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. 
xenophobia
Breaking Borders: Extraordinary stories of migrants
Deborah Walter
2011-05-25, Issue 531
© CMFDLaunched on Africa Day (25 May), a new five-part series of radio documentaries chronicling the lives, challenges, dreams and positive contributions of migrants living in South Africa is hitting the airwaves. In ‘Breaking Borders’, five migrants tell their stories of where they came from, what life is like for them in their new home and what their goals are for the future. Keep on reading to find out more and listen to the documentaries online.
ANC Youth League and economic transformation of South Africa
Sehlare Makgetlaneng
2011-05-19, Issue 530
cc A SSouth Africa continues to be the most unequal social formation in the world. Sehlare Makgetlaneng reviews proposals by the African National Congress Youth League to radically overhaul the economic structure of the country.
Xenophobia déjà vu and human rights in South Africa
Tafadzwa Thelma Madondo
2009-10-07, Issue 451
cc JaysenIn this week's Pambazuka News, Tafadzwa Thelma Madondo writes about last year's xenophobic attacks in South Africa and their dramatic consequences for foreign women and children. Madondo argues that the government did not do enough to protect the most vulnerable to violence and that more has to be done to guarantee everyone’s safety in South Africa in the future.
Resistance from the other South Africa
Neha Nimmagudda
2008-07-17, Issue 389
“Leaders are meant to lead and to be led [by those who elected them]” - Lindela Figlan, Abahlali baseMjondolo movement Fourteen years since the transition to democracy, leadership in South Africa is in a state of flux—and South Africans know a thing or two about leaders. For every Mandela, after all, there is an Mbeki. In his seven years of presidency, Mbeki has mistaken denialism for leadership and appeasement for diplomacy. The liberation victors in the ANC have tied up the ruling party in its own historical mythologizing, determined to hold its grasp on the state. Now, for every Mbeki, there is the possibility of a Zuma.
Mandela as South Africa's metaphor
Andile Mngxitama
2008-07-16, Issue 389
Mandela is, in some ways the perfect embodiment of post colonial Africa, a continent blessed with so many possibilities but consistently producing so much disappointment. The African dream of liberation has become a long nightmare. As Mandela turns ...
Xenophobia is a global phenomenon
Chengiah Rogers Ragaven
2008-07-17, Issue 389
Xenophobia, refugees and immigration politics in their own right have negative connotations when examined through the lens of universal values, moral truths or scriptural teachings which form the basis of our humanitarian civilization, but when translated and practiced through the lens of racism, religious chauvinism, cultural and ethnic ‘otherness,’ the consequence can be horrendous and catastrophic.
African writing in our time
Mukoma Wa Ngugi
2008-07-09, Issue 386
Each generation of writers is confounded by the simple and clichéd paradox – the more the world changes the more it remains the same. The imagination wants to be freed from the hold of the past, and yet it finds that the present and the material worlds are indelibly tied to that past. I believe it is to this tension that James Baldwin was speaking when he wrote that a writer cannot write outside his or her times.
Shattered Myths: The xenophobic violence in South Africa
Nathan Geffen
2008-07-03, Issue 385
On Thursday 22 May, Cape Town changed forever. The xenophobic violence that started 1,200 kilometres away in Gauteng spread to Du Noon township. On Friday the TAC offices began to get reports of violence on trains and Somali shops being looted. The details were scanty, but by Friday evening the consequences became visible even in the affluent city centre. About 150 people sought refuge outside Caledon Square, the city's main police station. Hundreds more gathered at the central train station so they could catch a train to Johannesburg in the morning and then leave the country.
South Africa: We are not like them
Andile Mngxitama
2008-07-03, Issue 385
The sms’s came fast and furious. As furious as the fiery images we were subjected to by our television and our daily newspapers. I dreaded opening a newspaper for days - afraid of being confronted by yet another grisly product of the negrophobic xenophobic violence, which by the end of week three had claimed the lives of about one hundred people and displaced about 100 000, according to some estimates. The mind spins out of its axis, out of the normal.
As the Alexander Township burnt, I was reading text messages from my cappuccino-loving Tito Mboweni-fearing middle class friends.
Is this integration?
Azad Essa
2008-07-03, Issue 385
The barbaric acts of violence against foreign African nationals in South Africa over the past month appears to have drawn to a close. However, thousands remain displaced and face the daunting task of putting their lives back together. Government indecisiveness, continuing xenophobic sentiment and the bitter cold of winter remain sizeable stumbling blocks in advancing the process of their reintegration into South African society. Durban suffered mainly reverberations of the mass violence emanating from Gauteng, but reports of harassment, poor living conditions for displaced refugees and growing fear amongst immigrant communities continue to filter in. What are the underlining issues and are they new? More importantly, how do we move forward? Azad Essa speaks to Pierre Matate, Deputy Chairperson of the KZN Refugee Council, to find out more.
Zimbabwe: Memo to African Leaders
African civil societies
2008-06-23, Issue 383
Although SADC must be commended for its attempts so far to resolve the crisis in Zimbabwe, its effort has not been repaid. The ruling party is effectively refusing to subject itself to a democratic contest, and waging a violent conflict against its citizens, aggravating a humanitarian crisis. As such it has lost legitimacy, triggering a necessary shift in Africa’s stance. Under the Constitutive Act of the African Union, member states are enjoined to “promote and protect human and peoples’ rights in accordance with the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights” and the African Union has an obligation “to intervene in a Member State pursuant to a decision of the Assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.” There is extensive documentation in Zimbabwe today of torture and killing of named individuals by agents of the ruling party and government who have been described and/or identified. African Union engagement, particularly by the Peace and Security Council, is fully mandated by conditions on the ground and is urgently needed.
The politics of fear and the fear of politics
Michael Neocosmos
2008-06-12, Issue 380
Reflecting on the causes of the recent xenophobic pogroms in the country, it is striking how most commentators have stressed poverty and deprivation as the underlying causes of the events, writes Michael Neocosmos. Yet it requires little effort to see that economic factors, however real, cannot possibly account for why it was those deemed to be non-South Africans who bore the brunt of the vicious attacks. Poverty can be and has historically been the foundation for the whole range of political ideologies, from communism to fascism and anything in between. In actual fact, poverty can only account for the powerlessness, frustration and desperation of the perpetrators, but not for their target. After all why were not Whites or the rich or for that matter White foreigners in South Africa targeted instead? Of course it is a common occurrence that the powerless regularly take out their frustrations on the weakest: women, children, the elderly... and outsiders. Yet this will not suffice as an explanation.
The golden glitter of South Africa is gone
Akwete Sande
2008-06-12, Issue 380
"As for Malawians, talk of regional integration is merely a joke as they visit the holding centre in Blantyre, to see if their relations are among the returnees." Akwete Sande gives a Malawian perspective on the xenophobic violence in South Africa.
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.
Time Mbeki should step down
William Gumede
2008-06-05, Issue 378
The South African state is imploding in front of our eyes. Although there is not a moment to spare, we can still avoid the coming crash, if we act quickly enough, writes William Gumede. This is a nothing but national emergency, which calls for extraordinary steps. Parliament must be dissolved. Next year’s general election must be brought forward to give government a new mandate. Mbeki must step down as president immediately. The ANC must call a special national conference to make the leadership decision, rather than wait for the provincial conferences to be completed by spring or for a list conference thereafter.
Xenophobia and the South African working class
Thandokuhle Manzi and Patrick Bond
2008-05-27, Issue 375
To convey the reasons and effects of xenophobia in South Africa and its effect on the working class, Thandokuhle Manzi and Patrick Bond take a microscopic look at Cato Manor Township, one of the sites where the attacks took place.
South Africa: A person cannot be illegal!
Abahlali baseMjondolo
2008-05-22, Issue 373
Abahlali baseMjondolo Statement on the Xenophobic Attacks
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."
A drive through a Xenophobic landscape
A trade unionist
2008-05-22, Issue 373
In this vivid and personal account, a trade unionist walks through the unfolding xenophobic attacks in South Africa.
Stop the xenophobia and hate!
Dale T. McKinley
2008-05-22, Issue 373
The Social Movements Indaba (SMI) – a co-ordinating national body of social movements, civil society and activist organizations – is organizing with its affiliated organizations and immigrant communities to roll back the groundswell of xenophobia.
Zimbabwe in context
Grace Kwinjeh
2008-05-19, Issue 372
Arguing that Mugabe has been "talking left" while "walking right" Grace Kwinjeh analyses Zimbabwe through regional, African and global capitalism. The post election crisis in Zimbabwe and the SADC region is a manifestation of much deeper, complex issues to do with global capitalism and its vampire-like tendencies
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....