Issue Title

From the antebellum period through the Civil War and Jim Crow the issues of gender and race were interwoven.

Six months from now, a commemoration of the long saga of struggle against national oppression and economic exploitation will take place. 

Radical educators and revolutionaries worldwide are bewildered by the question—which education is of most value? –as universities, colleges and schools turn into centres of oppression, perpetuating the dominant authoritarian discourse. 

This month marks the eighth anniversary of the uprising that culminated in the imperialist assault on Libya by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces and the killing eight months later of long-time leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

The author believes that the current challenges that Ghana is facing are largely due to the fact that the ruling elites have refused to learn from the past and continue making the same mistakes of opportunistic, short-sighted and divisive politics.   

The biggest youth movement in Swaziland, the Swaziland Youth Congress, called for democracy at its 12th national congress last weekend. The congress was held in South Africa because of repression in Swaziland against organisations that call for democracy. 

The leaders of the 18th century separatist movement from England were not motivated by a genuine desire for freedom and equality.

Imperialism has initiated a provocation for beginning its planned military intervention in Venezuela. Imperialism is treading a bloody path, the path it prefers. It needs the blood-soaked path. Already it has spilled blood along Brazil border.

From Seneca Falls to the Civil War and Reconstruction the struggle for national liberation and gender equality took centre stage. 

This paper discusses the crisis facing South Africa’s state-owned company Eskom and its general relationship to people’s struggle and the pursuit for energy alternatives.

This is an interview with Senfo Tonkam, a former Cameroonian student leader exiled in Germany, in which he discusses issues affecting Black people in the world including linguistic divides and tribalism among other problems. 

Africa is a youthful population, statistics show that the population of youth and children in Africa is rising. African youth are also among the most disadvantaged in the world. This ranges from economic refugees in Europe all in a bid to try and survive , to communities ravaged by the negative impacts of HIV and Aids to countries getting destroyed by election related conflicts.

Philanthropy, of various forms and origin, occupies a central, well-accepted position in the nations of Africa today. Invoking an historic confrontation between the supporters and opponents of Rag Day at the University of Dar es Salaam, this article presents a radical critique of such philanthropy. Though it occurred in 1968, the contrasting attitudes towards charity it depicts are of primary importance for the realisation of genuine social and economic progress in Africa today.

The author deplores the rapidly deteriorating socio-economic and political situation in Zimbabwe one year after President Mnangagwa took office. 

Controversies. There have been all sorts of controversies at MISR at the behest of Mamdani. It all goes back to the beginning. The precedent was set at the onset – that Mamdani was too important to play by the rules.

This article looks at how African countries are amassing unsustainable loans, mostly from China to fund their infrastructural projects. Is Africa turning out to be a remedy for China’s over-accumulation problem by serving as a major locale for a spatio-temporal fix?

Tagged under: 881, Economics, Tim Zajontz

The year 2018 ended on a high note for the Nigeria born writer Mohammed Umar who is celebrating in London after getting his books translated and published into 50 languages. 

The first phase of imperialism’s direct intervention in Venezuela has started. Progressive people all over the world should clear denounce this blatant assault on Bolivarian Revolution. 

In this article, the author talks about the complicity of non-governmental organisations and mining companies in impoverishing the people of Moroto, northeast of Uganda. 

Reflecting her first personal encounter with Samir Amin, the author believes that Samir Amin’s work will continue to be a tool for change and to challenge capitalism, especially in these days of rapidly rising inequalities.

This piece seeks to help most of Igbo friends and well-wishers and some Igbo who are involved in the campaign of Biafra without a clear understanding of the picture of what we are fighting for. It will help many to have a better grip of what is at stake. 

The author wonders whether existentialism could have been the reason behind the recent firing of Nigeria’s Chief Justice Walter Nkanu Onnoghen by President Buhari. 

Why has Liberia not enacted dual citizenship or repealed a constitutional “Negro clause”?

Going through education in an institution of higher learning is often a difficult process. For many students who come from disadvantaged families, they have to juggle side jobs (side hustles) in order to survive. Some are forced to skip classes to run errands and on top of that one is expected to pass exams.

It should be agreed that there are different ways of apprehending and describing the situation in Nigeria as the country draws near “Election 2019”, the general elections beginning on 16 February 2019. But I have chosen, naturally and unsurprisingly, an angle and a perspective informed by the burning interests of the working, toiling and poor masses of the country. 

The coordinator of Saharawi video activist group Equipe Mediawas assaulted, injured and interrogated by Moroccan police in the Moroccan colony of Western Sahara. 

A number of African countries facing internal politico-economic challenges including Zimbabwe are turning to Russia not only for financial help in terms of investments and loans, but also for political support. 

Swaziland’s government has been evicting farmers from their land to expand the monarchy-controlled sugar industry for decades. After years of empty promises that they could return, the children of farmers from Mbuluzi are fighting to get their land back.

In this keynote speech that Professor Issa Shivji gave at the launch of African Humanities Programme books at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on 1 February 2019, he calls on the African intelligentsia to construct a counter-hegemonic project in the face of new nationalisms. 

To what extent has the working class been an agent of radical change? The author discusses steps, proposed in the third chapter of Can the Working Class Change the World?, that need to be taken for workers to bring about radical change.  

This is part one of a seven-part series introducing the review of Can the Working Class Change the World?

Using the conceptual frameworks of “revolutionary rupture” and “contradictions”, as analytical tools to understanding the successes and failures of revolutionary movements in the world, the author argues that 2019 could be a year of “revolutionary rupture”.  

Tagged under: 880, Global South, Yash Tandon

This is part two of a seven-part series of the review of Can the Working Class Change the World?.

For many communities access to justice represents a near impossibility because of cost, distance, lack of knowledge and the fear of reprisal.  Paralegals utilise rapport and trust to increase access to justice for their clients.

The old guard of South Africa’s ruling party put on new clothes last year, and a new party of the working class finally made its debut.

From the Democratic Republic of Congo to Sudan the need for continental solutions is apparent.

Pentagon bombing operations against the Horn of Africa state of Somalia have killed numerous people over the last several weeks under the guise of the United States “war on terrorism.”

Having read the two books written by Nigeria’s former Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the recent book by the former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, I have come to an un-researched conclusion that Nigerian politicians do not know how to talk politics. 

The author argues that the Nigerian Left is the only political formation that can bring about genuine change in Nigeria, as the country’s ruling class has not been able to produce a winning alliance of parties that can offer Nigerians anything new. 

Efforts of Africa’s unity and regional integration are obstructed by continuing outside interference and destabilisation of the continent. 

After more than six decades since the gathering of the first All-African People’s Conference (AAPC) in Accra, Ghana on 8-13 December 1958, renewal of revolutionary Pan-Africanism is needed on the continent and globally. 

Once again, a formidable burst of state brutality against Zimbabwe’s citizenry has left at least a dozen corpses, scores of serious injuries, mass arrests, Internet suspension and a furious citizenry. The 14-17 January nationwide protests were called by trade unions against an unprecedented fuel price hike, leading to repression reminiscent of former leader Robert Mugabe’s iron fist.

In this review of Can the Working Class Change the World?, the authorreflects on the question whether the working class can defeat capitalism, its chief antagonist. 

According to the author, Africa must break its dependency on capitalism and instead resolve internal contradictions, which are a reflection of the on-going exploitation and oppression engendered by the post-colonial construct to benefit the West. 

The author argues that the failure of the Ghanaian Left to build on the legacy of Kwame Nkrumah is giving a good opportunity to the centre-right ruling party to develop and cement its neo-liberal ideology. 

World Bank president Jim Kim is an ex-leftist who claims that in the mid-1990s he wanted to shut down the Bank. At the time, it was an entirely valid, realistic goal of the 50 Years is Enough! Campaign and especially the World Bank Bonds Boycott. Kim’s co-edited Dying for Growth (2000) book-length analysis of the Bank’s attacks on global South public health offered very useful ammunition.

Happy New Year Pambazuka Newsworld! Hopefully, we can all keep our New Year resolutions! This time I, too, want to maintain and excel at all my resolutions, especially, to stay here, writing forever!

Reflecting on the 9 March 2018 handshake between Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and leader Raila Odinga, the author wonders if that reconciliatory moment ushered in a new democratic dispensation in Kenya. 

Experts and researchers have observed that, since the collapse of the Soviet-era politics, an appreciable level of media cooperation has never been on the side of Russia’s public diplomacy with Africa.

In this essay, the author talks about the current limited involvement of Russia on the African continent and the need to increase it to the level of the former Soviet Union’s ties with Africa.  

On what has been hailed as a great day and a milestone for the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, the plenary assembly session of the SADC parliamentary forum recently adopted the first ever SADC model law on elections.

Estimates demonstrate that, over the last 40 years, Nigeria has been loosing billions of dollars daily to corruption and wastages of the country’s resources. 

A recent conference in South Africa raised issues on whether universal healthcare should be a private or state-driven endeavour.

One thing supporters of President Muhammadu Buhari can’t deny is that many of those who oppose him today, almost three and half years after he was sworn in as the fourth president of the Fourth Republic, rooted for him 2015. Many of them are not politicians; they are not angry because President Buhari has blocked their illegal sources of wealth; and they are not people who have cases with anti-corruption agencies. I am one of them. 

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights turned 70 on 12 December and governments and civil society organisations around the world were commemorating the day with a range of activities.  However, the threat of illicit financial flows to the respect of human seems to have been forgotten on that day. 

Tagged under: 879, Economics, Imani Countess

I am a young African man with four university qualifications under his belt, yet, as is the case with many of my peers, adequate employment has been a challenge to obtain on offer.

Trade union renewal is high on the agenda in many countries, but we need to think carefully about why we want it.

The minimum wage law, the land question and the economics of imperialism are to shape the character of the coming electoral period in South Africa. 

The author argues that President Trump’s proposed new Africa strategy seeks to make geo-economics the governing and guiding principle of US foreign policy on the continent. 

This week’s hush-hush visit by International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde to Pretoria (between stops in Ghana and Angola) is mysterious. In contrast to last week’s IMF press briefing claim – “Madame Lagarde will hold meetings with the authorities, as well as fairly extensive meetings with the private sector, civil society, academia, women leaders, and of course the media” – there is a complete information void here, with no public events scheduled.

In his review ofProtection, Patronage or Plunder?by Apollo Nelson Makubuya, Professor Yash Tandon concurs with the author that the “Buganda Question” is an issue that would not disappear from the records of Uganda’s history, and thus needed to be candidly debated and addressed. 

The President of South African trade federation COSATU met with Swazi sugar cane farmers and promised to help them regain control of their land from Swaziland’s absolute monarch King Mswati III. 

The author writes about the impact the All Africa People’s Conference that was organised in December 1958 in Ghana had on liberation movements in Southern Africa, especially in Zimbabwe. 

In this essay, the author deplores the current generation’s unwillingness to learn the “ways of life” from elders in African villages including the culture of reading and seeking for knowledge that characterised that generation of the 1950s and 1960s. 

With the election of Jair Bolsonaro – who said he would rather be called a Hitler than gay – Brazil’s electoral system has brought fascism to power. It would be hard to overstate the impact this will have on the country, the continent and the world. 

The place of intellectualism is quite pronounced in international affairs much as is mired in defined controversies often emanating from society’s built perceptions.

Do the findings of the recent Afrobarometer survey on The Gambia’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission affirm the fact that truth and reconciliation mechanisms are snowflake mechanisms that are incapable of delivering justice for the victims of human rights violations?

Thomas Jefferson should have known about Ethiopia.  That was what the late, great Pan-Africanist scholar Ali Mazrui suggested in his keynote address to a conference held at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 2007.  I assisted Mazrui with research for that address and was honoured to travel with him to Ithaca and listen to his presentation as he reflected on Ethiopia with characteristic imagination and historical sensitivity.  

In this essay, the author asserts that, despite the incumbent President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, appearing to be in a strong position before the 2019 general elections, the opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar would not be a “walk-over” in the contest.

Since March of 2015, the United States has engineered and guided a genocidal war against the people of Yemen. Daily bombing operations by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition has killed tens of thousands of people, injured and sickened hundreds of thousands more and created the worse humanitarian crisis in the world.

This is a summary of a historic week for Argentina at the heart of the current economic turmoil. 

An amazing story-telling and reflection on Mauritius, written by Mateus Costa Santos, from Mozambique, who recently participated in the School of Ecology in Port Louis city, Mauritius. 

Professor Horace Campbell argues that Africa needs a new alliance of traders, workers, small farmers, progressive students, cultural artists and religious leaders to create a new movement for putting in place the mechanisms for the unification and freedom of Africa and not the current reformist leaders that the continent has. 

The authors draw our attention to the danger of growth at all costs, especially to the environment and the livelihoods of marginalised communities, especially in Kenya and other developing countries.  

Samir Amin died on August 12, 2018. In July of 2018 he published a call for the establishment of a global fifth international that could coordinate and provide support to progressive social movements. Amin, Samir 2018 “Letter of Intent for an Inaugural Meeting of the International of Workers and Peoples” IDEAs network, July 3. 

From Cape to Cairo, there is a wide-ranging call for decolonising the university curriculum and to some extent primary and secondary school programmes. This call is motivated by the inability of the current knowledge produced at African universities to transform the society, and to respond to the socio-economic needs of our continent, mother Africa.

The author writes about double marginalisation faced by Africans in the diaspora, especially those living in the United States of America. 

6 November 2018 was a day in which people across the United States and indeed the world were watching for some indications of the future political prospects for the leading capitalist state.

Khashoggi’s murder in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul has taken the world by storm. No murder story in recent history has claimed as much media attention as this one.  

On 23 October 2018, Paul Biya was elected for his 7th consecutive term in office as President of Cameroon. At 85 years old, Biya stands as the longest ruling national leader, having accumulated 43 years at the head of the Cameroonian state, first as Prime Minister (1975-1982) and subsequently as President (1982-2018). 

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