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. 
violence
Endemic violence in postcolonial Namibia
Shaun R. Whittaker
2011-08-03, Issue 543
cc C M‘Colonialism signified nothing less than the collective traumatising of the Namibian people who must carry the heavy burden of the consequences for generations,’ writes Shaun R. Whittaker.
If they come for you, who will speak out?
Jane Duncan
2011-07-20, Issue 540
© abahlali.orgAs part of a broad climate of political intolerance, incidents of torture of both activists and criminals in South Africa appear to be on a disturbing rise, writes Jane Duncan.
Cry woman cry, cry beloved Zimbabwe!
Grace Kwinjeh
2011-07-07, Issue 538
cc V VWhen Zimbabwe’s political temperature rises, women and children are the most vulnerable, writes Grace Kwinjeh.
Behind the boycott
Why South Africa's academic boycott of Ben Gurion University took hold
2011-06-30, Issue 537
cc S LOn 23 March, the University of Johannesburg in South Africa cut all ties with Ben Gurion University in the Negev in Israel. Salim Vally is a senior researcher at the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation, lecturer at the Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg and the coordinator of the Education Rights Project. While he was in Montreal in May 2011, giving a lecture at McGill University in Montreal entitled Reading Edward Said in South Africa, he spoke with Lillian Boctor regarding the University of Johannesburg’s decision to sever links with Ben Gurion University, the international boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israeli apartheid within the South African context, academic freedom and the role of academics and science in society. Listen to the interview online here.
Boko Haram: Nigeria’s new national crisis?
Sokari Ekine
2011-06-23, Issue 536
cc Amnesty Intl.Nigeria’s Boko Haram bombings, militants in the Niger Delta, attitudes towards homosexuality in Ghana, the censorship of internet pornography in Tunisia and a Canadian couple’s decision not to gender their child all feature in this week’s review of African blogs, compiled by Sokari Ekine.
My love
For David Kato and Eudy Simelane
Musa Okwonga
2011-05-19, Issue 530
Musa Okwonga performed his poem 'My love' at a memorial service for murdered Ugandan LGBTI activist David Kato on May 18. Originally written for Eudy Simelane, the South African lesbian footballer who was gang-raped and murdered, the poem also features in the forthcoming 'African Sexualities: A reader', published by Pambazuka Press. Watch the animated version of 'My love' here.
The gods of Africa are not asleep after all
Cameron Duodu
2011-05-19, Issue 530
cc D PWith the IMF’s (International Monetary Fund) Dominique Strauss-Kahn in hot water over accusations of sexual assault in a New York hotel, Cameron Duodu revisits the effects of the fund’s structural adjustment programme in his home country of Ghana.
Nigeria: Dealing with Boko Haram's violence
Cameron Duodu
2011-05-12, Issue 529
cc J WIn the wake of President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election in Nigeria, the government is faced with the tricky task of how to diffuse the violent northern Boko Haram sect, writes Cameron Duodu.
'Walk to work' and lessons of Soweto and Tahrir Square
Mahmood Mamdani
2011-05-05, Issue 527
cc A M FIn this presentation to the Rotary International District Conference in Munyonyo, Mahmood Mamdani links events in Tahrir Square to the 1976 Soweto uprisings in South Africa. This is a the full text of the speech.
Orientalising the Egyptian uprising
Rabab El-Mahdi
2011-05-05, Issue 527
cc S VThe narrative of the Egyptian revolution is being distorted by old, Western ways of seeing the Arab world. Rabab El-Mahdi suggests a different narrative.
Nigeria: The curse of post-election violence continues
Dibussi Tande
2011-04-21, Issue 526
© IRIN‘In reality, the targets of the uprising are the so-called leaders in the North – the political, military and business elite – as well the traditional institutions that have held the region back and truncated any attempt to educate the people and free them from the yolk of illiteracy and poverty.’ Dibussi Tande puts Nigeria’s post-election violence in context, with views from the African blogosphere.
South Africa: On the murder of Andries Tatane
Richard Pithouse
2011-04-21, Issue 526
© Abahlali.org
© Abahlali.org
© Abahlali.orgIf decisive action is not taken to persuade South Africa’s police that their job is to facilitate rather than repress the right to protest, we may have to add more names to those of Solomon Madonsela, murdered by the police in Ermelo in February, and Andries Tatane, murdered by the police in Ficksburg last week, writes Richard Pithouse.
South Africa: Police brutality and service delivery protests
Mphutlane wa Bofelo
2011-04-21, Issue 526
© Abahlali.orgThe arrest of six policemen for last week’s murder of protestor Andries Tatane is ‘a quick ploy to take attention away from the systemic factors that inform police brutality’, says Mphutlane wa Bofelo. Shouldn’t the country’s police force protect the interests of communities rather than criminalising service delivery protests?
Protect our children: Stopping the sexual abuse of children
Patricia Daley
2011-04-20, Issue 526
cc L WJust as we must condemn homophobia and support ‘the rights of consenting individuals to privacy in their sexual relations’, we must also grant far greater attention to the sexual abuse of children, argues Patricia Daley.
The death of David Kato
LGBTI Ugandans mourn loss and fear for own lives
Sokari Ekine
2011-02-01, Issue 515
© WikipediaResponses to the brutal murder of Ugandan LGBTI activist David Kato and Egypt’s inspiring revolution are the key topics covered in this week’s round-up of the African blogosphere, compiled by Sokari Ekine.
The Uprising of Hangberg
Rustum Kozain
2010-12-01, Issue 508
cc C RSouth African poet and writer Rustum Kozain reviews ‘The Uprising of Hangberg’, Dylan Valley and Aryan Kaganof's portrayal of two days of violence in Cape Town. Watch a clip from the documentary and read a commentary from filmmaker Dylan Valley. This article first appeared on the website of The Africa Report.
Will Zimbabwe again regress?
Patrick Bond
2010-11-18, Issue 505
cc TwoWings‘What may seem to some a progressive and brave government is upon closer examination a tyranny’, which despite ‘rhetoric about land redistribution, is ultimately very hostile to its own society’s poor and working people, women, youth, elderly and ill,’ writes Patrick Bond.
Held to ransom: The future of history
Jonathan Beale
2010-11-18, Issue 505
cc Scott LeibrandFollowing his recent kidnapping in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Jonathan Beale recounts his troubling experience.
On violence
Richard Pithouse
2010-10-28, Issue 502
© abahlali.orgWe live in a violent society, Richard Pithouse writes, but this very fear of violence is used to justify other forms of violence such as racism, xenophobia and fear of the poor. ‘… the presence of self-organised poor people in civil society is often received as a threat by all kinds of constituencies, including some of those that, be they liberal or radical, assume a right to enlighten and lead poor people from above,’ Pithouse argues.
Justice for Thomas Sankara, justice for Africa
Mariam Sankara
2010-10-21, Issue 501
cc SputniktiltIn a message commemorating the death of Thomas Sankara on 15 October 1987, Mariam Sankara calls on the people to continue the struggle not only for justice for Thomas Sankara, but also for Africa.
Birtukan Unbound!
An October to Remember
Alemayehu G. Mariam
2010-10-14, Issue 500
© freebirtukan.orgAlemayehu Mariam celebrates the release of Ethiopian judge and rights campaigner Birtukan Mideksa.
Nigeria’ s Golden Jubilee: Blood, tears and recrimination
Dibussi Tande
2010-10-14, Issue 500
cc N CBomb blasts killed 12 and injured 8 people in Abuja during Nigeria’s 50th anniversary celebrations on 1 October. Dibussi Tande finds the country’s bloggers ‘torn between sadness for the innocent victims, anger at the perpetrators, and outrage at the federal government for its inept handling of events before and after the blast.’
Kenya’s constitutional renewal: A post-referendum analysis
Tim Murithi
2010-09-29, Issue 498
cc A GOn 27 August 2010, President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya promulgated the country’s new Constitution. This was the culmination of a journey that begun over two decades ago when the first attempt was made to reform the constitutional order that Kenya had inherited from Britain, its former colonial power, in 1963. The draft Constitution was approved in a poll that took place on 4 August 2010, by 68 per cent of those who voted. Tim Murithi outlines what is at stake in the implementation phase.
Munir’s story: 28 years after the massacre at Sabra-Shatila
Franklin Lamb
2010-09-23, Issue 497
cc WikimediaDuring the 1982 Lebanon War with Israel, a massacre was carried out on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut, between 16 and 18 September. Although numerous human rights groups argue that it was a war crime and genocide, the event has not been investigated by international officials. Franklin Lamb tells the story of Munir, who was 11 years old at the time of the massacre, and who saw his family killed or disappear in its aftermath.
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.’
Kenya's civil society needs a new vision
Zaya Yeebo
2009-07-02, Issue 440
cc MothersFightingForOthersWhile acknowledging that Kenya's Grand Coalition Government (GCG) has given rise to much debate and commentary, Zaya Yeebo argues that civil society's ability to influence change without violence is often ignored. Though other African countries see their people's voices expressed through groups such as trade unions and youth organisations, Kenyans' voices are muted by the noisy contestations of the country's political elites. The tendency of the last few years to 'franchise' the role of civil society out to international NGOs must be challenged, Yeebo contends, and Kenyans must look to the recent examples provided by Ghana, Sierra Leone and South Africa of how people power can bring about change. But while Kenyan civil society can draw inspiration and even support from outside, it alone must work to stoke popular pressure if effective and lasting political reform is to be achieved, Yeebo concludes.
Nigeria: Mass-based student unionism could counterweight cultism
Kola Ibrahim & Ayo Ademiluyi
2009-07-02, Issue 440
cc loukreuCampus cults have ‘entrenched their diabolical tentacles’ across Nigeria’s institutions of tertiary education, write Kola Ibrahim and Ayo Ademiluyi, despite a mass movement against them in 1999 after five students were killed at Obafemi Awolowo University. Cults are to blame not only for the recent killing of twenty people in Edo State, but also for incidences of robbery, intimidation of students and the community and rape in a number of universities. Poor economic prospects make cultism an attractive option for youths, but there are also reports of officials allegedly using cults to protect their economic and political interests by suppressing student union activists, write Ibrahim and Ademiluyi. Noting that affected institutions lack a ‘viable, radical, independent and issue-based students' movement’, they suggest that this is what is needed to tackle the ‘monster of cultism’.
The African Group: Friend or foe of Africa's aspirations?
Korir Sing’Oei
2009-07-02, Issue 440
cc United Nations PhotoUnsurprised by the African Group's defence of Kenya at the UN, Korir Sing’Oei considers whether the group's actions should historically be regarded as positive or negative for the African continent it represents. Just as it has often stood in the way of some of the more radical action proposed against human rights violators, the group also has the dubious distinction of regularly championing the right of autocratic regimes in Africa to 'territorial integrity', Sing’Oei notes. In marked contrast however, the African Group has also proven a key advocate for international appreciation of the continent's economic difficulties. Concluding that the African Group should be regarded more as a champion of Africa's development rather than human rights, Sing’Oei cautions that such an approach should not be permitted to jeopardise the creation of a culture of accountability in governance.
Kenya: Government commitment necessary for police reforms
Louise Edwards
2009-07-02, Issue 440
cc DEMOSHThe Kenyan government has conceded that the country has a problem with the widespread and systematic use of extrajudicial killings by the Kenya Police Force, as highlighted in a report by UN special rapporteur Professor Phillip Alston, writes Louise Edwards. Now, however, the focus must shift to action to be taken to address the problems with policing the report raises, says Edwards. ‘Police reform is a daunting and long-term process,’ Edward notes, that ‘requires substantial law reform, a radical shift in policing culture from one of impunity to accountability and the restoration of trust between police and the community.’ But, Edwards cautions, ‘None of these urgent reforms will happen in Kenya without the political and financial commitment of the government.’
The world financial meltdown: What now for African women?
Hilary N. Ervin & Caroline Muthoni Muriithi
2009-06-25, Issue 439
cc hdptcarAs the global economic crisis takes its toll on Africa’s fiscal revenues and household incomes, Hilary N. Ervin & Caroline Muthoni Muriithi fear that the continent’s achievements in human rights and development may be reversed, worsening the condition of women already struggling against an ‘entrenched patriarchy’. Despite embracing commitments to gender equity on paper, Ervin and Muriithi say many countries lack the funding and resources to implement policies and legislation. Programmes focused on women, largely funded by multi-lateral donors, are likely to decline as aid dries up the authors warn, while at a domestic level many households will prioritise the education and welfare of sons over daughters, with ‘long-term consequences for overall development’. Calling for the ratification and implementation of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, Ervin and Muriithi suggest that ‘investment in women's livelihoods, particularly in African economies,’ should be ‘a central focus of governments’ economic recovery policies’.
