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. 
unity
Pan-Africanism and the challenge of East African Community integration
Issa G Shivji
2010-11-03, Issue 503
© AWAAZAs the East African Community seeks further integration, Issa G. Shivji explores the historical beginnings and vision behind such regional changes from a pan-Africanist perspective. Rather than debate specific forms of ‘economic integration’ or ‘political association’, Shivji seeks to discuss ‘whether we are asking the right questions’.
Integration or federation? Towards political unity for Africa
Regional integration and the East African Federation
Dani W. Nabudere
2010-10-21, Issue 501
cc SigPigRegional integration is an economic project with superimposed political structures, while federation is a political project as part of a strategy for political and economic emancipation, writes Dani W. Nabudere, in an examination of why the two ideas, as currently conceived, are incompatible. So what is the way forward for East Africa?
What Pambazuka News means to the Pan-Africanist in me
Chambi Chachage
2010-10-13, Issue 500
Pambazuka News has fostered debate about the 'whole spectrum of political colouring' and in so doing played a crucial role in turning ideas into pro-African action, writes Chambi Chachage.
8th Pan African Congress needed to redeem movement
Vincent Nuwagaba
2009-07-02, Issue 440
cc xrichxThe Global Pan African Movement is a ’dying institution’, writes Vincent Nuwagaba, and the whole continent and Africans in the diaspora must ‘rededicate their efforts to revive it’. Dismayed by its half-hearted commemoration of the day of the African child, Nuwagaba writes that the problem is that the Uganda-based ‘global’ secretariat ‘has been reduced to a branch and extension of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) and State House’. In order to de-link a mass movement from a partisan movement, argues Nuwagaba, ‘all Africans of goodwill must demand the holding of the 8th Pan African Congress and a shift of the ‘global’ secretariat.’
Pan-Africanism in Mwalimu Nyerere’s thought
Being both king and philosopher
Issa G Shivji
2009-05-07, Issue 431
cc WikimediaOutlining the essential differences between the respective approaches of Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah, Issa G. Shivji discusses the gradualist and radical positions of two pillars of the Pan-Africanist movement. Underlining the notion of an independent African state as a ‘national liberation movement in power’ as being at the very core of the movement, Shivji stresses that genuine African nationalism can only ever be Pan-Africanism. As both a head of state and leading Pan-Africanist intellectual, Nyerere found himself supporting contradictory ideas around contesting the imposition of colonial borders while emphasising the centrality of states' sovereignty, Shivji notes. While admitting that he is without a complete answer to the question of what intellectuals' role will be in the development of a new Pan-Africanism for today, Shivji stresses that the challenge will be to push forward a 'new nationalist insurrection', one which perhaps ultimately recognises African unity as a dream rather than a vision.
Who dropped the baton?
Njonjo Mue
2009-05-07, Issue 431
cc WikimediaKenya is a country of runners, writes Njonjo Mue, but for all its athletic prowess the country has yet to prove medal-worthy in the relay race of building true nationhood. With the baton passed from race leg to race leg, the Kenyan people have seen participation in the race restricted to a select, exclusivist and often brutal few, with many who have sought to champion the right of others to be involved being severely crushed. The finishing line of true nationhood remains a distant dream, with the runners even having dropped the right baton altogether, and if Kenya is not to perish entirely, the race's next leg can only be run by all Kenyans together.
Nyerere, liberation and unity
Message from Issa G. Shivji, Mwalimu Nyerere Professor of Pan-African Studies
Issa G Shivji
2009-04-09, Issue 427
cc WikimediaWith Dar es Salaam on the verge of hosting the Julius Nyerere Intellectual Festival Week from Monday 13 April, Issa G. Shivji, Mwalimu Nyerere Professor of Pan-African Studies at the city's university, offers his reflections on the pan-African struggle. Though Africa has undoubtedly suffered from the neoliberal onslaught of the past two decades, Pan-Africanism as a progressive ideology is now firmly back on the historical agenda, Shivji states, uniting in the process the continent's dual quest for unity and liberation.
Nkrumah at 100: Lessons for African leadership
Yao Graham
2009-04-09, Issue 427
© Africa WithinWhile many African leaders have aspired to inherit Nkrumah’s mantle as the visionary and driver of Pan-Africanism and continental unity, writes Yao Graham, a gaping political leadership vacuum remains at the heart of the continent’s collective expression. From an age when there were a number of outstanding African leaders, among whom Nkrumah was preeminent, Graham argues that the African Union’s election of Gaddafi as its leader is a statement of a collective failure of leadership and underlines the crisis in which the Pan-African project is currently mired at the inter-state level. Where, asks Graham, are the African leaders who see opportunities for change in the current crisis, and who are ‘ready to dare and look beyond guaranteeing the sanctity of aid flows?’
Mediterranean Union or neutered talking shop?
Stephen Marks
2008-08-06, Issue 392
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has repeated his rejection of the ‘Union for the Mediterranean’, launched last month in Paris on the initiative of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Speaking on a visit to Tunis, Gaddafi, - the only leader to stay away of the 44 invited - claimed the project would seperate North Saharan countries from the rest of Africa. "I do not agree to cutting up Africa for hypothetical prospects with Europe" he added, and went on to characterise the Union as a violation of AU resolutions, a threat to Arab unity, and a return to colonialism....
Death Spiral in Zimbabwe: Mediation, violence and the GNU
Grace Kwinjeh
2008-06-19, Issue 382
Rather than deflect and defeat the likelihood of political violence, the construct of a Government of National Unity would formally integrate it into the lifeblood of the Zimbabwean democratic dispensation. For South Africans, this situation recalls the kind of power sharing arrangements that former South African President F W De Klerk had in mind at the start of the 1990s negotiation process, where the share of actual voter support would not determine power arrangements. This proposal was not acceptable in the new South Africa then, and it is not acceptable in the new Zimbabwe now, writes Grace Kwinjeh examining the upcoming Zimbabwe presidential elections rerun.
African Liberation Day: the people must prevail
Horace Campbell
2008-05-22, Issue 374
In this essay, Horace Campbell looks at the importance of Africa Liberation Day, its changing relevances as Africans are betrayed by the architects of first independence and how, through struggle, we can reclaim and fulfill its promise.
Towards African-American Unity and a Black United Front
Nationalities Committee
2008-05-22, Issue 374
Commemorating Malcolm X's Birthday, appraise existing African American leadership and call for a Black united front that can shake the foundation of a border-less neoliberal globalization.
End the Zimbabwe Political Impasse!
Feminist Political Education Project
2008-04-15, Issue 362
We the under-signed Zimbabwean women, in our capacity as THE FEMINIST POLITICAL EDUCATION PROJECT (FePEP), urgently call for an end to the political impasse that our country is in. Over a week after we voted in the harmonized elections, we note with great dismay that the results of the Presidential elections are yet to be released.
Mugabe could be history
Mary Ndlovu
2008-03-24, Issue 356
Mary Ndlovu argues that in spite of the obstacles placed by ZANU-PF, Zimbabwean people must at a minimum strive to vote Mugabe out of power and elect a leadership that will unite Zimbabwe, rebuild the economy and deliver justice and healing as opposed to revenge
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
Refugees and displaced people in Africa
An interview with the special rapporteur on refugees and displaced persons in Africa
2007-11-13, Issue 328
Bahame Tom Mukirya Nyanduga, commissioner responsible for upholding the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ rights talks to Hakima Abbas about Africa’s commitment to protecting refugees and his belief that democratic states that tolerate diversity do not experience the conflict that generates the displacement of their citizens.