Welcome to The CIHA Blog’s monthly review (actually, this time more like a month-and-a-half review)!. We ended the month of April by highlighting two separate issues that demand a critical perspective: the notion of “free and fair” in national elections, and the idea that there is religious justification for anti-LGBT violence. In the post “Who is Fooling Whom? Unveiling the 2016 Ugandan Presidential Election Puzzles”, Gyaviira Kisitu discusses the problematic use of state institutional power in the recent presidential elections in Uganda, calling into question the assertion that the elections were “free and fair.” From the Ujamaa Centre and the University of KwaZu on Natal in South Africa, we also posted a talk by Justice Edwin Cameron, eminent South African human rights lawyer, Constitutional Court judge, and LGBTI and HIV activist, on the changes, including court cases, that offer hope for LGBTI equality on the continent. Justice Cameron gave his speech as the inaugural Eudy Simelane lecture. The Ujamaa Centre, in founding this lecture series, asserts that religious change is central to social change and demolishes any notion that Eudy Simelane’s rape and murder could be justified on religio-cultural grounds. The accompanying video about Eudy Simelane’s life includes a beautiful tribute by her Methodist pastor, who says that “Eudy’s spirit refuses to die,” forcing us “to disabuse ourselves of our stereotypes” about LGBTI people.
We also inaugurated a new series in May, which we are calling “Things People Who Want to Help Africa Should Know.” Some pieces will be original to The Blog; others will be culled from our “In the News” series; we hope that humanitarians, students, and scholars will use and comment on all of them. This month we posted an “In the News” article by Ben Radley demonstrating the negative effects of the “conflict mineral” campaign largely fueled by Western advocacy groups. While this piece calls into question the nature of Western aid, another piece, “In the News: Who Owns Local Knowledge and Resources in Africa?” discusses the lack of value placed on local knowledge by many actors in the West. In this piece, Professor Chidi Oguamanam argues that the current system of intellectual property rights, in particular, fails to recognize and value the knowledge production of indigenous and local communities in Africa.
The Blog also continued to post pieces from our conference on Biafra / the Nigerian Civil War. Two of these focus on the role of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in the conflict. Hans von Rütte and Mercy Amba Oduyoye each reflect on issues faced by the WCC, including its struggle to maintain a neutral position to try to broker peace. The WCC was faced with the dilemma of how to enact Christian ethics of diakonia, i.e., to serve those most in need. While von Rutte, in examining WCC archives, focuses on its failure to remain neutral, Professor Oduyoye argues that the WCC’s role represented an important enactment of diakonia. In a related post from Pambazuka News, Herbert Ekwe Ekwe calls for the US to stop selling warplanes to the Buhari regime in Nigeria, arguing that because the wounds from the civil war have not been healed, such arms would likely be used today against the Igbo people.
One of the major goals of The CIHA Blog is to explore connections between issues of faith and the conditions for constructive humanitarianism. This month, we posted two pieces exploring religion and religious harmony. In “The Marrakesh Declaration: A Sermon by Imam Dr. A. Rashied Omar,” a prominent South African imam emphasizes the importance of this declaration, which reaffirms the protection of religious minorities as integral to Islamic principles and history. In our most recent post, we present a lecture at Concordia University by Dr. Akosua Adomako Ampofo, entitled “Does a Bullet Know a Christian from a Muslim? Fear Love and Healing in our Multi-cultural World.” Dr. Ampofo discusses the meanings — personal, political and religious — of multiculturalism and makes connections between African contributions and pathways toward peaceful coexistence.
As always, we appreciate your reflections, comments, and ideas on other critical investigations to post!