We need some people like Nuhu Ribadu in Zimbabwe. Our health care system is in tatters yet Mugabe gets the best medical treatment. His children are in the best schools. His house could house a thousand homeless. Here’s an interview from Monocle magazine . . . really worth a subscription.

Clean Start

Nigeria’s first anti-corruption chief Nuhu Ribadu was so effective he was sacked and fled the country, fearing for his life. Now he’s back running for president.

When Nuhu Ribadu launched his presidential campaign at the end of last year, he took to the stage clutching a broom. This was a symbol of his pledge to clean up Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and the continent’s biggest oil and gas producer, where vast energy revenue have mostly been diverted into the pockets of the elite.

Ribadu says he is the country’s best chance for reform in an election due on 9 April (Since delayed to 16 April). Yet just one year ago, Ribadu felt unable to set a foot in Nigeria, let alone lead it. As the first head of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, set up in 2003, Ribadu had pursued corrupt politicians, civil servants and the country’s “419″ internet scammers.

But challengers to Nigeria’s “big men” are rarely tolerated for long. He was soon forced to take a year’s leave, suffered death threats and fled to the UK. He only returned home last year after the unexpected death of President Umaru Ya’Adua. He speaks to Monocle about his political ambitions.

Monocle: Nigeria is Africa’s giant, yet it is widely considered to fall short of its potential. What is holding it back?
Nuhu Ribadu: Corruption is at the root of everything. If the money that belongs to the state ends up in a few hands and is used for negative purposes, there will certainly be no money for development. Our presidential fleet has more than 10 aircraft, but the country doesn’t have a single good hospital.

M: How would you reform Nigeria?
NR: I would be an honest leader. This is a very top-down place, where corruption happens simply because leaders are doing it. Second, I will open up the oil industry and follow the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. Third, I will clean up the justice system and police force and create laws to protect whistleblowers.

M: Nigeria’s ruling People’s Democratic Party has won every poll since army rule ended in 1999. Is there any chance for opposition candidates like you?
NR: The PDP has never won a proper election and this year we are taking steps to ensure that you cannot steal elections easily. This is a real chance for the opposition and the country.

M: How should the international community react if the poll is rigged? After the last polls in 2007, they criticised the widespread fraud but accepted the results.
NR: The time has come for the international community to insist that things are done correctly. If the outcome is not to their standards, they should not recognise the winner.

M: How will you run a clean campaign in a political system that relies on corrupt god-fathers and sponsors? Will you probe your own backers?
NR: I’m not a policeman anymore. I’m trying to lead. So I won’t say that, if you donate a car to me, I’ll start probing and checking and saying I must know where you get your money. But that also doesn’t mean that I’ll take big money from anyone who brings it.

M: Do you still fear for your life? What security measures do you take?
NR: It’s not my nature to travel in an armed convoy. I’m not 100 percent safe but neither is anyone who lives in a country like Nigeria. My situation is only a little worse than that of others.

Source: Monocle

At the beginning of 2011 I wrote (a letter) to several people to launch a small personal initiative called The Teabag Project. Zimbabweans, as well as people who have visited Zimbabwe, are in love with many aspects of this country, including our fabulous Tanganda tea. In a personal effort to stave off the growing Facebook empire and the transformation of everything personal into digital, I posted a letter and included a couple of Tanganda teabags to several people asking them to brew a pot, take some time for reflection and write a few words to me.

Words about anything.

Here’s something from The Teabag Project (start yours and share the words!) …

I wanted you to know how happy I was that you sent a real, live letter. With a stamp. Licked by a human. And you licked the envelop. And complete strangers in a post office thousands of miles away touched it. Spoke other languages over it. Yeow….now I have your letter as an artifact of you.

I love writing. Real writing. The written word. I weep for everything we lost when we moved into digital. Gone are the psychologically revealing strokes, contours, tensions and flourishes of hand-written text.

I remember when I moved from Connecticut to California. I was thirteen and I had so many friends back then that I hated to leave. The love was so deep and tangible. The promise of letters and connection truly kept me alive. Literally, kept me alive. Those first few months in California and away from my support system were excruciating. I wrote letters with tiny gifts of nature in them. I survived each day in the hope of receiving in return, a pebble, sand, a bottle cap, flowers from the curb, anything to remind me of home. You could never get such subversive items through the mail these days.

And did we ever really live in a world nuanced enough to be able to embrace the idea that children just might send bulging, odd looking envelopes through the mail because that’s how they knew to throw a lifeline? Despite the sadness at our separation, I think what we expressed was truly ourselves, embodied in the words and the physical expression of our letters. I felt the words as agents of feelings and energies that just don’t travel through cyber space. I feel a better knowing of someone from a letter as compared to a email.  Ink on paper practically has a voice compared to the flat world of email transmission.

Daniel Maposa, Director of Savanna Arts Trust, spoke to me about his work in protest art in Zimbabwe. Click here to listen and read more . . .

Have you faced any political resistance to your work?
Quite a lot, especially during our formative years. We had artists who were arrested in 2007 & 2008 and some were beaten up. We then devised strategies of going around these problems. That is when we said communities should also be able to produce their own work; they should talk to their own issues, instead of us using a top-down approach. We have had events that were banned but we have always found a way out of this. If communities are doing it, it is difficult to ban because it is a movement from that particular community.

However carved up
or pared down we get,
we keep on making
the best of it as though
it doesn’t matter that
our acre’s down to
a square foot. As
though our garden
could be one bean
and we’d rejoice if
it flourishes, as
though one bean
could nourish us.

KAY RYAN, “The Best of It”

Would you like a be.Inspired newspaper filled with interesting and amusing examples of activism and defiance from around the world? Please email your name and postal address to products [at] kubatana [dot] net with Inspiration in the subject line. You won’t be disappointed. As always we would appreciate it if you share your copy with friends.

Famous

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men,
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

Naomi Shihab Nye