production source due to society’s strong protection for free speech. It cited parental supervision, co-viewing, and commenting on programs as mitigating factors as they reduce children’s identification with the perpetrator. The study criticised the undermining of the V-chip technology to control viewing by producers of violent shows who scuttled a content-based rating system.

The V-chip was studied in a 1997 report by the Action Group on Violence on Television (AGVOT) for the Canadian Radio-Television and Communications Commission. It recommended the technology should be rolled out with a common classification system. But the encoding software is not always reliable and does not react properly to scheduling changes. Moreover, promotions and movie advertisements are not encoded. The study found a high degree of community support for the V-chip but it requires harmonisation with the US to be successful.

American studies are moving in a different direction. In 1998, the National Television Violence Study brought together the findings of three annual studies on violence on American TV. It had four components; a review of the scientific literature, content analysis of violence, analysis of ratings, and an evaluation of media campaigns targeted at adolescents. The study found TV violence contributes to three types of harmful effects on viewers. These were; the learning of aggressive behaviours, a desensitisation to violence, and increased fear of victimisation of violence. Factors such as attractive perpetrators or victims, or where violence was justified, extensive, rewarded or humorous, all contributed to greater harmful effects. The report encouraged more responsible TV programming and viewing. It eschewed censorship or content regulation and instead called on viewers to reconsider viewing habits and conduct a national dialogue about the cause and effect of violence.

Here, the Australian Broadcast Authority (now replaced by ACMA) did its own study on community attitudes to violence on Australian free-to-air TV in 1989 and 2003. The surveys examined whether a relationship existed between concerns about violence on TV and whether people changed their behaviour to avoid violent content. Its research showed community levels of concern about television violence had decreased in the intervening 14 years. In 1989 25% of adults spontaneously mentioned violence as a concern. This had reduced to 14% by 2002. The later survey showed a strong agreement that Australian adults should be able to watch whatever they like on TV.

University of Western Sydney professor Virginia Nightingale produced a monograph in 2000 about children’s views on media harm. Her research explored awareness and experiences of media regulation and how children understand harmful media materials. The majority of young people surveyed (70%) agreed children needed rules to protect them from harmful media. A substantial number said they used the classification information and viewer warnings. Some went so far as to recommend changes for increased specificity so they could use them more effectively. The study did not favour more censorship or stricter classification but rather desired more consistency in how classification decisions are made. It concluded that the impact of violence on children is determined by whether they believe the events ‘really happened’. Films such as Titanic and Saving Private Ryan made a huge impression because they were based on real events. Nightingale recommended community regulatory activity should take children’s own reports of their media experiences into account.

British psychologist Tony Charlton also concluded it was people not programmes that impact behaviour. Writing in the Observer, Charlton documented how television changed the remote Atlantic island of St Helena when it arrived in 1995. The event provided researchers with a rare opportunity to examine before and after effects of television in a real life setting. The project found that television does not adversely influence children’s social behaviour. The research team concluded social controls in the community were more persuasive in shaping behaviour. He cites factors such as the disintegration of support networks, urban apathy and lack of parental supervision as having greater impact than regulatory controls on television violence.