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. 
transformation
Steve Biko's paradise lost
Andile Mngxitama, Amanda Alexander and Nigel C Gibson
2008-09-10, Issue 395
The following is taken from the introduction to Biko Lives! Contesting the Legacies of Steve Biko is edited by Andile Mngxitama, Amanda Alexander and Nigel C Gibson and published by Palgrave Macmillan....
European Development Fund: The illusion of assistance
Mouhamet Lamine Ndiaye
2008-09-03, Issue 394
Equitable and sustainable structural transformation of African economies is a prerequisite for improving livelihoods across the continent. Despite decades of reform often led under structural adjustment programmes, and a very high level of openness, ...
Obama and the continent of Africa
Achille Mbembe
2008-08-11, Issue 393
Barack Obama might become the next United States president. Because of his African roots, this possibility has been met with euphoria and enthusiasm in the continent. In some instances, African expectations are the expression of racial pride. In others, they are simply irrational, unrealistic and misguided....
Statement on the ICC
Communist Party of Sudan
2008-07-30, Issue 391
Statement of the Communist Party of Sudan The inclusion of the name of the President of the Republic of the Sudan among those wanted for justice by the International Criminal Court, increases the complications engulfing the crisis prevailing in th...
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.
Barack Obama and the New Afrikan “National Question”
Kali Akuno
2008-06-12, Issue 380
Kali Akuno looks at the limits and contradictions of Obama and argues that the progressives have to use a "combined “outside-inside” strategy that seeks to advance a coherent set of principle demands and push him and the forces he has mobilized sharply to the left.
The Paris Declaration and aid effectiveness
Yash Tandon
2008-06-10, Issue 379
The Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness will be held this September in Accra. But is aid effectiveness a mirage? Yash Tandon dissects the Paris Declaration in relation to aid effectiveness and reaches the conclusion that "under the pretext of making aid more effective, the aid effectiveness project is a form of collective colonialism by Northern donors of those Southern countries that, through weakness, vulnerability or psychological dependency, allow themselves to be subjected to it at the Accra conference in September." But all is not lost and he also offers a way out.
Peace with sexual violence is still war!
Stephen Lewis
2008-06-05, Issue 378
When my co-Director of AIDS-Free World, Paula Donovan, visited in November, and observed that the war being waged against women “may well be the most savage display of misogyny ever orchestrated in a conflict zone”, she was right. Terrible, unspeakable things have been done to the women of DR Congo, writes Stephen Lewis. It isn’t enough to stop the shooting when the raping continues apace. The only worthwhile armistice restores peace for the entire population, male and female. There can be no satisfaction in claiming a truce or a peace treaty which is soaked in the carnage of the women of the land. If all the peacekeepers were women, and the men of a country were under pervasive sexual assault, do you think the women would simply observe the carnage?
Challenges of democratic transition in Africa
Femi Falana
2008-05-15, Issue 371
The challenges confronting Africa's democratic experiments are many and complex and include entrenching constitutionalism and the reconstruction of the postcolonial state, writes Femi Falana. To move Africa forward, emerging democratic governments would have to confront a legacy of poverty, illiteracy, militarization, and underdevelopment produced by incompetent or corrupt governments.
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.
Kenya enters the Liminal Period
Steve Ouma Akoth
2008-04-15, Issue 365
Steve Ouma argues that for the promised social transformation in Kenya to take root, "political class and other parochial interests" have to give way to consensus and truth telling.
A response to the Feminist Political Education Project
Grace Kwinjeh
2008-04-17, Issue 363
I was just sent a copy of this statement by the Feminist Political Education Project and must admit to being more than a little bewildered and shocked by what is suggested in light of recent events in Zimbabwe, by sisters whom I know very well – who are part of the Feminist Political Education Project.
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
Makoni hijacking struggle
Madhuku Lovemore
2008-03-10, Issue 352
Madhuku Lovemore argues that Simba Makoni is hijacking the Zimbabwean struggle and will only entrench ZANU-PF type politics and suggests that no matter how flawed, Tsvangirai represents the best chance for change.
Liberia Women: Their Issues and Challenge
Una Kumba Thompson
2008-03-06, Issue 351
Una Kumba Thompson talks about the special challenges facing Liberian women and calls for greater solidarity amongst African women
It is the Kenyan people who have lost the election
Firoze Manji
2008-01-03, Issue 334
Kenya is entering a protracted crisis. No one really knows who actually won the presidential elections. Given the overwhelming number of parliamentary seats won by the ODM and the dismissal of some 20 former ministers who lost their seats, it seems likely that the presidential results probably followed suit. But it is no longer really a matter of who won or lost. For one thing is certain: it is the Kenyan people who have lost in these elections.
The routes and possibilities of a South - South subversive globalization: Africa and Brazil
Jacques Depelchin
2007-12-11, Issue 332
Jacques Depelchin reflects on the growing economic, political and cultural relationship between Brazil and the Africa and urges for a solidarity from below that is cognizant of black revolutionary history.
The delusions of power: Beauty and the beast
John Samuel
2007-10-31, Issue 326
Everything small is beautiful these days. NGOs, busy with micro finance and micro politics for the poor, are small, beautiful -- and powerless. Meanwhile, the beast of markets and States can continue to dominate macro economics and politics. This neat division into micro and macro sustains the unjust power relationships that perpetuate impoverishment, inequality and injustice, says John Samuel