Pambazuka News 852: Confronting global white supremacy
Pambazuka News 852: Confronting global white supremacy
Refugees across Africa are often in national energy plans. The involvement of various players including the private sector working on green and renewable energy could be welcome news to refugees living in big camps such as Kakuma, Kenya.
Imitators and the supposed dissenters in the global South are a part and parcel of the Western bourgeoisie and their agenda; and it is the reason why the global South never has a voice of our own that is at once eclectic to confront imperialism.
The departure of long-serving African leaders in Zimbabwe, Angola and The Gambia in 2017 ushered in measured hope for change and a desire for more such changes. Can new leaders in those countries meet people's high expectations?
Today comes the seventh year of the international conspiracy, in which obscurantist forces and Libyan agents participated in the war against Libya and its safe people, where innocent people were hurled to take part through the launching of false slogans by a media campaign carried out by excessive regional and international mass media machines.
Sexual violence should not be tolerated even in a revolutionary movement. Feminists in the movement have to speak out.
During his 32 years in power, President Museveni has developed a consistent pattern of deploying hate speech to insult or ridicule his political opponents as a most preferred strategy of regime survival. Incitement of his supporters against his political opponents is the corner stone of his policy.
Pambazuka News 851: No compromise, the struggle continues
Pambazuka News 851: No compromise, the struggle continues
The linking of our ancestors who are gone, ourselves here, those coming, our continuation, our flowing along our living way, the way: it is that remembrance that calls us. That remembrance not only birthed successive waves of global insurrection, but directed the everyday lives of millions of forcibly dislocated Africans.
The US informal empire, through the US African Command (AFRICOM, is expanding the US economic-frontier by discursively securitising Africa using exceptional speech acts.
African Americans and their children need to tell their own stories, instead of enabling misguided bigots to seize the narrative – a false narrative that misrepresents them, as a people and threatens their uniqueness, as individuals.
Oxfam has been successful in highlighting the gross and rapidly growing inequalities in the world in international fora, but their approach of asking the rich elites and their allies in governments to do the right thing is not bringing change and worse it is perpetuating the myth that we have no alternative other than to depend on large corporations. It is in people’s everyday practices, not from the elites that we are far more likely to find meaningful solutions to inequality and the seeds of a more human economy.
Nigeria should abandon its ineffective policy of quiet diplomacy while seeking to recover its stolen artefacts, and pursue vigorous and open policies to bring back its artefacts.
Raila Odinga's swearing himself in as a people’s president could have both political and legal implications. Legal scholars are already divided on this and this swearing in of Raila Odinga has attracted the attention of foreign governments, calling for dialogue, and a possible power deal. So what can we make of this juicy and appetising unfolding story and new chapter in Kenya’s political history?
The Nigeria legal system is not only conservative; it is elitist. More and more the system is programmed to inculcate in lawyers a mechanical adherence to elitist practices that are dangerous to progressive evolution of law. The hijab of Firdaus is not a case about religion; it is about a lady challenging a contradictory status quo.
For over 60 years Hugh Masekela had been at the forefront of world revolutionary trends and made his mark at the site of the global anti-racist struggles. His sounds of struggle, inspiration, revolutionary change and love are now part of the history of revolutionary music of the end of the twentieth century and early twenty first century.
President Trump’s insult is fed by deep ignorance about Africa among Americans. To most Americans, Africa is as an exotic place where animals roam around freely. There is really need to educate them.
A recent World Bank report, The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018, offers evidence of how much poorer Africa is becoming thanks to rampant minerals, oil and gas extraction. Yet World Bank policies and practices remain oriented to enforcing foreign loan repayments and transnational corporate profit repatriation, thus maintaining the looting.
The 31 December 2018 revolution in Ghana was a political upheaval that promised and had the potential to deliver a Castro/Sankara type social and political revolution, but was wasted on the rubbish heap of personality power grab fuelled by the ambitions of one man, the collective theft of national resources by a cabal of opportunists and nation wreckers who perpetuated their vile corrupt values on the rest of the nation.
If Martin Luther King Jr. was among us today, it is safe to say he would oppose the wars in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. He probably would attempt to broaden the anti-war movement to take an active role in the wars on the African continent. It is safe to say that King would be on the side of the movement for reparations.
Swaziland is Africa's last absolute monarchy. While some foreigners might have problems while visiting the kingdom and get or seek for help from their governments; Swazi people seem to have nowhere to seek for help. The story of Peter Kenworthy confirms that.
Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his life for the elimination of national oppression, the war policy of the Pentagon and the necessity for the lifting of the masses of people out of poverty. His assassination was a by-product of a system built on forced removals of the indigenous people, the enslavement of Africans and the super-exploitation of workers in general.
Challenges in the struggle for democracy assume definite shape and character: no scope for ignoring imperialism and plunder, and lending space to imperialists and its proxies while organising the struggle for democracy. So, the stand is: oppose imperialism and plunder, and don’t deactivate the march to democracy.
Pambazuka News 850: The imperialists’ evil empire
Pambazuka News 850: The imperialists’ evil empire
The attempt to make the public believe that the Allied Defense Forces, a small, beleaguered Ugandan Islamist militia, attacked a United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on 7 December 2017, killing 15 heavily armed and highly trained Tanzanian peacekeepers and wounding 55 more, raises more questions than it answers.
The failure of most of the African leaders, intellectuals and activists both on the African continent and in the diaspora to call out Barack Obama when he was insulting and marginalising Africans, some even making all sorts of excuses to justify his actions because he is one of “our own,” might have emboldened Donald Trump to insult Africans.
The meeting between US ambassador to Uganda Debra Malac with Uganda's disgraced Minister for Foreign Affairs Sam Kutesa on 19 January 2018 demonstrated that the value of Uganda’s cooperation in furthering American foreign policy and corporate interests clearly outweighs any embarrassment caused by Kutesa’s alleged incontinence.
We are nearly two decades into the 21st century. African nations are lumped together as “s…hole countries” by the President of the free world. KKK members no longer need the cover of the night or their hoods as they chant “blood and soil” in the main streets of America, laying an exclusive claim to American soil by Aryan blood.
The recent demonstrations and fighting that broke out across Tunisia for about ten days in January 2018 are all the more significant in that Western representatives and apologists for the current state of the world have held up Tunisia’s political situation as the most successful outcome of the 2011 “Arab Spring", that is, from the point of view of maintaining the status quo.
Civil society organisations have to be deliberate about using language and strategies that are relatable and accessible. At the same time, they have to bridge the gap of knowledge and interest about what they do, what they stand for and why the do it and connect people to that so that it is harder for governments to delegitimise them.
Patrice Lumumba, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s independence hero and first Prime Minister, famously wrote to his wife Pauline from captivity in 1960, shortly before his assassination: “We are not alone. Africa, Asia, and the free and liberated peoples in every corner of the globe will ever remain at the side of the millions of Congolese who will not abandon the struggle until the day when there will be no more colonisers and no more of their mercenaries in our country.” But is anyone on the side of the Congolese now?
The Supreme Courts of Kenya and Liberia have projected sufficient independence and demonstrated the relevance of the judiciary in electoral matters, but they have also exposed lapses in the electoral management bodies, particularly with the introduction of new technologies, which became central to the disputes in both countries.
The commitment to the struggle of the working class was valorised, as African activists spent time with Brazilian rural farmers in their simple lives, but yet filled with abundant joy, love and humility. Within the walls of their homes, one could see a strong sense of hunger in striving for the burial of the downtrodden and barbaric system of capitalism.
To make a difference, President George Weah must revisit the unfinished business of unification of Native and Americo-Liberians began by the Tubman administration. Given their weak economic and political position, the Natives cannot go it alone, and in spite of their years of dominance even with their small number, the Americo-Liberians must have realised that both groups need each other as partners in Liberia’s progress.
The Interdisciplinary Journal for the Studies of the Sahel is seeking submissions from all disciplinary fields of academic inquiry, including the arts, humanities, social sciences and STEM-related fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) for its June and December 2018 publications.
In recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the Donald Trump administration has accomplished nothing significant other than expose their already bare backs to the international community that is a wee-bit tired of their shenanigans.
With ending autocratic tendencies of Governor Okorocha, there is only so much the people of Imo State of Nigeria can endure. It is, nevertheless, comforting that the Imo Peoples Action for Democracy has declared 2018 a year of rage! Now that the heat is on, those who aspire to lead Imo State in 2019 must stand up and be counted.
In his reflection on Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o's Wizard of the Crow ,Yash Tandon argues that like all social studies, there is no neutral literature. Observers and writers on society are part of society, and whether they are conscious of it or not, they are inevitably taking sides in the drama around them. They are a part of the superstructure and the prevailing norms and values of the society around them – adopting them, rejecting them, reforming them or revolting against them.
Pambazuka News 849: Africa's Christmas wish-list
Pambazuka News 849: Africa's Christmas wish-list
After the ascendancy of Cyril Ramaphosa to the presidency of the African National Congress (ANC) last month, it is vital to understand deep structural barriers that prevent South Africa’s achievement of desperately needed socio-economic justice.
The idea of Guevara as a latter-day Don Quixote, setting out on his adventures to undo wrongs and bring justice to the world, and, despite a series of disastrous encounters, managing to survive with spirits undiminished until the very end, is one that appeals to the romantic in all those who see themselves as revolutionaries.
Monday night’s internal African National Congress (ANC) presidential election of Cyril Ramaphosa – with a razor-thin 51% majority of nearly 4800 delegates – displaced but did not resolve a fight between two bitterly-opposed factions. On the one hand are powerful elements friendly to so-called “White Monopoly Capital,” and on the other are outgoing ANC president Jacob Zuma’s allies led by Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, his ex-wife and former African Union chairperson. The latter faction includes corrupt state “tenderpreneur” syndicates, especially the notorious Gupta brothers, and is hence typically nicknamed “Zupta.” (Zuma is still scheduled to serve as national president until mid-2019.)
Many African regimes today simply avoid the demands of good governance, ignore the rule of law and commit gross violations of human rights in the belief that Western aid will always bail them out of their chronic budget deficits. Stated simply, Western taxpayer dollars provide the fail-safe insurance policy for the survival and persistence of failed regimes in Africa. That is exactly Nana’s point.
The Southern African state is one of the few countries within in Africa with a military attache stationed in Israel where it opened an embassy in 2015. Israel does not have an embassy in Zambia. Holding an Israel-Africa summit in Zambia would represent a tremendous setback in Africa’s historic support for the oppressed Palestinian people.
The nine months I spent at Fahamu as a multi-media producer intern felt like an incubation period, a launch pad of sorts for deepening my commitment to radical social justice, scholarship and storytelling about and for Africa. These were some of the most transformative moments of my lifetime.
The West and African leaders share the blame for slave trade reported in Libya. Serious human rights violations have been perpetrated against the youth of Africa: violation of their right to work, violation of their right to life, violation of their dignity, violation of their right to be protected against slavery and slave trade. This must stop.
There were at least two strong indicators of the paralysis of the 11th World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires. One was the Argentine government's revocation of the accreditation of 64 representatives from 19 civil society organisations. And the second is that there was no Ministerial Declaration coming out of Geneva.
Dear Readers,
With this issue, Pambazuka News takes its year-end break from 15 December 2017. The next issue will come to you on 11 January 2018.
We would like to thank all our readers, contributors, volunteers and partners who made the production of Pambazuka News possible this year.
We look forward to your continued support.
Pambazuka News relies on the donations of its supporters. We ask you to consider making a donation in 2018 to keep Pambazuka News alive, free and independent.
Thank you.
The government’s nuclear policy was approved by a full sitting of the cabinet back in 2015. There are a number of reasons behind this commitment to nuclear power and the haste with which the government appears to be acting at the moment.
The most important developments in the Fourth Republic that have facilitated and expanded media freedom and free speech are the introduction of independent and private broadcasting, the end of state monopoly and control of broadcasting, and the arrival of the new communications technologies of digital media and mobile telephony.
The two clerics were in London to attend an Islamic conference and squeezed in leisure and tourism into their itinerary. Their touristic adventures in the British capital, which, in the rhetoric of many puritan clerics, is a bastion of an immoral modernity, Western education, and cultural trends antithetical to righteous Muslim living, surprised many Northern Nigerian Muslims.
Pambazuka News 848: Speaking truth to power
Pambazuka News 848: Speaking truth to power
A basic feature of today's imperialist world – the division of the globe into the feasting and the fed upon – has become so unbearable that millions of people in Africa, Asia and Latin America would rather risk death than accept the future that a country oppressed by imperialism can offer them. This, in turn, is seen as a threat to the serenity and stability of Europe.
His soaring popularity comes from his strong repertoire of protest music that forcefully speaks truth to power. If Bobi Wine’s new body of artistic work has a singular thrust, it is that people can fully enjoy their inalienable rights only for as long as they are willing to fight for them. It is a battle he is prepared for in any way possible, including exchanging punches if need be.
Africa’s share of global trade remains insignificant because it faces numerous challenges: customs procedures, a lack of infrastructure and information as well as poor market integration. While there are expectations that the EU trade policy and the WTO negotiations could improve Africa’s trade, there is an increasing need for African countries to consider other alternatives for trade performance.
In times of political crises, as was recently experienced in Zimbabwe, citizens expect the regional body to take a bold stance against leaders who disregard human rights and hinder the advancement of democracy. Zimbabweans were quick to remember the numerous previous failures of the regional community. They roundly rejected SADC’s intervention.
Storms and hurricanes are becoming more severe due to warmer sea temperatures. Low lying island nations now experience annual flooding with the seawater contaminating groundwater supplies. Whether it is flooding or drought, or any other climate related catastrophic event, the poor nations of the world and their populations suffer most.
British journalist Charles Bremner's recent report represents neo-colonial wishful thinking, concocted from probably the bar at George The Fifth Hotel in Paris. The Times, once a paper that published great foreign reporting, must not become a rag full of stories of the type that used to emanate from the Nairobi Hilton Hotel bar.
Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies (formerly The Journal of Pan African Studies (JPAS), a trans-disciplinary on-line multilingual peer reviewed open-access scholarly journal devoted to the intellectual synthesis of research, scholarship and critical thought on the African experience around the world, is seeking contributions for a special edition focused on “Afro-Intellectualism: Past, Present and Future Dimensions,” hence, the global use, development, and exercise of the intellect by people of African heritage in all parts of the world.
Senfo Tonkam still retains his anti-imperialist militancy and radical outlook after two decades in exile. The liberation of Africa, he insists, is not yet complete. The struggle continues. And no African will ever be free until all Black people everywhere in the world are free
Who won the battle for Zimbabwe? The Crocodile, of course. But he did not only swallow Comrade Bob. Now that the Crocodile is firmly in the saddle probed up by the Generals, there is no end in sight in the struggle for liberation in Zimbabwe.
Revolutionary Cuba today – and this is the living legacy of Fidel Castro – has become, in word and deed, the leading voice for working people and oppressed nations and peoples everywhere. In the worldwide Battle of Ideas that Fidel stressed continually, the Cuban Revolution is the living, resonant, politically attractive socialist alternative to today’s capitalist world disorder with its grotesque inequality and permanent fueling of war.
Despite the evidence of worsening poverty, the government felt sufficiently confident in this year’s budget speech to move the target date for attaining middle-income status forward by two decades. Originally planned for 2040, the new status will now be attained in three years. Agricultural output is going to be increased, educational outcomes improved and corruption eliminated. Just like that.
Kagame runs a brutal, US-backed regime with the ninth highest per capita incarceration rate in the world. State surveillance is so pervasive that Rwandans fear to trust their own family and neighbours. Latest investigative reports about African deportees to Rwanda from Israel reveal horrific abuses. Does that sound like a government ready to open its arms to its African brothers and sisters?
South Sudanese need to seriously think about a future beyond the inept regime of President Kirr. It is unacceptable that millions of citizens still live in decrepit camps internally and in neighbouring countries. South Sudan is one of the poorest countries in the world, despite its enormous natural resources. There are many alternative leaders to choose from.
Pambazuka News 847: Thieves without borders
Pambazuka News 847: Thieves without borders
The military intervention in Zimbabwe leading to the resignation of President Robert Mugabe was widely celebrated. But there is no justification for such a role under the constitution. What is more, the military has shown that it remains involved in the country’s politics. Given its past record in protecting the Mugabe regime, this is worrying for the future of democracy.
On 18 November, Rwandan President Paul Kagame inducted seven thieves without borders and one medical doctor into his “National Order of Outstanding Friendship,” presenting them with medals for “exemplary service” to the nation, meaning himself and his ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).
The court ruled that she had not denied or minimized the Rwanda Genocide and that her criticism of the government should have been allowed as part of her freedom of expression within Rwandan law.
If the so-called goal of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) 2017 is Women First, Prosperity for All the “Women” ought to include the wives, mothers and daughters or simply women operating at the level of basic subsistence and the “All” must include the working poor, the beggars, the homeless and issues such as the stray dog menace on the streets of Hyderabad.
With 18 earned and honorary degrees, Robert Mugabe was the most educated African president. His leadership of Zimbabwe was messed up by neocolonial terrorists who wanted its resources. Zimbabwe is a wake up call for Africa. Western imperialism is not dead. Africa will be destroyed unless its leaders strengthen its sovereignty.
The US government officials who have attempted to browbeat Liberia into political submission clearly have selective amnesia. They have forgotten that in 1985, allegedly rigged elections sanctioned in the name of expediency led to more than 15 years of death and destruction in Liberia.
NATO’s invasion of Libya is perhaps one of the most racist and atrocious crimes of the 21st century. Why are CNN, the French government and others who led the charge in 2011 all of a sudden concerned about the plight of Africans in Libya? Minister Farrakhan calls it “deceptive intelligence”, and warns us that, “every time the serpent raises its head it should be de-capitated”.
There has been a massive media interest in the events leading up to Mugabe’s resignation. Over the last ten days, the Nordic Africa Institute’s Zimbabwe expert Henning Melber has given more than 30 interviews for Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish media. In this blog post, he gives his unfiltered analysis of the situation in Zimbabwe.
The growing power of social media is undeniable, so Facebook’s rules are not only harmful to freedom of speech, a basic human right; they also exclude marginalized people from using the power of social media to affect meaningful change through social activism.
Resistance is the only road to liberation for people exploited and suppressed by those who have state power and control over wealth and resources. However, resistance does not mean disregard for the law. Nor does it mean resorting to violence. The means must be just and peaceful. The desired end might take a long time – a long, long time – but its effects are also long lasting.
SPECIAL ISSUE: Pan-Africanist perspectives on Mugabe
SPECIAL ISSUE: Pan-Africanist perspectives on Mugabe
President Mugabe blundered in not arranging an orderly transition to a successor while he was in a stronger political position. That failure left the door open for schemers like Emerson Mnangagwa and General Chiwenga. The coup was organized over many months to establish a transitional government that would include the opposition.
1. The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the Court), under the aegis of the African Union, in collaboration with the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania, the German Development Cooperation (GiZ), European Union, and World Bank organized the Third African Judicial Dialogue on the theme “Improving Judicial Efficiency in Africa”, from 9-11 November, 2017, in Arusha, Tanzania.
In the wake of the evolving military coup d’état in Zimbabwe this past week, there is already a concerted effort by some in the media in Britain to begin to construct a totally distorted narrative of the relationship between Britain and Robert Mugabe since 1980. The following essay, “Britain, Mugabe, Zimbabwe, Africa”, written in July 2008 and published as chapter 15 in my Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature (2011: 95-100), is reissued here, unedited, in response to these multiform revisionist efforts on the history of this key region of the African World: