Pambazuka News 757: Terrorism as Empire's new tool
Pambazuka News 757: Terrorism as Empire's new tool
The book offers first-hand testimony to social, political, literary, educational, and internationalist aspects of the World War I-era “New Negro” movement and to Harrison’s role in its development. The need for new interest in the life and work of Harrison is even more pronounced today among the many people challenging injustice and seeking a better world.
During the China-Africa meeting in South Africa last month, where China pledged $60 billion for Africa’s industrialization, the hype continued about the Asian giant’s beneficial role in the continent. But the truth is that China has undermined Africa’s development for nearly 30 years now.
Climate change has brought on a severe drought in Swaziland. The solution to the crisis is literally to pray for rain, says the country’s absolute monarch. No, we need a democratic government that does not treat its people as enemies, says a young activist.
Iran, now emerging from years of diplomatic isolation by the West, is hell-bent on destabilizing nations in the Arab world and beyond in it is attempts to put Shi’a Muslims in power. That is the context in which the current worsening relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia should be understood.
There is clear evidence that the crime preventer program is linked to the ruling political party and that the crime preventers’ actions are frequently both unlawful and partisan, aimed at intimidating or reducing support for the political opposition.
Western powers and their media clergy have no right to give lessons of democracy to China. They should first correct their ugly behavior in the places they control.
The exhibition lays bare the human cost of Britain's broken asylum system. The featured asylum seekers were active and successful people in Zimbabwe, but many developed depression, poor health and became destitute in the UK after being forced to live in limbo for too many years.
This polemic longread takes a critical look at the differences in the discourse about Africa and about Europe. Comparing Africa and Europe 130 years ago and today, the book contains a passionate plea for greater respect for the different African cultures and languages and contends that a lack of such respect is one of the main factors impeding Africa's development today.
Ethiopia remains of the African countries with the highest rate of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Ethiopian activist Tesfaye Melaku Aberra tells Valentina Mmaka about the practice and his fight against it.
Seventy years after commencement of the Manhattan project that developed the atomic bomb, a conscious debate on its socio-political consequences is missing when decisions are reached to adopt nuclear energy, most recently by a number of African countries. Until today, the costly projects draw on the legacy of demonstrating power, couched in language of necessity and accompanied by secrecy.
London is now home to experienced university lecturers on career exchange as security guards. Pastors are leaving behind bewildered congregations to become cab drivers in London. Market women are abandoning their stalls to clean hospital toilets in London. What really is behind this migration craze?
Monday 18, 2016 will be the official commemoration of the birth of African American civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His legacy has important lessons for the current rash of police killings of African Americans in cities, suburbs and small towns across the United States.
In Nigeria today, there is renewed agitation for the creation of the separatist Biafra republic. The 3-year Biafra war led to the death of some 3 million Igbo people, according to Biafra supporters. Here is a summary of five Igbo demands, each one a memorial symbolising their resilience in surviving five decades of the longest, continuous running genocide of recent history.
Pambazuka News 756: Nairobi and Paris: How the people were conned
Pambazuka News 756: Nairobi and Paris: How the people were conned
The outcome of the meeting, the so-called Nairobi Package, was a slap in the face for the peoples of the South. It was especially egregious that the US used the 10th Ministerial, with the help of the Kenyan leadership, to undermine the future of Pan-African trading relations and to drive a wedge between the BRICS societies and those that the US wants to manipulate in the poor countries. The 10th Ministerial has hastened the demise of the WTO.
Paris witnessed both explicit terrorism by religious extremists on November 13 and, a month later, implicit terrorism by carbon addicts negotiating a world treaty that guarantees catastrophic climate change. The first incident left more than 130 people dead in just one evening’s mayhem; the second lasted a fortnight but over the next century can be expected to kill hundreds of millions, especially in Africa.
As the world continues to search for viable solutions to the issues of sustainable development and climate change, why not look at the ordinary men and women who have done extraordinary things in fighting poverty and preserving the environment? One such inspirational figure is Tadeo Nyabirweki.
Climate politics will go nowhere as long as peoples' movements remain locked into debates over arithmetic. It is time to re-set the start line for climate struggles in a place that transcends the old episteme.
The West has forced millions to become wandering, destitute refugees, as it destroys nations and peoples that get in the way of Empire. Palestinians have lived this reality for 67 years. Beirut sits at the lip of the volcano.
The first generation of African leaders had some excellent qualities like nationalism, patriotism, vision and less corruption. But they suffered from the grave original sin of staying in power too long by undemocratic means. The continent is still harvesting the sour fruits of their legacies in the likes of Mugabe, Museveni and Kagame.
The new book is a genuine and significant contribution to the understanding of one of the worst tragedies of this century, an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to know what the human costs of regional poverty and underdevelopment are today, and a much-needed voice for the actual victims of the tragedy.
This sociological novel provides readers with an opportunity to read the kind of Africanized French that is spoken in the streets and neighborhoods in Gabon’s major cities such as Libreville. The text is replete with standard French words, argot and indigenous language words and expressions that endow it with a reasonable dose of cultural authenticity.
Zimbabwe’s violent dictator is once again the darling capitalist of the West. The reason is the standard and most simple: Zimbabwe has the world’s second largest reserves of platinum, its uranium production is going westwards and Mugabe has agreed to toe the line on the marketing of the world’s largest ever single field diamond operation, Marange.
Namibian President Geingob's image as a flamboyant intellectual filling the shoes of a skilled statesman is showing wear and tear. Intolerance and temper limit his ability to engage with critical views constructively. Add to that an aloof and dismissive attitude bordering on arrogance, and the people of Namibia have reason to worry about the prosperity promise.
East and Central Africa’s largest media house, Kenya’s Nation Media Group, has this week sparked a national storm after suspending a senior newspaper editor for publishing an editorial sharply critical of the government of President Uhuru Kenyatta. Kenyans are wondering whether the disciplining of Denis Galava indicates NMG’s growing coziness with the scandal-ridden regime that is relentlessly dragging the country back to dark days of dictatorship. Below is the controversial editorial published by Daily Nation on January 2, 2016.
At least 300 Shia sect members, and likely many more, were killed and hundreds more injured in December when the Nigerian army confronted the group in the north of the country. This deadly encounter reveals – once again – a country that is sleepwalking to a catastrophe.
Conversations with Ugandans reveal that people at the grassroots see ethnic federalism as one possible way of restoring and guaranteeing both socio-political accountability and economic security in a system that relies too much on increasingly narrow ethnic and political clientelistic networks.
If 1965 consists of the first time in recorded history of contemporary Burundi that people lost their lives simply because of who they were ‘ethnically’ considered to be, 2015 is yet another moment in the post-colonial history of Burundi that people are losing their lives simply because of who they are ‘politically’ considered to be.
Islamic militancy which targets non-Muslims, often Christians, is deeply rooted in the historical discord that exists within Islam itself. Prophet Mohammad preached peaceful co-existence particularly with Christians. Muslims who promote wanton violence in the name of their religion are simply misguided about its true teachings.
He was known as a founding member of what was described as the “Sons of Toussaint”, a group of nationalist leaders who initiated the armed struggle against French imperialism on November 1, 1954. He is a national hero in Algeria.
This is the year of ‘A Man of the People. 2016 is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Chinua Achebe’s fourth novel, the gripping satire.
Pambazuka News 754: A sip, a laugh and a legacy: Remembering Sam Moyo
Pambazuka News 754: A sip, a laugh and a legacy: Remembering Sam Moyo
Sam was highly regarded for his sharp intellect and rigor. Among the young and old, men, women, children, he was a welcome presence wherever he journeyed. He was warm and kind, going out of his way to assist; he made people feel good; and he loved laughter.
Sam stood for integrity and steadfastness, a calm intelligence and a cool deliberation, a level head in a crisis situation, and a free spirit in a party that was sure to follow every difficult episode.
Prof enriched our lives in an immeasurable way. We have lost a caring father, a leader, a mentor, a friend and above all a fine human being.
The first heavy snow in the winter of Beijing,
With the heartbreaking chill,
Came the message of the sudden death of my old friend, Sam Moyo.
He seemed to be quietly leaving amidst the fleeting snowflakes…
Beijing, Chongqing, Hong Kong -- his traces were everywhere,
Conference halls, villages, classrooms -- his voices echoed around,
In my mind, I see his image active in different places in China,
In my heart, I cherish his warm smiles and sharp views.
Sam Moyo has departed. Yet, he is still among us.
* Prof Wen Tiejun is with Rural Reconstruction Movement, Beijing, China.
I knew Sam before Independence. I worked with him on land, energy and forestry issues. My abiding memory of him is his open, radical, good natured approach to life. He was a true geographer, driven by the empirical evidence that landscape meant lifescape and that lifescape was built by bias in race, class and gender.
Not my judgement, but one of his doctoral examiners left the room after questioning Sam about his doctoral thesis, obviously on land in Zimbabwe. “It was like asking Bismark about his foreign policy” was the judgement. What a loss felt around the world!
Phil O’Keefe. Newcastle, UK.
Sam was a great thinker and fearless scholar. At the height of the political crisis in Zimbabwe and the fast track land reform programme, or invasions if you wish, Sam was amongst the few scholars who acknowledged that reform had benefitted small scale farmers, the rural poor.
I enjoyed my research assistant work although it was not an easy job, given Sam’s high academic expectations. However, through it, Sam taught me hard work, discipline and persistence. Sam was a professional at heart, by experience, dedication, and commitment to land and agrarian issues.
Professor Sam Moyo reached the pinnacle of academia and stayed true to his vocation to the end.
As teenagers, we used to good-humouredly call him Sam ‘Mudzanga’ (because of his new-found love for smoking, “mudzanga” being the Shona word for cigarette) or Sam Kanhunzi (because of the dark mole by his nose which stood out in contrast to his very light complexion, “kanhunzi” being a small housefly or domestic fly). He was born with more than enough charisma, but he remained down-to-earth as he rose higher and higher.
Moyo was neither an Afro-pessimist with a colonial mentality hankering after servitude like a house nigger nor a hopeless optimist as to blind himself to the post-independence failings and evils like oppression and corruption. Moyo’s colleague Professor Ian Scoones encapsulated this in an obituary he wrote this week: “Sam has often been inaccurately pigeonholed as being on ‘one’ side or another . . . Whether inside the State and the party (Zanu PF), among opposition groups or with the World Bank and other donors, no one could ignore what Sam had to say.”
His free academic spirit could not be shackled by ideology and this made him “challenge oppression and exploitation in whatever form”.
Moyo did not erect barriers, but built bridges. He interacted with all sides — from the ruling party to various opposition formations.
Moyo, true to academia, adhered to highest standards of scientific analysis, earning himself a global reputation as an eminent scholar bringing real value to humankind.
What more can I really add except that a whole library has gone?
Rest in peace, Sam Mudzanga.
*Conway Nkumbuzo Tutani is a Harare-based columnist.
There was a time when Prof Moyo stood alone with the revolutionary people of Zimbabwe. In international academic platforms he refused the seductive embrace of colonisers which comes with a litany of personal rewards.
I met Professor Sam Moyo at a seminar in the 1980s after he joined the University of Zimbabwe where I was then teaching, and was immediately struck by his quiet brilliance.
Pambazuka News 753: Paths beyond Paris: Movements, action and solidarity towards climate justice
Pambazuka News 753: Paths beyond Paris: Movements, action and solidarity towards climate justice
As long as industrial bioenergy remains included in the definition of renewable energy in the EU and elsewhere, higher renewable energy targets will, perversely, translate into more land grabbing, more forest destruction, more biodiversity loss and even more greenhouse gas emissions.
The green economy does not present a contradiction to the continuity of the current extractive and energy intensive economy; the “green” mechanisms are designed to create value and to be complementary and interdependent on the current economy.
Are people standing up to corporate power, shutting down the polluters and building and defending their own solutions to climate change? Yes. Is it time for the rest to stand up in solidarity and do the same? Yes.
Regardless of the reality of carbon trading contradictions, if policy continues to favour corporate strategies, an even greater speculative bubble in carbon finance can be anticipated in the next few years.
False solutions are a way to turn away from real alternatives to the global environmental crisis. The true path requires transforming a society of petro-addicts, curbing the rise in world consumption of cars, and questioning the energy-intensive Global North and its historical responsibilities for global emissions.
We need to think beyond Paris and to stand in active solidarity with those who are at the frontlines of fighting the climate and environmental criminals. We need to hear what they have been saying for a long time and in different ways. Building radical solidarity with social movements and communities in resistance may be a way forward.
Mainstream thinking on climate change governance is dominated by neoliberal ideologies and constrained within neoliberal policy frameworks. Therefore, practitioners accord primacy to narrowly conceived, financialized solutions, despite the lack of evidence that climate problems can be solved through financial means or institutions; and the growing decade of evidence that financial approaches can even be counterproductive.[1]
We urgently need to stop the expansion of exploitation. How? By echoing the feminists of the 80s: “We have the right to say NO!” We need to build a plan towards de-growth and deceleration. And, of course, by practicing alternatives to the patriarchal capitalist machine.
The policy contains the same old package of unfounded assumptions, pseudo-science, half-truths and lies, which forms the core of the delusion that climate change and greenhouse gas emissions can be regulated and controlled by the neo-liberal capitalist market that demands more intensive use of fossil fuels like coal and petroleum.
We now posses tools that are so powerful they enable us to create, recreate, resurrect and redesign life forms that evolved on earth over millions of years. Or do they? Perhaps what they really enable us to do is mess things up royally.
Since the intergovernmental agreements for the construction of the huge EU pipeline were signed in 2013, the government of Azerbaijan has felt politically covered to arrest every non-embedded voice in the country, to close every independent media and every international organization in the attempt to cut connections between civil society in the country with the rest of the world.
The “green economy” is nothing more than capitalism of Nature. It is a more extreme attempt by corporations, extractive industries and governments of mainly the industrialized countries towards developing mechanisms for cashing in on Creation. This is achieved by privatizing, commodifying and selling off all forms of life.
Contrary to UN hype, REDD+ is destroying biodiversity and damaging ecosystems including forests, while undermining local communities and Indigenous People’s rights
The need to talk about the real causes of climate change and capitalism, the transformation of production and consumption fueled by oil addiction, social and environmental justice, democracy and the rights of nature is gaining momentum globally. At least two-thirds of proven fossil fuels must be left underground in order to avoid social and environmental disasters.
Why does the internationally accepted definition of “forest” only include trees and not the human beings and animals that inhabit forests? This definition is at the heart of the global plunder of forests and the false solutions imposed by the industrial North ostensibly to mitigate climate change.
The entry of financial markets into environmental issues can only be disastrous. All the functions of Nature can be converted into financial assets that can be bought and sold in a market. Those who can buy them can use them and those who can use them can continue to pollute.
A world that capital is constantly trying to bifurcate between a monolithic society and a monolithic nature – and partially succeeding – is one of the worlds we occupy. For that very reason it must be one of the targets of popular struggle.
Dear Reader,
In the light of the UN climate conference (COP21) taking place in Paris, France, this week we bring you a special issue of Pambazuka News dedicated to the urgent climate crisis.
The collection of articles in this edition is the work of Carbon Trade Watch, working with several specialist individuals and organisations over the course of several months. The articles have recently been published as a booklet that is available at the website.
Pambazuka News Editors are grateful to the individual contributors to the booklet and to CTW for allowing us to reproduce this stimulating and timely collection.
The central line of the articles is an urgent call to all humanity to do everything they can to end the climate crisis gripping the world at this moment. The authors unanimously reject the false neo-liberal, financialized solutions as being of little use for meaningfully addressing the crisis. They propose alternatives that are based on the simple fact that the Earth is finite; human beings must live responsibly or we will destroy ourselves and the rest of life.
What are you prepared to do personally to avoid this catastrophic eventuality?
PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORS
The December 2015 issue of the International Refugee Rights Initiative’s Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter (formerly the Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter) is out. Find the full newsletter .
Pambazuka News 755: Crossing the red line: Burundi, WTO and Biafra
Pambazuka News 755: Crossing the red line: Burundi, WTO and Biafra
The progressive pan-African stance that guided Tanzania’s politics in the 1960s and 1970s is gone: its place has been taken by tribalism and chauvinistic nationalism. The political demands enshrined in the Peasant Manifesto of 2015 offer an alternative to the bankrupt politics of giant parties and the 5-year elections.
Our identity no longer resides in the nation-state but is located rather as human earthlings within the unfolding evolutionary journey of the universe. A new ethic of care and compassion to build our common home – the Cosmos - is essential.
The tendency of attributing to Islam everything a Muslim does harbours a major fallacy, which simply presumes that all Muslims are devoted to ‘their creed’ and that whatever they do is necessarily guided by what ‘their religion’ sanctions. In fact, however, the bulk of those identified with Islam, like other people everywhere, attend to their worldly things largely motivated by the mundane logics of desire and power.
She was among the most well-known Muslim feminists and her courageous writings sought to undermine the ideological and political systems that silence and oppress women. Her influential pieces were well crafted and accessible to thousands of minds across the Muslim world and beyond.
Joseph Kabila is doing everything to remain in power in DR Congo. He knows that he cannot hold on to power solely by force, hence he is in a mad pursuit to establish any form of legitimacy to justify holding on to the presidency. His options are increasingly limited and in the end, his schemes are likely to fail.
Immigration waves to Western countries are not only ‘manageable’ ( in terms of sufficient space and resources to accept immigrants); rather, they continuously bring advances in innovation, knowledge and wealth regeneration, keeping the West leading the most important sectors in modern global economy. Progressive arguments that say the West has a moral responsibility towards immigrants only tell half the story.
Is Rwanda building a rebel force composed of Burundian refugees to overthrow the government of Pierre Nkrunziza in Bujumbura? A former U.N. official who has recently returned from Rwanda believes this is the case and calls on the international community to intervene before it’s too late.
The government-appointed Commission was wound up last month and directed to compile its report by 30 November. The report is expected to be published on 15 December. The Commission faced a lot of huddles deliberately thrown on its way including a campaign mounted by government figures to discredit it.
If those crusading for a separate state are doing so because of the failures of previous governments to serve the needs of Nigerians adequately, that is not a good enough reason to seek secession. The grievance is shared across Nigeria. Moreover, the idea of a separate nation based on religious and ethnic calculations is unworkable.
A child born in the U.S.A. will consume more—and cause more greenhouse gas emissions—during his lifetime than several children born in a developing country. It is no longer in doubt that there exists a clear link between population and the climate crisis.
Not many years ago Kenya’s flowers were produced by hundreds of small producers, providing livelihood for thousands. Now they are produced by a handful of multinationals. Those who own the farms in Naivasha as well as middle agencies make enormous profits, but the direct producers – the wage workers – get very little.
No solution in sight from a system that breeds the world’s problems, warns global activists a day ahead of the 10th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Nairobi, Kenya
As the violence escalates to a kill a week – sometimes more - illegal evictions continue unabated, women are are raped by gun-toting triggermen, and freedom of movement and association has ground to a halt in this poor South African neighbourhood, anyone who suggests ‘bringing warring factions together at the ‘negotiation table’ has clearly been drinking Molotov cocktails, or they are on the thugs’ payroll.
It is a matter of international solidarity to side with the oppressed, advocating their rights and thereby also promoting fundamental human rights universally. Namibia itself benefitted from such solidarity in its struggle for freedom. So how come the country is withdrawing from the International Criminal Court?
China’s cooperation with Africa promises great benefits for the continent. But the Chinese government owes it to its people not to allow the fruits of the suffering of the Chinese to be monopolised by corrupt African elites. They must carry out thorough due diligence before they give the Chinese people's money as loans to African regimes.
There is renewed agitation in Nigeria to actualize the break-away republic of Biafra. While this demand is unrealistic in many ways, it points to an urgent need to address the unresolved question of Nigeria’s nationhood once and for all.
A commission of inquiry must be transparent. Its work is not over until its report is presented, following which those in charge of the secretariat are expected to hand over the records of the proceedings for safe-keeping. There is uncertainty in Guyana as to responsibility and accountability of the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry.
Engler masterfully lays out the ways in which Canada participated in the exploitation of Africa during slavery, through colonialism, via Canadian mining companies that operate in Africa and through aid and Structural Adjustment Programs, and through implementing global neoliberal policies.
Self-described Africa scholar Gerald Caplan’s recent praise of Canada’s relations with Uganda is superficial and misleading. He ignores Canada’s support for imperialism in East Africa that goes back to the days of the slave trade.
In September, there were high hopes in some parts of Swaziland’s civil society and democratic movement that a dialogue with the county’s absolute monarch King Mswati III was on the table. Not least because of pressure from the Commonwealth, the USA and the EU. Three months later no such meeting has taken place and that hope seems all but shattered.
In my interactions with the youth, I have discovered that we are in a very serious situation in this country. The average Nigerian youth is not independent, but their mind is focused on conformity and adherence to the rules. If the youthful minds of our country are busy doing what they have been told, then who will challenge the status quo?