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. 
reconciliation
Zimbabwe: Healing, reconciliation and reconstruction
Recent symposium explores way forward
Wazir Mohamed and Esau Mavindidze
2009-11-05, Issue 456
cc WikimediaWazir Mohamed and Esau Mavindidze report on a recent symposium aimed at creating a space for Zimbabweans to discuss the present and future of the country. Bringing together representatives of government, civil society, human rights groups, scholars and Zimbabweans in the diaspora, the symposium – hosted by Syracuse University’s Africa Initiative and the Newhouse School of Public Communications – provided ‘a rare avenue’ to ‘assess the progress, status, challenges and opportunities for lasting peace, healing and reconstruction for the people of Zimbabwe’.
Rwanda's genocide: Justice to spare the powerful?
IBUKA, AVEGA and AERG
2009-06-11, Issue 437
cc D ProfferIn response to a 1 June Human Rights Watch letter calling for the transfer of Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) soldiers to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the umbrella organisation IBUKA expresses concern over the absence of measures to bring Western parties complicit in Rwanda's 1994 tragedy to task. While broadly applauding Human Rights Watch's commitment to justice, IBUKA and its associates AVEGA and AERG take issue with the letter's suggestions that RPF soldiers should be tried in the same manner as genocidaires. Missing from the discussion, IBUKA contends, is the role of Western governments in the genocide, an omission which needs to be swiftly rectified if rich countries are not simply to be immune from international justice.
Darfur, ICC and the new humanitarian order
How the ICC’s “responsibility to protect” is being turned into an assertion of neocolonial domination
Mahmood Mamdani
2008-09-17, Issue 396
On July 14, after much advance publicity and fanfare, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court applied for an arrest warrant for the president of Sudan, Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, on charges that included genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Important questions of fact arise from the application as presented by the prosecutor. But even more important is the light this case sheds on the politics of the “new humanitarian order.”...
Amnesties and the International Criminal Court?
Jegede Ademola Oluborode
2008-09-10, Issue 396
(We) are unable to forgive what (we) cannot punish and (we) are unable to punish what has turned out to be unforgivable - Hannah Arendt [1] INTRODUCTION The granting of amnesty [2] is by no means new in history. Religious testaments, notably th...
Invoking Mandela: How do we make democracy work for the poor?
Fazila Farouk
2008-07-30, Issue 391
It's just been a few weeks since Nelson Mandela was taken off the United States terrorism watch list. No doubt so that they too could join in the celebrations of this living icon, without the embarrassment of hoisting up a revolutionary....
Transitional justice in sexual and gender-based violence
Makau Mutua
2008-07-14, Issue 388
It is now fashionable in academic and activist circles to speak of transitional justice in normative, inflexible terms that suggest a utopian certainty, writes Makau Mutua. Nothing could be further from the truth. At the outset, we need to understand that transitional justice concepts are experimental – good experiments to be sure – but that they do not offer us tested panacea because they are essentially works in progress. This is not meant to diminish the utility of the concepts or to throw cold water on them as a beachhead for recovering societies with a legacy of traumatic conflict. Rather, it is to recognize their limitation so that we do not stampede to the temple only to find it empty of the goddess of truth.
Is the pen mightier than a machete?
Arno Kopecky
2008-07-09, Issue 386
Is the pen mightier than the panga? This was the question confronting Kenya’s literary establishment in the opening days of 2008, as war spread throughout Kenya’s urban centers and across the fertile Rift Valley in the nation’s heartland. As belligerent armies of unemployed youth paraded before news cameras armed with the one weapon all Kenyans have access to, pangas (machetes) once again became the symbol for death and destruction in Africa. Spoken words, it seemed, coming from the podiums of politicians of every stripe, were what helped ignite this chaos in the first place; was it possible that written words from a more thoughtful source might help reverse the spread of violence? Or barring that, could it at least make sense of the chaos and thereby ensure that when peace returned, it stayed?
Double jeopardy of women migrants
Romi Fuller
2008-06-05, Issue 378
Although often overlooked amidst the shocking images and stories emanating from the xenophobic attacks of the last two weeks, there is a gendered face of xenophobia, says Romi Fuller. Foreign women face the double jeopardy of belonging to and being at the intersection of two groups so vulnerable to exploitation, abuse and violence. This something the country must consider as it moves towards healing and responding to the needs of the injured and displaced.
South Africa is all of us
Mukoma Wa Ngugi and Firoze Manji
2008-05-22, Issue 373
The mythologies we have constructed around us are imploding, write Mukoma Wa Ngugi and Firoze Manji looking at the background to the explosion of xenophobia in South Africa. The situation is the culmination of policies that have made the rich richer, and the poor poorer. But "the ruling elite is not South Africa. There are many within South Africa who are in solidarity with those under attack, and are opposed to the conditions that feed xenophobia."
Namibia and Zimbabwe - the second liberation
Henning Melber
2008-05-13, Issue 371
Henning Melber looks at the possibilities for a people-centred opposition and ultimately a true liberation in Namibia and Zimbabwe, after years of misrule by the liberation movements-turned-ruling parties.
Urgent action: Stop forced closure of IDP camps in Kenya
National Internally Displaced Persons Network of Kenya
2008-05-13, Issue 370
The National Internally Displaced Persons Network of Kenya is deeply concerned with recent moves by the Government of Kenya to forcibly close IDP camps across the country in violation of the international Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and basic human decency.
Buying peace in Uganda
Doreen Lwanga
2008-04-15, Issue 364
As Uganda tries to find peace and justice, Doreen Lwanga grapples with the questions: Is there a price that is just too high? Can there be peace without justice?
It is horrifying that there are certain people in favor of buying peace supposedly to convert warlords into civilians, by giving them either monetary or political to lay down their...
African Peer Review Mechanism: Lessons from Kenya
Bronwen Manby
2008-04-15, Issue 362
As the baton of violence heads over to Zimabwe, Bronwen Manby looks at the African Peer Review Mechanism in relation to Kenya, its shortcomings such as lack of follow-up and political teeth and the urgent lessons from its engagement with Kenya
Zimbabwe – who can halt the slide to inevitable violence?
Sam Kebele
2008-04-15, Issue 362
Sam Kabele looks at the fault lines along which violence in Zimbabwe is traveling and calls for solidarity the Zimbabwean people
Tribute to a man of honour: Captain Diagne Mba
François-Xavier Nsanzuwera
2008-04-03, Issue 359
François-Xavier Nsanzuwera reflects about Captain Diagne Mbaye, a true exemplar of Pan-Africanism who dies in Rwanda as he fought against the 1994 genocide
Prospects from a flawed election
New report on Zimbabwe
International Crisis Group
2008-03-20, Issue 356
ICG warns that the international community needs to have contingency plans ready in anticipation of rigged elections in Zimbabwe on 29 March that could precipitate a potentially violent crisis
Forget The Hague: Mugabe must face justice in Zimbabwe
Blessing-Miles Tendi
2008-03-12, Issue 354
Blessing-Miles Tendi argues that If Mugabe is to stand trial for crimes against humanity, he must do so as close as possible to the site of his crimes - Zimbabwe
Human Rights defenders role in promoting just peace and democracy
Ndung’u Wainaina
2008-03-13, Issue 354
Ndung’u Wainaina argues that there has to be an unwavering commitment by African societies to human rights - and that part of that vigilance also means protecting human rights advocates who might be under threat from the state or other actors
On the Lower Congo (Luozi and Nseke Banza) massacres in D R Congo
March 5, 2008
Kodya dia Moyo Study Group
2008-03-11, Issue 352
We, Daughters and Sons from the Kongo assembled in the Kodya dia Moyo Study Group, are hereby denouncing the events which took place in Lower Congo, more precisely, in Luozi and Nseke Banza....
Women speak on the way forward for Kenya
Women’s Coalition
2008-03-03, Issue 351
Kenyan women assert their right to be heard and included in the Kenyan peace process
East African sub-regional women's collective call for peace in Kenya
2008-03-06, Issue 351
The East African sub-regional women's collective calls for a comprehensive peace plan that is cognizant of how violence affects women.
Drama of the popular struggle for democracy in Kenya
Horace Campbell
2008-01-03, Issue 334
This analysis by Horace Campbell argues that the calls for peace and reconciliation by the political and religious leaders will remain hollow until there are efforts to break from the recursive processes of looting, extra judicial killings, rape and violation of women, and general low respect for African lives. The analysis is presented as a drama of three acts.
No justice, no peace!
Onyango Oloo
2008-01-03, Issue 334
Onyango Oloo dissects the "save our country" media blitz ad argues that behind the non-partisanship approach might actually be making a case for a Mwai Kibaki presidency.
Justice for Mau Mau War Veterans
Mukoma Wa Ngugi
2007-10-25, Issue 325
As the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) prepares to sue the British Government for personal injuries sustained by survivors of the Mau Mau war for independence whilst in British detention camps in Kenya, Mukoma Wa Ngugi unravels the Colonial myths of Christianisation and civilization and exposes the reality of torture, murder, slavery, landlessness, dehumanization and internment.