Let's get real about Africa's burden of malnutrition

http://nutritionafrica.blogspot.com/2012/01/lets-get-real-about-africas-burden-of.html

 

In the past, I have received criticism for my work linking malnutrition to underdevelopment and social dysfunctionality. My critics have suggested that, by identifying problems in African society and highlighting the "stigmata of malnutrition," I am giving racists ammunition for their claims that Africans are genetically inferior to other races.

I beg to disagree with my critics. First, race is not a biological category. It is a socially constructed category. I have no essentialist arguments to make about Africans. What I do talk about is nutrition, which can be changed willfully by people who have choices. The point of my intervention is to raise awareness of the kind that will increase the number of nutritional choices available to most people.

No reasonable man or woman would dare to claim that the nutritional needs of most of Africa's children were being met. Conditions such as kwashiorkor, pellagra, rickets and others are commonplace in our communities. Any African who has lived in a community where having one meal a day is a luxury knows that children do not thrive under those circumstances. They do not thrive physically: Their bodies are stunted, and they succumb easily to diseases and parasites. The children do not thrive emotionally either: Hunger does not breed joy, nor is competition for limited resources in the home conducive to cooperation between family members. Families quickly become dysfunctional. They do not thrive intellectually: How can they, when their bodies are ailing and their brains do not receive the nutrients necessary for the growth, development, and optimal function of the brain? Furthermore, they may also be vulnerable to mental disease as teenagers and adults. Remember that mental disease is like any other form of disease: It thrives where there is chronic malnutrition, stress and trauma.

These are the challenges that the majority of Africans (who are poor) must wrestle with as they raise their children. Their children, in turn, grow into adults who are physically and psychologically marked by the deprivations they suffered. They may be small in stature, prone to falling ill, may have failed to reach their full intellectual capacity, and may experience undiagnosed depression and other forms of mental disease. All these factors can be attributed, not to their race, but to chronic lifelong malnutrition and the other difficulties they have endured. Anybody who takes the time to study the experiences of populations the world over that have historically been subjected to similar deprivations will notice similar problems.

Boer residents of British concentration camps in Southern Africa in the early 20th century endured such deprivations. Furthermore, prisoners in the Russian Gulag experienced similar forms of deprivation, as did Jewish people and other European minorities in Nazi-occupied Europe. The Kikuyu families who were put into concentration camps by the British during the so-called Mau Mau Emergency experienced similar deprivation. Those occupants of the Sahel and the Sahara who have lost their livelihoods to drought, and have had to seek refuge at relief centers decade after decade have experienced the same. A quick internet search will reveal that Asia and the Americas have similar stories to tell.

Whether chronic malnutrition results from poverty, natural catastrophes, wars or political repression and marginalization, it deprives entire communities of their potential. Thus, observations about diminished intellectual capacity and physical stamina, and vulnerability to physical and mental illness in such communities are a testament to the long reach of malnutrition. They are not essentialist claims about "the nature of a race."

If the nutritional needs of most of Africa's children were somehow to be met, then there would be no reason for us to be having this conversation. Africa would be a self-sufficient continent, confident in her dealings with itself and the rest of humanity. But we all know that that is not Africa's present reality. A country like Kenya can afford to pay its parliamentarians world class salaries, but the average person in the village or in the urban slums often struggles to get one square meal on to the table daily. The cycles of famine and drought, which have come to define Eastern Africa, are destined to continue, punctuated by emergency cabinet meetings to deliberate the hunger crises.

Educated Africans must take a step beyond their comfort zone. Instead of spending most of their energy trying to deny the deep-seated problems that plague our societies, they should look at the bigger picture. The underdevelopment burden due to malnutrition across sub-Saharan Africa is real. By not accepting that there is a problem, Africa's educated elites become part of the problem; they stand in the path of advocacy for better nutritional health. Once we accept that there is a problem, policy makers can be pressured to diversify agricultural production on the continent. Africa's educated elites need to shed the disdain they hold for the majority of their own people and, instead, start using their skills to offer transformative advocacy and support.

Can censoring indigenous languages prevent ethnic hatred?

Today, a status update on the Facebook fan page of the Daily Nation has clarified the guidelines that users are expected to follow when posting on the page. The rationale behind the guidelines is to promote spirited discussions that remain within the bounds of decency and the law. This is not surprising at all. January 23^rd 2012 is an important day in Kenyan history. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has finally made the ruling that four Kenyan men will stand trial for allegedly committing crimes against humanity during the 2007-2008 Post Election Violence (PEV). The four men are William Ruto, Uhuru Kenyatta, Francis Muthaura and Joshua Arap Sang.

Many Kenyans have heaved a huge sigh of relief at the ICC’s ruling. They would like to see justice for those who were killed, maimed and terrorized during the PEV, and realize that this would be next to impossible in a Kenyan court of law. Of course the ICC’s ruling is not an indication that any of the men is guilty by law. They still have to go to trial for that to be established or disproven. Furthermore, some have pointed out that it took more than four people to engineer the bloody events of 2007 and 2008 and that, consequently, any justice achieved at the end of the day is unlikely to be complete. Regardless of the outcome of the trial, Kenyans can rest assured that the trial will force them to come to terms with the underbelly of Kenyan political culture.

This brings us back to the Daily Nation’s Facebook fan page, where various Kenyan critics and supporters of the four men have expressed their respective elation and anger at the ruling. In response to the inciting language used by some, the moderator of the page has seen fit to reiterate the guidelines for posting on the page. Some of the guidelines entail basic internet courtesy. They ask fans to be courteous, to avoid posting in ALL CAPS and to refrain from personal attacks against each other. Others are targeted at more serious forms of offensive speech. Defamation, hate speech, sexism, tribalism and racism in posts are forbidden.

The guidelines outlined thus far sound reasonable. However, the third guideline, concerning the use of language, is curious. It states, “Since participants in the forums are from mixed backgrounds, English shall be the primary language of conversation. Some widely "accepted" slang and pidgin - Sheng -might also be permitted.” This is a curious statement for two primary reasons. One is the fact that Swahili, Kenya’s national language is completely dismissed in a forum predominantly frequented by Kenyan speakers of Swahili. The second is the fact that Kenya’s other indigenous languages are dismissed with a simple flourish. The latter can be justified as a temporary measure to keep the discussion open and minimally-polarized but there is no legitimate reason to disallow the use of Swahili on the forum.

Considering that the Nation Media Group publishes Taifa Leo, the national Swahili-language newspaper, and makes regular media broadcasts in eloquent Swahili, disallowing the use of Swahili on the Facebook page makes absolutely no sense. I am not even going to pretend to understand the reasoning behind it. I hope that when the number of people complaining about that ‘oversight’ reaches critical mass, the moderator of the page will correct it. I will, however, spend some time discussing the connection between the guideline and Kenyans’ conflicted relationships with their indigenous languages. While Swahili is an indigenous language, it is also the national language of Kenya, more widely spoken than English and understood by most Kenyans. Thus some of my statements about indigenous languages below may not apply to Swahili.

For the record, I don’t think that banning the use of Kenya’s indigenous languages in ‘Kenyan’ virtual space will neutralize the hateful sentiments felt by many Kenyans about their fellow Kenyans. Any person determined to post in hateful language will do so, even in English or Sheng’. However, I understand the reasons behind this decision on the part of the moderator of this Facebook page.

Some Kenyans resort to the use of their indigenous languages when they want to express hateful sentiments about other ethnic groups. The indigenous language has become, for them, a code to unite ‘insiders’ and to mark them as unique and different from the hated ‘outsiders.’They post divisive and inciting statements in their respective languages, often using objectifying code words to refer to the ‘other.’ Interestingly, the average person that does this seems to be of the opinion that speaking in his or her indigenous language offers protection from public scrutiny. The person erroneously believes that members of other ethnic groups will not understand these statements and that all members of his or her ethnic group will sympathize with them.

People who have been following the ICC hearings will point out that media broadcasts and speeches by public personalities in indigenous languages were characterized by the same problems and ultimately played a significant role in fracturing Kenyan society and inciting the different sides to violence in 2007-2008. Others will point out that various Kenyan discussion boards and blogs allowed the same kind of unmoderated hate speech in indigenous languages, and consequently made the situation worse. It is this history of the misuse of Kenya’s indigenous languages that makes any Kenyan entity that maintains an interactive forum online or in the mass media wary about allowing indigenous language contributions. It is not surprising that some of them would opt to completely do away with Kenyan indigenous languages and the logistical complications of trying to moderate comments in these languages.

Kenyan indigenous languages have clearly earned a terrible reputation, particularly in recent years. But is this reputation fair? Are these languages primarily the vehicles for the expression of hatred? Of course the reputation is unfair. Indigenous languages are not primarily used to express hatred and create divisiveness. Indigenous languages are vehicles for the expression of every aspect of culture- the good, the bad and the ugly. So is English, and so is Sheng’. In fact, many Kenyans who spend time online will attest that tribalism, racism and other forms of hatred are predominantly articulated in English on Kenyan forums.

Hatred is not brought into being by indigenous languages. In reality, many Kenyans live in cosmopolitan communities and are, consequently, multilingual. They worship together, go to school together, do business together, often intermarry and learn each other’s languages. So Kenya’s indigenous languages are the collective heritage of the Kenyan people. Banning the use of these languages in cosmopolitan forums is not a long-term solution for anything.

That said I cannot blame the NMG for trying to keep things simple on their Facebook page. Disallowing the use of Kenya’s indigenous languages is probably a wise move in the short term: it will make the page relatively easy to moderate in a time of heightened sensitivities. However, they will eventually have to come up with a sustainable approach to moderating comments that does not involve the censorship of entire languages.

This work is licensed to Rose Kahendi under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Contemporary Africa's implication in its own underdevelopment

http://nutritionafrica.blogspot.com/2012/01/contemporary-africas-implication-in-its.html

In early April of 2010, I was hosted at a Public Library for the presentation of my book, A Healthy You: Tame Africa's Child Malnutrition. I was quite surprised at the interest the contents generated: I had assumed the book would primarily interest Africans, but the audience was predominantly American. To cut a long story short,the presentation went well, and gave me fresh food for thought.

One issue that came to the fore during the question and answer session was the poor utilization of quality protein maize (QPM) in the place of ordinary maize to tame childhood malnutrition on the continent. Other developing continents seemed to have made greater use of this resource than Africa. One participant in the audience hinted that the African establishment seemed to enjoy "victimhood." The person speculated that they preferred to exploit the sympathy that poverty, disease, the orphan burden, and violence attracted than to do the hard work that was necessary to undo institutional dependency on foreign aid.

Globally, research on QPM has been ongoing for many years. On the African continent, it is only in Ghana that community studies have been documented. These studies have shown that Ghanaian children with Kwashiorkor fed on QPM recover. I have thoughtfully compared these with my own casual observations that Western Kenyan children, fed predominantly on a white hybrid maize staple diet continue to suffer from Kwashiorkor. The high infant mortality rate in Wetern Kenya is a crying shame, yet any possible solutions must come down to political will. When political will catches up with the reality on the ground the problem will receive the attention it deserves. The officials concerned with addressing malnutrition nationally then will be well advised to break down the national statistics for disease burden, poverty rates, and child mortality into regional figures. It will be important to identify the communities most afflicted and to apply the most intense programs within them.

Several reasons have been cited for the minimal undertaking of QPM research efforts on the African continent. One of these reasons is that many nations do not have the technical capacity to support such research. However, if Ghana can do it, why can't other African countries do it? Keep in mind that much of the hard scientific work that would facilitate such research has already been done. It seems more likely that the absence of such research efforts is attributable to the absence of coherent national development goals in many African nations. Such goals are rendered impossible because of the degree to which resources are commandeered for ethnic interests rather than national interests.

Leaders focus more on meeting the superficial needs of "their people" so that the tribal voting blocs on which they are dependent can get them back into office during the next political cycle. There really isn't much time or energy left to look into the more profound needs of their communities in the long-term, or to even think about other communities nationally. What this means is that ordinary Africans who want to see Africa change for the better have to learn to do the dirty work themselves, often without government support.

The African culture of poor leadership is bred in our homes. We must start taking responsibility for this culture: If there is something you can do to change Africa for the better, do it now, starting in your home. Don't just complain about "Africa's poor leadership." Leadership should start with you, dear reader. If you can't make the necessary sacrifice, why should you expect that somebody else will? Leadership arises from the people.

How Africa's maize turned white: a review

http://nutritionafrica.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-africas-maize-turned-white.html

A while back, I read James McCann's book Maize and Grace: Africa's Encounter with a New World Crop, 1500-2000. Beautiful book! Any of you out there who can should grab a copy.

My favourite chapter in the book is "How Africa's maize turned white". It opens with the dramatic events that have characterized and shaped modern Africa, starting in South Africa i.e. mining, industrialisation, European settlement and male migrant labour. Maize is at the heart of all these events. However, whereas maize serves as the native South Africans' staple diet (in mealies and beer), for South Africa's commercial farmers, maize is a traded commodity used globally in industry and as cattle feed (and allied feeds).

According to McCann, native African maize (originally imported from South America during the Columbian era) expressed itself in very different ways on small peasant farms, displaying many colours. Up to the beginning of the 19th century, farmers could choose seed from their previous crop; they also had a variety of coloured maize varieties to choose from (e.g. Blue Flint, which they had by then christened "Blue Zulu"), but the arrival of hybrid maize changed all this. This was preceded by the discovery of diamonds at Kimberley in 1867, which led to an influx of migrant workers and capital, opening up the area for commerce and an increased demand for food. In the late 19th century White American Maize, which birthed the hybrid varieties that would revolutionize maize farming in both Southern and Eastern Africa, was imported. These new (hybrid) varieties were, in addition, high-yielding and utilized commercial fertilizer, making maize farming attractive to large commercial farmers.

While most of the world's maize crop is yellow, Africa produces mostly white maize. Chemically and genetically the 2 varieties are similar, although the yellow maize has a nutritional edge over the white maize because it contains the "carotene oil pigments responsible for the colour of yellow maize". Carotene is a precursor of Vitamin A. Most Africans prefer the white maize and refuse any other colour. In fact, when given a choice, they will pay more dearly for the white variety. This sharply contrasts with earlier Africans who selected "coloured maize ranging from crimson to blue to colourful mosaics of red, blue, yellow and orange." So how did this transformation occur?

This transformation is linked to the commercialization of maize that naturally followed increased demands for the crop. Maize became an exportable commodity which, for the purposes of the British starch and distillery industries, had to be homogeneously white. The South African crop could therefore compete on the international market, and get premium prices as a white homogeneous crop. In Southern Rhodesia, in an effort to force farmers to grow this homogeneous white crop, the cultivation of coloured varieties was outlawed. The flour mills also preferred the hybrid white maize because it was easier to mill, having a softer grain than the other varieties. One author mentioned in the book hints at another reason, divorced from the above two: "The real cause is the tendency of the native to imitate the white man, and that as the white man in Southern Africa eats only white mealie meal, the native thinks he ought to do so too". Contrary to this assertion, however, white South Africans had long identified maize as a "kaffir food".

McCann ends the chapter by reflecting on the political and economic forces inscribed by hybrid maize onto Southern Africa at the end of the 20th century: White farmers prospered while black farmers declined. Medical records from the 1920s and 1930s show that in colonial Basutoland "the incidence of pellagra and kwashiorkor increased in direct proportion to the rising percentage of maize in the diet".

Living in Translation

Whenever I have encountered American depictions of Native American or First Nations people, I have wondered why their personal names are often given in English. Names such as "Touch the Clouds," "Sitting Bull," "Crow Foot," "American Horse," and "Buffalo Hump" are the ones that typically make it into history books and anthologies. That has often left me wondering, what happened to the original names and languages of the people of these nations? Of course they still exist to varying degrees. However, for some reason, American history has not been kind enough to take First Nations people at face value, seemingly expecting that many translate themselves into English before they are comprehensible. I realize I am generalizing. There are certainly families who have retained names and traditional naming systems, and there have been movements to preserve languages and promote their use in younger generations. But, unfortunately, these efforts are rarely foregrounded in the national US consciousness.

To me, it is sad to imagine people predominantly living in translation, to the degree that, even the names they are given within the bossoms of their families are translations or approximations of names that once were. I try to imagine a parallel scenario in East Africa, where, instead of having given names in their native Dholuo, Kigiryama, Turkana or Kipfokomo, people would have had translated given names like "Firstborn Son," "Born during Famine," "Born during the Harvest," "Hyena." Perhaps these names would have been comprehensible to a large population of English speakers, but they would have marked some sort of alienation from the people's oral traditions.

It is sad when fluency in old languages is lost, but even more profoundly so when personal names in the old languages are lost. My concern is this: if people are sentenced to live in other people's languages, even in this most fundamental of senses, then to what extent do they control their image as perceived by themselves and others? Perpetually living in translation means that one is almost always accommodating oneself to others' perceptions and ways of being, even in one's own home. There is little effort being expended to do the converse: to live on one's own terms, and to get others to understand one on one's own terms. In the best of circumstances, interaction should be a two-way street. Having to live in translation is a testament that the circumstances are far from ideal.

This particular observation applies, not just to Native Americans, but also to African Americans in their naming systems and beauty ideals. When they were brought over to the US through the Middle Passage, African peoples were reinvented. They essentially lost their names to slave names and gradually lost their languages and many of their traditions. The circumstances forced them to adopt new strategies to simply survive. However, vestiges of the old ways and languages remained in their cultural practices. I have always been intrigued by such survivals, but I don't think that the comparatively new names and practices are illegitimate. In various ways, the latter speak of the history of African peoples in the Americas, and that is valuable.

That said, it has been my observation, as a non-American living in the US, that African Americans have often lived 'in translation,' reinventing themselves to conform more closely to mainstream American ideals. The most apparent indication of this was in women's hair grooming practices: Tight African curls were so demonized that, until recently, it would have been next to impossible to see black women wearing their hair without applying some form of chemical straightener or heat to it. The issue is so controversial that black hair grooming practices have been politicized. To me this is ridiculous. How can one's natural hair texture be political in a nation that claims to be Christian? From a Christian standpoint, did God not create the world and all that was in it and declare it to be good? So how on earth can any normal and healthy phenotypic expression be deemed 'bad'? How can hair of any texture or color be 'bad'? How can skin of any complexion or eyes of any shade be 'bad'?

Many black women who have opted for natural hair textures have been demonized, largely by their own families and peers. These families' and peers' reactions, while problematic, are understandable. They have lived for so long in a world where they have had to 'translate' their hair into acceptable textures that the alternative terrifies them. To me this is the epitome of 'living in translation.'

Racism was the external factor behind the 'translation' strategies historically adopted by Native American and African American peoples. However, today, I believe that the impulse to continue 'translating' comes predominantly from within. It makes sense that the efforts to transform this cultural dynamic are being developed within these very cultures.

This work is licensed to Rose Kahendi under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

The Mumia Abu-Jamal Story

Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther, and an activist and journalist, was tried in 1982 for the murder of Daniel Faulkner, a Philadelphia police officer. He was subsequently convicted and sentenced to death, only for the death sentence to be eventually declared unconstitutional and vacated. In December of 2011, the Philadelphia District Attorney made an announcement that there would be no further attempts to seek the death sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Instead, Abu-Jamal’s sentence would be allowed to revert to a sentence of life without parole.

THE VACATION OF ABU-JAMAL’S SENTENCE

Abu-Jamal’s case has been the subject of heated debate over the decades, pitting those who see it as proof of a racially-biased justice system against those who see it as evidence that justice can prevail. The December 9^th 2011 announcement by the Philadelphia District Attorney, Seth Williams, was met with celebration by Abu-Jamal’s supporters worldwide. The nearly three decades that he had spent on death row at the SCI-Greene maximum security prison were over. He would no longer be confined to a small, windowless cell, away from other prisoners, nor would the state be able to continue denying him physical contact with his family and friends.

Abu-Jamal’s flawed sentencing has long been the subject of controversy. The jury at the 1982 trial sentenced him to death based on misinformation and confusion over the options available to them. This was confirmed by a series of federal courts, beginning in 2001. So the December 2011 decision was a victory for Abu-Jamal. However, for many, the celebration was tinged with disappointment: Abu-Jamal was slated to spend the rest of his natural life in prison for a crime they believed him to be innocent of. If, as they asserted, the entire trial, and not just its sentencing phase, had been flawed, then an innocent man had just given 30 years of his life to death row with the threat of death hanging over him and would spend the rest of his life incarcerated in Graterford Prison without the possibility of parole. That was hardly a victory.

Some may argue that the righting of the wrongs committed during the sentencing phase of his trial is cause for hope: It points to the possibility that someday the verdict of his original trial will be overturned and he will be proven innocent. Mumia Abu-Jamal has already tried to challenge the verdict of his original trial (citing all the unconstitutional flaws that characterized this trial and the subsequent appeals) and failed. If anything, this is an indication that any future attempts on his part are likely to be an uphill struggle. However, it is possible for Abu-Jamal to get a new trial if new evidence supporting his claims of innocence comes to light.

THE ACCUSATION

The details surrounding the shooting of Officer Daniel Faulkner on 9^th December 1981 are contested to date. The prosecution’s version of the fated happenings has it that Faulkner stopped William Cook, Mumia Abu-Jamal’s brother, for a traffic violation. Cook responded aggressively, prompting the police officer to try to subdue him. Abu-Jamal, who was witnessing the events from a parking lot in the vicinity, crossed over and shot the police officer in his back. Faulkner shot back at him and succeeded in wounding him. Subsequently, Abu-Jamal is said to have cold-bloodedly fired four more shots at Faulkner, killing him. According to the prosecution, Abu-Jamal’s attempts to escape came to nothing as he fell to the ground, wounded. He was later found there by other police. Abu-Jamal was transported to the hospital, where, according to two eyewitnesses, he is supposed to have admitted to killing Faulkner.

During Abu-Jamal’s trial, four witnesses for the prosecution confirmed the above version of events to various degrees. They included Albert Magilton, a pedestrian, Michael Scanlan, a motorist, Robert Chobert, a taxi driver, and Cynthia White, a prostitute. Chobert, the taxi driver, claimed to have seen the killing from his taxi, which he said was parked immediately behind Faulkner’s car. He positively identified Abu-Jamal as the shooter, as did Cynthia White. Scanlan, who said he saw Officer Faulkner being attacked and then saw a second man run across the street and shoot him, could not positively identify the killer. Magilton admitted to seeing Abu-Jamal begin crossing the street, but did not witness the shooting, nor did he see Chobert’s taxi behind Faulkner’s police car.

Abu-Jamal never testified at his own trial. However, he maintained his innocence. According to his statement, he ran across the street after he heard the gunshots and was shot by a police officer upon arriving at the scene. He denied ever claiming to have shot Faulkner. One witness for the defense claimed to have seen a man run along the street after Faulkner was shot. This has contributed to speculation by Abu-Jamal’s proponents that the killer was not Abu-Jamal or his brother, but another man who left the scene of the crime.

PROBLEMS AND INCONSISTENCIES

There were holes in the prosecution’s version of events, many of which have been raised by Abu-Jamal and his defense teams over the years. More recently, Linn Washington and Dave Lindorff, journalists who have both written about Abu-Jamal’s case, have taken up the story and subjected it to further scrutiny.

One of the points that the two journalists have sought to verify concerns the bullets that Abu-Jamal is said to have fired downward while aiming at Faulkner. One bullet hit Faulkner between the eyes, but there is no evidence that other shots were fired in the way that the witnesses claimed. If Abu-Jamal had actually fired shots into the sidewalk, they would have left clear marks there and there would also likely have been debris embedded in Faulkner’s clothes or skin. Two separate tests conducted by the journalists in their respective attempts to reconstruct the crime confirmed this. There was no evidence of marks in the concrete sidewalk in the photographs of the crime scene or in the police investigators’ reports. Nor was there evidence of debris in the coroner’s report or in the report of the analysis of Faulkner’s police jacket. These results put to question the prosecution’s physical evidence and the testimony presented by its eyewitnesses, Cynthia White and Robert Chobert

Another important point involves the police’s apparent failure to test Abu-Jamal’s hands for gunpowder residue, which would have been a routine step to take. If they did test him, the results remained unreported. Interestingly, two other people, previously suspected of involvement in the crime, had had their hands tested for gun residue by the police.

Linn Washington and Dave Lindorff have also pointed to Chobert’s and White’s questionable credibility as eyewitnesses. Chobert claims to have parked his taxi behind the police car seem unlikely as he had a history of severe traffic violations and was driving on a suspended license at the time. He also happened to be on probation; thus, it seems inconceivable that he would take the risk of parking next to a police officer’s car and being caught violating the terms of his parole. Additionally, Chobert’s view of the events (as he described them) would have been severely obscured if he had actually parked his vehicle where he said he did. It is unlikely that he would have been able to identify the killer easily.

There is also the fact that Magilton, another eyewitness, saw no taxi parked behind the police officer’s car at the time Chobert claims to have been there. Official crime scene photos by the police and subsequent photos by Pedro Polakoff, a press photographer, show no evidence of a taxi behind Faulkner’s car. This suggests one of two things: either Chobert never parked his taxi there to begin with, or the police removed it before the crime scene investigators and photographers arrived. If the latter was the case, then the police were guilty of tampering with the crime scene.

It is worth noting that Cynthia White never described Chobert’s taxi as being present in the area when she drew a diagram of the crime scene and, later, when she described it for a police artist. Just as interesting is the fact that no witness claimed to have seen White at the intersection from which she claimed to have witnessed the nearby shooting. Other inconsistencies have become apparent: For one, White’s description of the shooting evolved in each subsequent interview with the detectives. At the first interview, she claimed that Abu-Jamal had fired several shots at Faulkner. Later, she spoke of two shots being fired. By the time of her trial, the details had been modified: she only mentioned one shot.

The eyewitness testimony to the effect that Mumia Abu-Jamal boasted about killing Faulkner while in the hospital ER is also worth subjecting to further scrutiny. The doctors at the hospital stated that Abu-Jamal was in no condition to make statements of that nature. More noteworthy is the fact that Gary Wakshul, the officer who accompanied Abu-Jamal to the hospital, explicitly indicated in his report that Abu-Jamal made no comment.

WHAT LIES AHEAD?

From the foregoing, it is apparent that Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case has been characterized by evidentiary issues. It is no wonder that it has received international attention and taken on symbolic meaning in the eyes of activists globally. In the past two decades, the rhetoric surrounding the death penalty has become less strident. A number of people, previously found guilty of murder, have been proven innocent and released. It is becoming increasingly apparent to the public that the justice system is not infallible. Evidence can be unreliable and investigations can be flawed; as a result, innocent men and women can fall into the cracks of the justice system. If Mumia Abu-Jamal is one of these people, will he get a chance at a fair trial someday?

RESOURCES

http://justice.danielfaulkner.com/transcripts/

http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/951

http://thiscantbehappening.net/node/866

http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/09/20/new-tests-show-key-witnesses-lied-at-abu-jamal-trial/

http://blog.soros.org/2011/12/mumia-abu-jamals-journey-through-the-american-death-penalty-system/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/us/execution-case-dropped-against-convicted-cop-killer.html

http://www.npr.org/2011/12/07/143269288/d-a-dropping-death-penalty-against-mumia-abu-jamal

http://www.prisonradio.org/media/audio/Mumia

This work is licensed to Rose Kahendi under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Teaching through humiliation: tough love or cruelty?

Today a popular East African radio show host received a message from one of her fans, an aspiring writer who was seeking advice about how to get published. The young writer made the mistake of sending the radio show host a message ridden with grammatical errors and typos. How did the radio show host respond? She posted the young writer’s message, complete with her name, age and alma mater on her Facebook wall, with a statement to the effect that nobody would take a self-proclaimed writer seriously if she couldn’t be bothered to write her message properly.

The radio show host had a point about the importance of such details as grammar and spelling in letters of inquiry about jobs and about opportunities for publication. Hiring managers routinely disqualify candidates who send them documents that are full of errors. In their experience, people who don’t pay attention to detail in their formal communication are bound to carry the same casual attitude into the job. This is especially the case in the writing professions, where the correct use of language is necessary for clear communication. It is important for those in the know to convey this information to aspiring professionals as they would otherwise continually sabotage their efforts to find decent jobs and opportunities.

The radio show host was likely thinking along these lines when she set out to show her fan “tough love” on her page. However, she went overboard. Her attempt to shame her fan ended up overshadowing any lessons she might have imparted and probably earned her a huge chunk of ill will.

Now, it is not the role of an entertainer to teach her fans the finer points of English grammar or to connect them to professional opportunities. So the radio show host would have been entirely within her rights to ignore her fan’s letter. However, she did choose to respond, and she did so in her professional capacity. So she should have taken the time to do it properly: she should have sent a private response to her fan, answering her question, and pointing out the flaws in her approach. Then, if she felt inclined to turn it into a teachable moment for her other fans, she should have written a note on the subject without singling out the fan and sharing the specific contents of her letter.

Radio entertainers may not view themselves as journalists, but they do have a public platform, and the capacity to reach and affect hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of listeners with their words. Their profession brings with it great responsibility. More so if they take it upon themselves to inform or educate their fans on matters that fall outside their immediate purview. Belittling their fans for lacking sophistication in professional etiquette is unprofessional. It is also a wasted opportunity to make a meaningful difference.

This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. Please feel free to use my writing for non-commercial purposes and do credit my name, Rose Kahendi, as the writer.