Pernille Bærendtsen, Information Worker, Tanzania
I'm watching SACB News in Johannesburg. Suddenly, men with ''Politi' written on the back of their marine blue overalls are controlling activists with battons swinging over their heads. In yesterday's The Star there was a photo of a man dressed up as the death riding on a horse back. All from Copenhagen.
Eye catching footage brought to a continent which is usually supplying Europe the other way with heavy conflict material.
Copenhagen is still making headlines in African media this week.
What, no rainmakers in Copenhagen? Charles Onyango-Obbo, one of my favorite journalists from Uganda asks in this week’s East African on December 14. He goes on explaining the traditional African way of making rain, and the traditional African tendency to explain environmental catastrophies with withcraft:
'If the rains stay away for a long time, you gather half a dozen white chickens and take them to the local rainmaker. He will get a powder into which a tiger tooth and lion claws have allegedly been ground, climb to the top of a high hill, blow the powder in the air, flash his miracle-filled backside at the heavens, and frighten the sky into opening up.'
Onyango-Obbo reflects on the fact that Africa has a tradition for believing that environmental and climate problems can be fixed quickly without the help of science - and it is partly explaining why Africa might be the world’s smallest polluter, but suffers the greatest damage from climate change. Read his examples here.
The South African Mail & Guardian is covering the Climate Change Summit daily (overview here). Obviously, it had Desmond Tutu on front from the demonstration. Greenpeace South Africa praised its government on December 7 for the fact that 'South Africa will slow emissions growth by 34% deviation from business as usual (BAU) by 2020 and 42% by 2025. It aims to have a peak in emissions between 2020 and 2025 - a step up from the previously announced peak of 2025.' However, Greenpeace also questioned the South African government's intentions yesterday in an article in The Star.
Tanzania has been very busy this week; amongst others with a Canadian diplomat who spat on a traffic police officer; and celebration of its independence on December 9. Climate change hasn't been high on the agenda in Tanzanian on-line media. Daily News did have an article on December 14 under the title Activists want global response on climate change, but it doesn't say much which can't be read on many other websites.
The Tanzanian blogger Faustine at Faustine's Baraza writes that he is 'pleased to see that the developing countries have developed an alliance to fight for their rights'...and 'encouraged to see that the Developing countries have gone back to the negotiation table. It is time to work together for common good. We citizens of the world want to see an agreement that will be binding to all countries whether rich or poor. We need to protect this world for our children's children.'
The Tanzanian driven blog 'Unheard Voices' is blogging directly from Copenhagen here where they are presenting a book on climate change in Tanzania -and hooking up with MS ActionAid Denmark's climate change agents - in Kiswahili.
And finally Henry Gombya at the Ugandan newspaper, The Citizen, is covering the climate change summit on December 16's frontpage, firstly leaving a broad smile on my lips, having replaced the 'ø' with an 'o' in Lars Lokke Rasmussen ('lokke' means to trick in Danish). The article, however, also makes a very important statement;
'One cannot fail to take a glance at the many well-known corrupt leaders who will be shaking hands with Mr Rasmussen while their officials are busy exploiting the openness of the Danish people by opening bank accounts in which to deposit their countries' hard earned currency and their spouses making a bee-line for the most expensive shops in Copenhagen while their countrymen and women are starving back home.'
Pernille has worked in Tanzania since September 2007; previously for 26 months along and across the Ugandan border to Southern Sudan with civic education and Sudanese refugees, with activism in Copenhagen; and youth and reconciliation in ex-Yugoslavia. She blogs from Tanzania on www.pernille.typepad.com.
Photo from Mikumi National Park, Tanzania. October 2009.