Pambazuka News is produced by a pan-African community of some 2,600 citizens and organisations - academics, policy makers, social activists, women's organisations, civil society organisations, writers, artists, poets, bloggers, and commentators who together produce insightful, sharp and thoughtful analyses and make it one of the largest and most innovative and influential web forums for social justice in Africa. 
Pan-African Postcard
RSS FeedGreed, pauperisation, and the free market
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
2008-10-15, Issue 402
In light of the current global economic downturn and bailout plan for the rich, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem examines the hypocrisy and profound limitations of a neoliberal market orthodoxy ostensibly hostile to state intervention yet increasingly reliant on its restorative role. Berating the continued failure of Western institutions to provide adequate conditions and support for African development, the author urges African governments to turn their backs on foreign ‘aid’ and instead concentrate on their own course of action.
A world without conscience
Ochieng M. Khairallah
2008-10-09, Issue 401
Lamenting the persistence of widespread social and economic inequalities, Ochieng M. Khairallah asks whether the continued experiences of marginalisation and disenfranchisement suffered by the global poor belie a world without conscience. In light of...
Go figure: Do the poor count?
Adam W. Parsons
2008-10-02, Issue 399
With the World Bank’s recent recalculations on the number of global poor going unnoticed within the majority of mainstream media channels, Adam W. Parsons laments the absence of external scrutiny of the Bretton Woods institutions. The author illustra...
Twenty things we should know about the US and the world
A social justice quiz
Bill Quigley
2008-09-22, Issue 397
How many of the following 20 social justice questions can you answer...correctly? Social justice, as defined by John Rawls, respects basic individual liberty and economic improvement. But social justice also insists that liberty, opportunity, inco...
The market has spoken!
Zimbabwe, South Africa and Nigeria
Patrick Bond
2008-09-18, Issue 396
The past week has been a wild roller-coaster ride down the troughs of capitalism and up the peaks of radical social activism. Glancing around the world from those peaks, we can see quite a way further than usual....
Kenya and Zimbabwe: No size fits both
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
2008-09-11, Issue 395
There are indications that after so many false starts, grand standing, braggadocio and unrealistic demands, both sides in the Zimbabwe conflict are finally negotiating genuinely and a deal may be reached soon. It will be a tribute to the much criticised President Thabo Mbeki's tenacity but also a final realisation by the hawks on both sides that neither can finish the other without finishing the country....
Ten years after the Nairobi bomb blast
Catherine Cutcher
2008-08-12, Issue 393
It was August 7, 1998. Suicide bombers exploded 700 kilos of TNT in a truck outside of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. The bomb blast ended the lives of 257 people, injured 6,000, and destroyed a fragile peace in a bustling city. At the same time, another explosion rocked the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. A little-known terrorist network named al Qaeda organized the attacks, led by Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden....
African writing: When the dispossessed don't know they are dispossessed
Obi Nwakanma
2008-08-05, Issue 392
Modern African literature was the child of a renaissance. The roots are to be found in the movement of revendication that began from Olaudah Equiano’s 18th century literary activism, to the work done in the Harlem renaissance in the early years of th...
When security considerations violate individual rights
Salma Maoulidi
2008-07-30, Issue 391
I love to travel. I enjoy visiting distant and new places and learning about new cultures. Of late, however, I have developed a dread for travel not because of a latent fear of traveling by air or road, but more so on account of my strong objection to the increasingly degrading treatment travelers, especially from the global south, are subjected to at embassies and in both northern and southern ports....
Whither the fourth estate of government?
Charles Mkula
2008-07-23, Issue 390
Malawi’s media diversity continues to grow and vary especially in radio broadcast, a sharp contrast to the previous trend in the first ten years of multiparty politics where newspaper business mushroomed with down-market tabloid papers like the Democrat, the Chronicle, the Dispatch, the Generation and others making in roads and establishing themselves for critical reading.
They are all beggars now
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
2008-07-16, Issue 389
I was born and brought up in a predominantly Muslim community but the best schools around were fee paying Christian missionary schools. Our parents were ambitious enough for us that they had no hesitation about paying (government Schools were free) to get us into these schools. They were strong enough in their faith to trust that we were there 'for their knowledge not their God.’ And so it was. I can recall only one Muslim pupil converting to Christianity for all the years that the school was run by the Baptist Missionaries.
Zimbabwe: A good place as any to draw the line
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
2008-07-09, Issue 387
There has been a lot of opprobrium directed at African leaders for lacking the political will to put in check if not end Mugabe’s misrule. However I have a different take on the outcome of the recent Sharm El Sheikh Summit of the Heads of State and Government of the African Union, writes Tajudeen Abdul Raheem.
Mugabe and Mubarak deserve each other
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
2008-07-03, Issue 385
So what was responsible for my underwhelming enthusiasm for the Sharm el Sheik Summit? I must admit it has all to do with the leader and country hosting the summit. Independent CSOs, NGO activism and even democratic opposition in Egypt are treated like traitors and intimidated on all fronts by the Mubarak regime. He has been in power for almost 30 years brooking no opposition and tolerating not even the mildest criticism. I am not quite sure how much of NGO/CSO activism one can do when one's local colleagues are not able to fully participate, Tajudeen Abdul Raheem reflects.
Zimbabwe…wait before you…!
Nsingo Fanuel
2008-06-26, Issue 384
The next day mother forced me to wear the ZANU-PF T-Shirt and to attend an everyday compulsory ZANU-PF meeting. When we arrived at the meeting place I heard war veterans boasting that they had just acquired new knobkerries to beat those who had absconded from the previous day's meeting. At first I thought it was a joke, but was shocked to see a young man being dragged in front of everyone, and thereafter being severely beaten… We are told that there is a struggle between Zimbabwe and England but it feels like a struggle between the rich and the poor in Zimbabwe, writes Nsingo Fanuel.
Mugabe should be stopped!
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
2008-06-25, Issue 384
It is so sad that a leader who came as a new Nkrumah is going down as a Mobutu, writes Tajudeen Abdul Raheem about Mugabe. It is a grave understatement to continue to describe him as an embarrassment to Africa. He is a dangerous autocrat who does not care anymore if the whole nation crashes with him. He needs to be stopped and stopped now.
Operating on a risk basis
Salma Maoulidi
2008-06-18, Issue 383
It seems to me that the world over, and more so in our developing nations, that our very existence is built on risk. Women’s ability to bring life into the world is full of risks; the ability of the child to survive past her childhood is surrounded by risks; the ability of the child to obtaining basic schooling is a momentous risk. And the risk of a young girl falling into the poverty trap is greater than her succeeding in life - writes SSalma Maoulidi.
Concerning the safe return of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine
Letter to the government of Brazil
Eusi Kwayana
2008-06-19, Issue 382
It is time, after nine months of uneasy anxiety, that some authority charged in the name of the international community with responsibility for security in Haiti, advise the international community, that is, the international public, of its findings in regard to the scandalous kidnapping or disappearance of Haitian citizen and patriot, Mr. Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine.
Eritrea: A revolution betrayed
Nunu Kidane
2008-06-17, Issue 381
When Eritrea earned independence from Ethiopia in 1991, it was seen by many as a revolutionary moment that would usher in freedom and equality. But more than fifteen years later, the “reality is the liberation-army-turned-government is led by a brutal dictator and his handful cronies. There are no systems of representation or participation in the government. Sadly, those who paid the highest price in the armed struggle, the former fighters men and women are the ones who suffer the most today,” Yet in the midst of it all Nunu Kidane finds hope.
Obama's challenge to Africans
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
2008-06-12, Issue 380
For Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, "Obama’s nomination and his eventual victory should make us reexamine our legal, political, cultural and social attitudes about citizenship and stop using it as a means of exclusion and marginalisation."
A Critical Review of South African Xenophobic Attacks
Kola Ibrahim
2008-06-10, Issue 379
What happens when dreams are deferred and social movements all offer a neo-liberal vision? For Kola Ibrahim, South Africa is the answer.
Obama: US president or world president?
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
2008-06-05, Issue 378
Tajudeen walks us through the skepticism that initially greated the Obama candidacy, the pitfalls of the hubristic Clinton campaign and Obama's strengths but cautions us that Obama will be an American President who happens to be of African origin. He is never going to subordinate America’s interests to ours where they clash in a fundamental way.
Yar Adua: Throw caution to the wind
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
2008-06-03, Issue 377
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem looks at the Yar Adua, the political mileage the stolen election has cost him and argues that the only Yar Adua will win legitimacy is "through public policies that reduce poverty, deliver education, creatre decent jobs for the millions of youth roaming the streets, empower women. bring security to cities, towns and villages and light up all homes, industry and streets of Nigeria."
South Africa's broken road
Mildred K Barya
2008-05-29, Issue 376
In addition to a conflicted identity, Mildred Barya argues that the xenophobic attacks in South Africa and Africa in general can be traced to the Berlin Conference and the partitioning of Africa.
Racialized complexes of xenophobia
Paul T Zeleza
2008-05-27, Issue 375
Amongst other things, Paul T Zeleza argues that in spite of the xenophobic violence being black on black, there is a "bequest of deeply racialized and internalized superiority and inferiority complexes at work."
Why we must struggle against Xenophobia!
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
2008-05-22, Issue 374
In this Africa Liberation Day Postcard, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem warns that "if care is not taken to take decisive action to stop the violence against other Africans and challenge the widespread xenophobia, South African businesses and other interests across Africa will soon become legitimate targets, not just for demonstrations, but for campaigns of boycott and who knows, even targets for sabotage and revenge attacks across this continent."
Erosion of freedom: From Haiti to South Africa
Jacques Depelchin
2008-05-22, Issue 373
Jacques Depelchin reflects on the ties that bind Haiti to South Africa and asks: "In a country where the lethal combination of racism and competition has left a legacy of gross injustice, is it too late to suggest that those who were trampled upon should be listened to with the greatest care possible?"
Unhappy Highways: Economic growth, technology and alienation
John Samuel
2008-03-19, Issue 372
John Samuel cautions Africa that technology should not come at the expense of Africa's "a shared sense of community, mutual support, trust and a culture of collective approach."
Don't criminalise African Languages
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
2008-05-15, Issue 371
Tajudeen rages against the attempts to criminalise African language media. The state should be making laws to protest society and be willing to sanction those who use the media to exacerbate ethnic tensions rather than seeking to ban them.
Kenyan media - we too are to blame
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
2008-05-13, Issue 370
Tajudeen Abdul Raheem asks the question: Do we expect too much from the media when we ourselves are failing African societies?
Airbus A330-300 to Malabo: Get your ticket to the heart of darkness
Agustín Velloso
2008-04-15, Issue 369
Agustin Velloso advices those interested in plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea "to choose one's travel companions for a coup d'état with care."
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