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Features
RSS FeedObama’s second inauguration and the new terrain of struggle
Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall
Horace G. Campbell
2013-01-24, Issue 614
cc H EPresident Obama is on a collision course with the social justice forces that elected him. Beneath the soaring rhetoric of his ‘progressive’ inauguration speech lay the reality that after four years in office, the oligarchs are stronger that they were in 2009
The Tutsi contradictions: A response to Jean-Paul Kimonyo
Antoine Roger Lokongo
2013-01-24, Issue 614
cc P KRwanda’s criminal involvement in the wanton violence in eastern DR Congo is neither deniable nor defensible. It is a sad irony that Rwanda now sits in the UN Security Council while aiding and abetting crimes against humanity
In search of independence for African waters
Chika Ezeanya
2013-01-23, Issue 614
cc SThe African Union is at the conclusive stages of fashioning an African cabotage regime that will ensure that only vessels owned by Africans will trade within the continent’s coastal waters
Haiti is open for exploitation
Humanitarian pillage and racism continue
Sokari Ekine
2013-01-23, Issue 614
cc J O BBeneath a duplicitous discourse of humanitarian and development assistance to Haiti, economic exploitation continues in the consolidation of the Free Trade Zone and creation of a mega assembly line in Caracol. Sokari Ekine traces this exploitation to the founding of the world’s first black republic in 1804
Changing value systems: one village at a time
Nidhi Tandon
2013-01-23, Issue 614
cc W LFood production systems in Africa are founded on values centered around incomes and profitability that Nidhi Tandon challenges. Unless and until the over-emphasis on the values that underpin the global market economy is reversed, equality and equity for women is doomed.
Letter to Patrice Emery Lumumba
Ama Biney
2013-01-16, Issue 613
cc R OOn the 52nd anniversary of the vicious assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Ama Biney reflects on both the current state of the DRC and Africa, arguing that the Congo is not only a ‘world problem’ but remains critical to the future unity of Africa due to its resources and geo-strategic location
Patrice Lumumba’s relevance
Ideas for today’s generation of African leaders
Antoine Roger Lokongo
2013-01-16, Issue 613
cc J EDuring the short life of Patrice Lumumba, before he was savagely assassinated, he committed himself to several important ideas and principles that a new generation of Africans must re-visit
UN wants to make war in Congo?
For whom, for what, against whom?
Jean-Paul Kimonyo
2013-01-16, Issue 613
cc R OThe UN in the DRC is stabilizing the predatory Congolese state and part of the failure of the stabilization strategy is due to the insecurity stemming from conflicts between communities revolving around land, citizenship, control of space and the externalization of neighbouring instability
MLK’s legacy and the labour movement
Abayomi Azikiwe
2013-01-16, Issue 613
cc R BFrom the Montgomery bus boycott, the marches on Detroit and Washington to the sanitation strike in Memphis, civil rights and labour worked to break down US apartheid which is integral to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
World Bank racism: deaths and sufferings
Fatuma Mokaba
2013-01-16, Issue 613
cc G SThe group Justice for Blacks indicts the World Bank for its racial injustice against its own black staff as America celebrates Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday and questions whether the new President of the bank will uphold the caste system of discrimination against blacks or seek to walk a different path that genuinely addresses systemic racial discrimination
African Americans at the World Bank
Beneath the racial underneath
Phyllis Muhammad and Adrienne Smith
2013-01-16, Issue 613
cc S NThe birthday of Dr Martin Luther King reminds the world that African Americans suffered for centuries under slavery and during the Jim Crow era of legalized segregation. Yet the World Bank continues to target them to this day
Zuma and Zulu nationalism: A response to Gumede
Gary K. Busch
2013-01-16, Issue 613
cc J GA long memory is necessary in untangling the political relationships among the Zulus as well as the historic conflict between the ANC and Inkatha, which Gary Busch assesses in his rejoinder to William Gumede
Haiti: the earthquake, cholera and Hurricane Sandy
Empty promises of the West and designs of capitalist plunder
Ama Biney
2013-01-10, Issue 612
cc SMFollowing the 7.0 earthquake that annihilated Port-au-Prince and killed thousands of Haitians in January 2010, Ama Biney reviews socio-economic and political developments in the country and argues that the radical Fanmi Lavalas party still resonates with the Haitian majority
The debt owed to Haiti
Nia Imara
2013-01-10, Issue 612
cc B BThree years after the unprecedented earthquake in Haiti that extinguished at least 300,000 lives and upended millions more, the world is asking the same questions that were posed six months, one year, and two years after January 12, 2010
US issues Haiti travel warning: How dare they!
Malaika Kambon
2013-01-09, Issue 612
cc F FIn the wake of the Obama administration’s gaffe in their attempt to replace the bloodied hands of Hilary Rodham Clinton with the bloodied hands of Susan Rice, comes now another historic and cruel irony
What’s at stake in the Central African Republic?
Neo-Colonial intrigue, minerals, militarism and the struggle for sovereignty and unity
Abayomi Azikiwe
2013-01-09, Issue 612
cc P BAfrican states must resolve the conflict inside the Central African Republic in order to avoid further French and US military involvement argues Abayomi Azikiwe
The ultimate logic of a society built on mass murder
Glen Ford
2013-01-09, Issue 612
cc N TWhite America lacks the capacity for self-examination. It cannot grasp the simple truth, that a culture that celebrates the annihilation of whole peoples, casually and without guilt or introspection, is devoid of human values at its very core
Did bloody hands, not black womanhood, sink Susan Rice nomination?
Bruce A. Dixon
2013-01-09, Issue 612
cc MSNBCDid Susan Rice step down on her own or did she do so at the insistence of the White House? Did Republican opposition doom her nomination, or was the Obama administration too afraid to have such a bare knuckled champion of disaster capitalism and African dictators as Secretary of State?
Neo-liberal thinking and the problem of politicised ethnicity in Africa
Killian Ngala
2013-01-09, Issue 612
cc MXIn insisting on referring to Africa's ethnic groups as 'tribes' and publishing the idea that the continent's woes have their origins in the tribalism of its leadership and its peoples, we collaborate in a degrading and demeaning description of Africans, argues Killian Ngala
Hundreds of indigenous women and girls murdered in Canada
Farooque Chowdhury
2013-01-10, Issue 612
cc ALADespite their endless preaching about human rights to the global South, the so-called developed democracies are themselves blighted by serious violations which they have done little to address
South Africa: a country at odds?
Social discontent and the ANC leadership
Thabani Mdlongwa, Azwifaneli Managa, Lwazi Apleni and Bertha Chiroro
2012-12-20, Issue 611
cc G VThe just concluded ANC conference at which Jacob Zuma was re-elected party president came against the backdrop of growing violent discontent among ordinary people who are dissatisfied with government performance.
Zuma and Zulu nationalism
William Gumede
2012-12-19, Issue 611
cc J GZuma has skillfully used Zulu or African ‘traditions’ to cover-up poor personal choices, indiscretions and wrong behavior, and portrayed those who oppose such poor behavior of being opposed to African ‘traditions’ or ‘culture,’ argues William Gumede.
Politics, profits and policing after Marikana
Patrick Bond
2012-12-20, Issue 611
cc M MAs the official South African judicial investigating commission into the Marikana Massacre draws to a close in 2012, with many weeks of testimony in 2013 still ahead, what did the SA Police Service (SAPS) learn from their behaviour?
Good-enough racial equality at World Bank
Adrienne Smith
2012-12-19, Issue 611
cc Y BThe effort to abolish racial discrimination within the World Bank largely depends on the whims of its president and his perception of what is good enough for blacks. Adrienne Smith argues that after more than three decades of pledges and reaffirmed promises to end discrimination the Bank’s reforms have failed
Africa: the next twenty years
J. Paul Martin
2012-12-19, Issue 611
cc R FWhat can Africa anticipate over the next twenty years? More of the same? If it is not to be more of the same, what economic and political processes need to change? J. Paul Martin looks into Africa’s future and addresses these crucial questions.
Electoral politics and transition in Kenya
The 2013 general elections as a tipping point
Antony Otieno Ong’ayo
2012-12-19, Issue 611
cc J NWith elections in March 2013 Antony Otieno Ong’ayo reflects on how ethnicity has become politicised in Kenya’s past violent elections and argues that the forthcoming election is a bridge between stagnation and a forward leap towards a middle-income country
Rule Britannia: empire on trial
Katie Engelhart
2012-12-19, Issue 611
cc BBCAn attempt to twist posterity and the archival record for future generations has been exposed as a consequence of a British court ruling in a case by Kenyan freedom fighters
History, imperialism and endangered Africans
Sankara Kamara
2012-12-19, Issue 611
cc S NWhilst the international community celebrates the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 2012, Sankara Kamara reflects on the dehumanization and outright denial of human rights for Africans through the experiences of enslavement and colonisation
Ethiopia and Kenya have taken over Somalia
Mohamud M Uluso
2012-12-20, Issue 611
cc Y AThe recent Memorandum of Understanding delegitimizes the federal government and pre-empts its sovereign leadership role in the internal and external affairs of Somalia
Will US stand by the side of brave Africans?
Alemayehu G Mariam
2012-12-20, Issue 611
cc G VIs the US standing with brave Africans or in bed with Africa’s strongmen? Now, at the cusp of the beginning of President Obama’s second term, there are some tough questions about his promises to Africa