Henning Melber

Thank you very much for posting the three thought-provoking, sensible and reflective essays with differing perspectives on the impact of Obama [http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/current]. They offer in complementing ways to outsiders like me additional understanding of how to read some of the substantive contentious issues. With this posting, Pambazuka News shows once again its relevance in information sharing.

Henning Melber tackles the critical issues surrounding the EU-African summit.

Gone are the days of perpetuating historically entrenched interests and relations between “old Europe” and its in the meantime sovereign African colonies as unchallenged integral part of a global economic and political system in favour of the imperialist powers. The former hunting grounds for slaves fuelled European early capitalist development and pushed the continent ever since into structural dependency fr...read more

This paper was presented to the Africa University Annual Conference on the 'Commemoration of the Legacy of Dag Hammarskjöld', held in Mutare, Zimbabwe, 24-26 September 2007. The author, Henning Melber, was prevented from participating in the event, since the Zimbabwean embassy had informed him a day before his departure from Sweden that the immigration authorities in Harare had turned down his visa application.

During a visit to India in early February 1956, Dag Hammarskjöld presented ...read more

The internationally renowned African scholar Mahmood Mamdani is said to hold the view that the only feature of post-colonialism he is aware of is the post office. He tries to suggest that true Independence as liberation from the structures, contents and ideologies of the colonial era remains a remote goal.

Decolonisation was more so a hand-over of formal political power, while social structures and hierarchies - as well as mindsets - remained largely intact.

Little has changed ...read more

Black economic empowerment (BEE) continues to cultivate human and natural exploitation for the benefits of few at the expenses of far too many. It turns de-colonisation into a private business for self-enrichment. Henning Melber on the ensuing kleptocracy in Namibia and the possibility of another Zimbabwean style tragedy.

A Namibian parliamentary committee hearing was told in April 2007 by the executive secretary of the state-owned Namibia Development Corporation (NDC) in liquidation (...read more

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/303/41299.jpgAfrican people continue to remain as the have-nots at the bottom of the world’s pyramid. Even if ‘their’ leaders bath in abundant wealth and privileges. It is fair to conclude that so far neither Nepad, nor its support from the G8 and others who claim to be concerned, have managed to contribute substantive change.

...read more

It seems like yesterday, that I discovered Pambazuka News. Since then, I've joined the family actively, met Patrick Burnett on several occasions in Cape Town (- actually: not only at Greenmarket Square but also in the coastal 'dorpies' Muizenberg and Fish Hoek, to be exact, since this makes a hell of a difference for a Kapie!), watched his family growing and himself developing further. Now he has matured to the extent that he is leaving the electronic periodical, to which he contributed so ...read more

Henning Melber presents a “state of the continent” report and comments on the “new African order” as designed by the global power structures of the World Economic Forum.

Almost 50,000 people from social movements all over this world gathered in Nairobi during the second half of January at the World Social Forum (WSF). Originally initiated in the Brazilian city of Porto Allegre a few years ago, it is organised as a counter meeting to the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) during this tim...read more

Activists from social movements all over the world flocked to the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre six years ago for the first World Social Forum (WSF). It was organized under the slogan “another world is possible” to demonstrate impressively the counter position to the neo-liberal globalization project as represented and pursued by those in political and economic power. These meet every January for the World Economic Forum at the posh Swiss skiing resort of Davos.

Often erroneously ref...read more

Scholars and intellectuals are faced with stark socio-political choices, writes Henning Melber. Do they side with those maintaining the status quo in unequal societies or do they demand the right to engage in social struggles?

This essay argues for the need for a permissive postcolonial socio-political system allowing for dissenting views, including manifestations of critical loyalty through the articulation of dissenting views, and concludes with an appeal to opt for such a socio-poli...read more

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