Pambazuka News 818: Undoing the legacies of imperialism

Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” did not exist. Assad’s “use of chemical weapons” is an obvious, blatant lie. “Iranian nukes,” another blatant lie. The lies about Gaddafi in Libya are so absurd that it is pointless to repeat them. What is the reason for all the death and destruction and the flooding of the West with refugees from the West’s naked violence around the world? Violence for its own sake. That’s what America has become.

The deliberate destruction of Libya was a war crime by all standards of international law. That country was just one victim of the American plan to eliminate secular governments in the Middle East. Under the guise of a phony ‘responsibility to protect’, American propaganda gave an atrocity the appearance of a humanitarian act.

People working on peacebuilding and accountability in Burundi, Central African Republic and South Sudan should look to the experiences of neighboring countries in the region. Some approaches have worked, but others have contributed to delays and political backlashes. There are also successes to learn from, like efforts by local groups in the DRC to document abuses and in Uganda to empower women victims.

Pambazuka News 817: State terror as security

With America’s unilateral attack on Syria, a Russian ally, there are reasonable fears that the worsening relations between Washington and Moscow could escalate. Africans should not imagine that these events are too far away to affect them. The US and Russia are nuclear powers. War between them endangers the whole world. Africans should explore creative ways of putting the issue of nuclear disarmament firmly back on the global agenda.

Stiff-necked apartheid high priests had their problems but none of them contemplated the type of weird political culture the ANC and Mr. Zuma are foisting on post-apartheid South Africa. Where is that country headed?

With perhaps 100,000 people detained in the six months of the State of Emergency declared by the Ethiopian government, it boggles the mind how Prime Minister Desalegn came up with the figure of 82 per cent of Ethiopians who want the Emergency extended. No amount of repression will permanently suppress the peaceful struggle of all Ethiopians for freedom, human rights and majority rule.

Somaliland is not only a pioneer as a cashless country but as one of the leading markets in mobile banking platforms in Africa. The phenomenon is not only revolutionising the people’s concept of money but also the way urgently needed assistance is provided to affected people in emergency situations.

Elections in Kenya have become a ritual performed periodically to legitimise the control of power by a few, while the majority remain silent, but enraged, waiting for the opportunity to vent their frustrations. Just a few months before the August 8 poll, all indications are that the type of leadership the country needs to end corruption and tribalism has no chance of rising. Kenya has a long way to go.

Recent statistics show that for a population of over 70 million, only 4% of the inhabitants are connected to the Internet due to limited infrastructure and high access costs. Government actions such as shutdowns, alongside surveillance and censorship practices, undermine the development of inclusive Internet society in the central African country.

Kenya’s military has been inside Somalia ostensibly pursuing al-Shabaab militants since 2011 as part of the US-led ‘war on terror’. No one knows when the mission will end or its cost. There is little discussion about the war among Kenyans. Government updates are impossible to verify. The public is generally assumed to be in support of the invasion – even when in reality they are so ignorant of what is going on to really care.

From chattel slavery to the current period of neocolonial flag independence, the Caribbean labouring classes have yet to exercise substantive power over the political institutions that govern their lives. A system of popular assemblies with the capacity to challenge the authoritarian liberal capitalist democracies for power would be one of the best expressions of reparatory justice in the Caribbean.

The developments in Syria demand attention as many countries face the threat of imperialist intervention. There is no reason to imagine that any country is immune to imperialist intervention. Markets, resources to be plundered, geographical location, relations with the world bosses are all factors favouring imperialist intervention. Is the rest of the world going to simply sit by and watch?

Nothing could be more hypocritical than Trump's claim to have bombed Syria because of the suffering of Syrian children. Deployment of weapons of mass destruction against civilians is a hallmark of America’s wars. Moreover, how can a man who ordered that not a single refugee be accepted from Syria, even keeping out children scheduled to undergo life-saving medical procedures, claim to act in the name of Syrian children?

Militarism for the purpose of destabilization remains a way of life for US foreign policy. America insists on projecting the image that it has a morally, politically, and ideologically superior position to accord itself the role of patron imperialist delivering the wretched of the earth to Western capitalist civilization – a 21st century version of the 19th century “White man’s burden”.

South African communist leader Chris Hani was assassinated by white racists 27 years ago, removing him from the scene during the nation’s transition to Black rule. Hani fought careerism and corruption in the revolutionary movement. Today, the tradition of internal debate that Hani promoted has become eroded, and criticism keeps being silenced as sowing disunity.

Kenya’s Independent Policing Oversight Authority has launched investigations into the killings of the two victims who are allegedly suspected of being members of a gang. A video that went viral on the Internet showed an alleged police officer shooting several times at a man who apparently was unarmed and represented no imminent threat to anyone’s life.

The security context in Europe today doesn’t make everybody unhappy, especially among firms that have specialised in security and surveillance, among them the British G4S, to which many governments subcontract their dirty work, ranging from prison management to the deportation of migrants. Will it be able to regain financial health in the new "Trumpian" world in which we live, after being tarnished by so many scandals?

Even with 22,000 western-trained and funded AMISOM troops stationed in Somalia, the country still has not been stabilized. Trump’s directive will only create more death and destruction.

Common sense, historical facts and circumstantial evidence suggest that it’s unlikely that Assad gassed his own people.  In fact, it’s much more likely that the chemical weapons were from al-Qaeda, ISIS and/or other anti-Assad factions. Indeed, a case can be made that the attack was coordinated by the White Helmets, with US neoconservatives providing the script.

Pambazuka News 816: South Africa: Death of a dream

The youth have  great potential to advance gender equality in Africa, given the fact that they are not overburdened by gender stereotypes and patriarchy. The greatest value of enlightenment and education of young men and women to promote gender equality is to create a new generation of gender activists that can shift minds and hearts to redress historical and present injustices against women.

The Convergence of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) has defied all efforts over the past year, by the Honduran government and the DESA dam company, to destroy it. On Monday, 27 March, 24 years after Berta Cáceres cofounded the Lenca indigenous organization, COPINH hosted an anniversary celebration of rebellion and recommitment.

Created in 2011 by the International Women’s Network for Democracy and Peace, the prize is awarded to any person or association promoting peace and reconciliation in the African Great Lakes region and educates its populations on non-violent strategies of resistance and achieving change. Two of this year’s winners have featured in recent interviews published by Pambazuka News.

The Igbo expect that a post-Brexit Britain will have to sit down with a free Biafra and discuss the entire history of the Igbo genocide, the enslavement of the people of Biafra and the subsequent conquest and occupation of Biafra, forced into the genocidist Nigeria “federation”. 

Britain will surely accept full responsibility for the crimes against humanity, apologise to Biafrans and pay full reparations.

This year’s International Women’s Day (IWD) celebration may have come and gone, however, its theme continues to reverberate around the world. The #BeBoldforChange mantra challenges everyone to help create a more gender inclusive world beginning in their spheres of influence. I think this is a very apt disposition.

Black America needs a peace movement to confront militarism and the global structures of white supremacy. “We are calling for a new alliance to help revive the black anti-war and peace movement in the black community as an essential component of a revived broader anti-war and pro-peace movement,” says human rights activist and former Green Party VP candidate Ajamu Baraka.

The formation of states that cut across clan lines may help Somalia achieve the elusive unity that it has been seeking for more than two decades. With fine tuning, Somalia may finally come up with a solution to end its prolonged mistrust and clan bickering to the satisfaction of all sides.

Does the gradual increase in the number of offensive strikes starting in 2007, the occurrence of the Marikana Massacre and the farm workers’ revolt of 2012, the five-month platinum strike and the one-month metalworkers’ strike in 2014 indicate that a new wave of offensive strikes has begun? Or is this just a short-lived revival? A key question is: has South Africa reached a turning point?

Given the corruption and exploitation by the top dogs within the factions of the ruling ANC, it is clear that none of the factions has anything to offer the working people of South Africa. Instead of backing one faction over the other, the working class (and the black section in particular) rather needs to fight against class rule, capitalism and the state. That is the system that is rotten to the core.

Since 1994 South Africa has been unable to seriously change the national socio-economic direction in the interest of the majority of the people. The end of apartheid has helped to increase SA’s integration into global capitalism. The benefits and misfortunes of capitalism and racism are mass poverty for the majority and wealth and privileges for the powerful minority, which includes a few blacks.

Monopoly capitalists and their allies in the ANC have corrupted something very precious in South Africa’s history – the proud and militant tradition of struggle for social justice. They have corrupted the dream of a free and egalitarian nation. For over two decades, the ANC has presided over entrenched corruption, which must now be resisted. But that struggle will constitute a whole new historical epoch.

Supporters of austerity are happy because South Africa’s junk rating is a good stick with which to whip President Zuma. But his immediate concern is survival, not the economy. Could the current crisis generate a long-overdue era of redistribution, racial justice and radical economic transformation? This was the promise of new Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba last Saturday, April Fool’s Day.

Pambazuka News 815: Africa's heroes and Empire's darlings

Will the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) bloc ever really challenge the world financial order? The BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) leadership is meeting in New Delhi from 31 March to 2 April with a degree of fanfare unmatched by accomplishments. It is a good moment to assess progress since the BRICS Summit in 2013 when rumour had it that the then host city of Durban would also be the NDB’s home base. (It ended up in Shanghai, launched in 2015.)

South Africa’s democracy is in trouble. The present situation is, in objective terms, a house divided; a house that is tottering on rotten foundations. Despite the more general advances that have been made under the ANC’s rule since 1994, power has not only remained in the hands of a small minority but has increasingly been exercised in service to capital. 

People in every country must oppose the terror campaign the US is leading in Iraq and Syria. America seeks to maintain its intolerable political and economic domination of the region, which created the conditions for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the first place. The lives of the people of Iraq and Syria mean nothing.

Is there really no explanation for Khalid Masood’s lone attack on Westminster Palace, as Scotland Yard sleuths say? Masood could not change his “blackness”, nor the reality of racism in England. He could not get over his schoolmates calling him “Black Ade”. He laughed about it, and even as he grew up into manhood he behaved convivially, behaving like a “good boy”, so as not to appear rude.

In May, Paul Kagame will be feted for his outstanding friendship with the Jewish people. That friendship chiefly entails cynical use of the Rwandan genocide to advance U.S. and Israeli interests in Africa and the Arab world. Kagame was the only African head of state to support the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He has totally thrown his lot in with U.S.-led imperialism.

Africa is a vast continent with diversity of cultures. Rather than see this as an impediment to development, the continent should take advantage of this rich cultural diversity in its quest for economic development and should change the attitudes of its people towards work, interpersonal trust, time, youth and women.

Not only did the ANC consciously choose (before 1994) to turn its ideological and strategic back on the possibilities of organising a massive wellspring of popular power to pursue much more thoroughgoing systemic change, but it also made a conscious choice after 1994 to exercise its unparalleled political position and power (mostly through the state) in partnership with and in service to capital.

The editors have brought together a vast compendium of knowledge that challenges the Eurocentric epistemic colonisation of Africa. The book should be on the reading list for courses on the Political Economy of Africa, Development Economics, and International Relations at universities. It would also do well in the library of journalists and other analysts.

The ISIL phenomenon poses profound lessons and challenges for maintenance of international law and order. Although recent, ISIL has its roots in the deep anomalies and double standards of the global system itself. The policies of Western governments have contributed lavishly to this lawless dynamic. Without discernable effort to repair those fatal policy flaws, more ISILs may be in the offing.

The World Bank has for decades left a trail of human misery. Destruction of the environment, massive human rights abuses and mass displacement have been ignored in the name of “development” that works to intensify neoliberal inequality. In response to legal attempts to hold it to account, the World Bank has declared itself above the law.

Donald Trump is by far the most controversial president the US has ever offered the world. But behind the headline churning, attention grabbing façade, is there any difference between him and the 44 US presidents that have come before?

The same people who did everything they could to vilify both Biko and Sobukwe while they lived – and have taken part in attempted erasure of their legacies – pretend to honour these anti-apartheid icons. Today, those who paid a painful price for associating with Biko and Sobukwe watch how others gobble up the fruit of their sacrifices, as they and their families continue to suffer in silence.

A university in Finland plans to confer an honorary doctoral degree on Ethiopian ruler Hailemariam Desalegn in May. In doing so, Tampere University of Technology will have been an unwitting partner in a sophisticated public relations campaign to legitimize, glamourize, mythologize and romanticize a ruthless and brutal dictator and his regime.

Pascuala Vásquez is the spiritual leader of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH). Known affectionately to all as Doña Pascualita, she is also head of COPINH’s Lenca Cultural Committee, and is on the Council of Elders.

“Kathy”, as he was popularly known, was elected to parliament in 1994  but declined to seek re-election five years later. He wrote an open letter to President Jacob Zuma, suggesting that perhaps he should step down due to widespread corruption in government. Zuma did not attend Kathrada’s memorial, citing the wishes of the family of the veteran freedom fighter.

Pambazuka News 814: Israel's apartheid crimes

Rima Khalaf resigned as executive secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia(ESCWA) after the agency was forced to retract a report stating that Israel is an “apartheid regime.” Khalaf’s letter of resignation to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was translated and posted by poet Lena Khalaf Tuffaha on her Facebook page. Here is that translation:

World Poetry Day was marked on Tuesday, March 21. Throughout Africa, spoken word art is taking firm roots, especially when it explores social issues. Spoken Word artist Valentine Onyeka Ogunaka aka Brainbox from Nigeria shares his experience.

If Steve Biko – the iconic leader of South Africa’s Black Consciousness Movement - were alive today, what would he make of the Afrophobia/xenophobia in South Africa? Would he stridently denounce it – unlike South Africa’s leaders – and seek to foster a new sense of self-love in the transformed slogan: “Black is Beautiful! Be Proud of your Blackness and the Blackness of other Africans!”?

March 21 is International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. A notable cultural icon in the struggle against racism is Jamaican reggae artiste Peter Tosh. He was an internationalist and linked the fight of Africans against racism, settler-colonialism and apartheid in Southern Africa with the struggle of the Palestinians against Zionism and Israeli apartheid.

Namibia marked its 27th independence anniversary on Tuesday. Despite the government’s populist rhetoric, Namibia remains a rich country with poor people. Redistribution of wealth is mainly limited to a new black elite. These are office bearers, party stalwarts and those with close ties to the state. They thrive through a policy of so-called affirmative action and black economic empowerment.

In the four years Uhuru Kenyatta has been in power, the country has accumulated huge debts that will take ages to settle. Official theft of public money stands at a third of the national budget. Kenyatta’s authoritarian tendencies have seen a shrinking of democratic space. Kenya is deeply divided along ethnic lines. As the August elections approach, it is increasingly clear that a new leadership is needed.

Black people are quickly labeled racist any time we raise our voice against white supremacy. It is racism fighting back. It is meant to silence us. We should not openly express what we feel and know. As Black people we should not own our experiences and history. No. We are instead supposed to become complicit in our oppression by attributing our suffering to everything else except white supremacy.

Negotiations did not produce the state of Israel. From 1917 when the Jews procured the dubious Balfour Declaration right up to independence three decades later, the Jews conducted themselves in a manner that could have made the murderers of today’s ISIS and Boko Haram look like saints. So, why do some people encourage Palestinians to embrace negotiations as the way to their freedom?

The racist policies of Israel constitute the internationally recognized crime of apartheid against Palestinians. As was the case for South Africa under minority white supremacist rule, it is imperative to think seriously about the nature of Israel’s constitutional order and about how to deepen anti-racist alliances and solidarities across borders on behalf of the Palestinian people.

Historically, the state is a transient phenomenon. Where are the world’s once great empires? Europe, with just a third of Africa’s population, has produced 23 new states since the late 1980s. There is no point in insisting that the Igbo people, victims of Africa’s worst – and ongoing – genocide, who want their own state, must remain a part of Nigeria.

An American manufactured helicopter attacked a vessel carrying Somalis fleeing from the war-torn state of Yemen killing 42. Somalia supports the US-backed Yemeni regime against the Houthi forces. But it is well known that Yemeni forces and their allies continue to target civilians in the war and prevent the transport of essential goods and services from reaching millions of people inside the country.

De Klerk succeeded in shaping post-apartheid South Africa in deep and fundamental ways. Every policy he spelt out in his 1990 speech has been faithfully followed by successive administrations of the ANC. This is why so many black South Africans feel that their dreams are unrealised. It also explains why there is so much confidence among white racists that their positions of power are untouchable.

Two recommendations from the report stand out. First, it asks that the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel. Second, the report urges that UN member states allow criminal prosecutions of Israeli officials connected with the practices of apartheid against the Palestinian people. Since most of the world’s states have signed the Convention Against Apartheid, they are now obliged to act.

Rima Khalaf’s resignation, under pressure to suppress factual and legal findings unfavorable to Israel, will send a chilling message to other UN officials that they are better off serving those in power than in upholding any mandate to advance human rights and respect for international law.

Popular former President Aristide survived an assassination attempt this week against the backdrop of increased violence in the world’s first black republic. The mandate of the deeply resented UN occupying force MINUSTAH ends in April and is set to be renewed. The violence is orchestrated to justify continued imperialist intervention that benefits foreigners and their local henchmen.

Hundreds of popular organizations, networks and movements of Latin America and the Caribbean launched a Week of Solidarity with Haiti, March 15-22, with a petition demanding the total withdrawal of the troops that occupy that country and closure of the UN Mission (MINUSTAH). They also want the UN to provide reparations for violations and crimes against the Haitian people.

Pambazuka News 813: Invasions, protests and fifth columnists 

As the head of Nigeria’s elections body, Prof Attahihu Jega is widely acknowledged to have delivered a credible election, with abiding lessons for Africa. For him, a credible election requires planning, effective organisation, focus, resilience, relative autonomy of the electoral body, as well as its impartiality and integrity.

The National Coalition for Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA) and the Pan-African Institute for the Study of African Societies (PAISAS) have signed an MOU as part of a process of strengthening relations between Africa and its Diaspora. Here is the document:

Last week in six Caribbean countries - Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago - survivors of gender based violence and their supporters took to the streets for International Women’s Day in solidarity with the #LifeInLeggings movement to raise awareness and to demand adequate measures to end the vice.

Morocco’s newfound interest in Africa is linked to NATO’s attack on Africa and the murder of Muammar Gaddafi. NATO’s destruction of Libya completely humiliated the African Union. It tore the heart out of an alternative African future. And left Africa seriously exposed once again to the Western imperial virus: a virus contemporary Morocco carries.

Britain will have no problem explaining to the world why it accepts 5 million Scots to exercise their right to self-determination which could cause the collapse of a union of 310 years of willing partners, but is unrelentingly instrumental in supporting a 51-year-old genocide campaign against 50 million Igbo people, forced into a conquest agglomeration of a “state” created and called Nigeria by Britain, but who, equally as the Scots, want their freedom.



The 13th Israel Apartheid Week continues in Kenya, March 20-25, 2017. The event, organised by Kenya Palestine Solidarity Movement, will feature films, poetry and discussions. In this poem, Shailja Patel shares her thoughts on why Kenyans - and Africans - should support the struggles of the Palestinian people against Israeli apartheid.

Israel summoned the South African ambassador for an official reprimand after two SA officials condemned Israeli policies in Palestine. During the Israel Apartheid Week, SA Minister of Water and Sanitation called the Israeli Defence Forces "a murderous machine" and accused Israel of conducting a "water apartheid" against Palestinians. Here is Nomvula Mokonyane's speech:

Not only was she involved in the development of the first national television network in Ghana, Graham Du Bois worked on a high level within the CPP government as an administrator within the state publishing house. She worked directly with President Nkrumah and was a part of his inner circle of advisors.

Security forces shooting dead unarmed protesters, arbitrary arrests, detentions, torture, disappearances, harassment and intimidation are some of the reported human rights abuses that have been continuing for more than four months now in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon.

In order for Africa to assume responsibility for its own transformation and elevation, and be able to undertake self-reliant development and create secure domestic prosperity, it must create its own specific ideology and strategy of self-development. To do this there are 5 irreducible components that have to be designed and put in place.

The Rwandan dictator has mastered the philosophy of the big lie: if you keep repeating a falsehood over and over again, people will sooner or later believe it. Kagame has grossly exaggerated his social and economic accomplishments of the past 23 years. He says he has built the Singapore of Africa. In reality, though, Rwanda is the poorest country in East Africa, except for Burundi.

Kenya’s rulers and some elite commentators frame the ongoing occupation of indigenous lands grabbed by colonialists in Laikipia as a criminal invasion of private property by lawless bands of tribal herders. Really? Those white ranches - in land-hungry Kenya, half-a-century into “independence” - are nothing more than ample proof of neocolonialism. The dispossessed indigenous people must take back their land. By any means necessary.

President Donald Trump’s declared agenda is to put America first in world affairs. That seems to have frightened some people as it suggests the so-called leader of the free world is not interested in promoting multilateralism. But, as a matter of fact, when has America ever been interested in internationalism? When has America ever championed interests other than its own?

Somalia’s president has declared the famine ravaging the country a national disaster. There has been little response from the world.  Drought is a natural calamity that can happen anywhere, but what makes it more deadly in Somalia is the continued conflict that prevents relief aid from reaching the needy or makes it difficult for affected nomads to travel to other places to find help.

Pambazuka News 812: No Revolution without women!

Women played an instrumental role in the formation of the Pan-African Movement and in the national liberation struggles. Inside Africa, women were at the forefront of the independence movement in the areas of mass mobilization, political education, armed struggle and national reconstruction. In the U.S., numerous women provided the impetus for the reemergence of the Civil Rights and Black Power struggles.

In this final essay of a seven-part series, Yash Tandon depicts fascism as a systemic phenomenon arising from the incompatibility of democracy and capitalism. For capitalism to persist, as is the case now, democracy is dispensed with. Hegemonic imperialist powers embody fascism in their relations with the rest of the world. Leaders of African neo-colonies administer the fascist system on behalf of the global corporate and financial fascism.

Government statistics show that Kenya’s public universities and counties are largely ethnic ghettos. The universities are often headed by academics - and have a majority staff - from the ethnic communities where these institutions are located and whose names they bear. Same thing with the country’s 47 devolved units. The names of universities and counties should be changed to de-ethnicize them.

Western Sahara stands out today as Africa’s last colony, occupied illegally and forcefully by Morocco with the backing of France. Everyday Saharawi people suffer horrendous human rights violations by the occupying power. This is one of the world’s forgotten conflicts. The only peaceful solution is for Morocco to accept the Saharawi people’s right to self-determination.

Biafra’s sons and daughters must cease to represent genocidist Nigeria in all conceivable competitions. Never again should we be treated to the grotesque scene of witnessing some Igbo athlete, some Igbo writer, some Igbo academic, appearing at some world stage carrying or wrapping themselves around a Nigerian flag. Enough! Order a Biafran flag for the occasion.

Before the start of a public lecture by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o in South Africa, student activist Kolosa Ntombini requested the renowned Kenyan writer and academic to ask white people in the audience to leave the hall as only black people could meaningfully discuss decoloninization. Kolosa recounts the episode.

Despite widespread vociferous opposition by citizens, the government of Somaliland has granted a military base to Abu Dhabi. There is no credible justification for this decision in terms of Somaliland’s national security or economic needs. The decision is one more example of the culture of impunity, entitlement and mendacity of the Kulmiye government.

The business community, oil companies, government officials, residents of Port Harcourt and non-governmental organizations need to come together to find a lasting solution, which borders more on structural and systemic issues associated with the oil and gas capitalist economy than with any flimsy explanation being given.

As American contradictions get sharper in the coming four years, what is needed is a rich Islamic selfhood that abides by the law of the land, is at ease with quarrelsome heterogeneity, and is confident enough to enter into open, vigorous and respectful dialogue.

It is wrong history to teach that Africa was named by Greeks or Romans when these colonialists illegally occupied this unique continent through aggression and invasion. This was in 332 B.C. until the Roman invasion in 30 B.C. Africa got its name from Africans.

On what would have been indigenous and environmental movement leader Bertha Cáceres' 45th birthday [March 4, 2017], we reproduce this letter from her daughter Laura. Cáceres was assassinated in her native Honduras just before midnight one year and one day ago. Her birthday party had already been planned.

The Pan-Africanist movement harbours some African men who conceal patriarchal attitudes. These “Man-Africanists” are cancerous to the advancement of the movement that needs to engage in developing new men who are genuinely anti-sexist, anti-heterosexist, empathetic, connected to a radical political concept of self-awareness, and guided by an ethical sense of equality, justice and freedom for all.

A record of some visits, different moments, several episodes, significant speeches, various events and testimonies, as part of the international work of President Chávez to Africa between 2001 and 2013. Download the publication below. 

To mark this year’s International Women’s Day, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights published its first-ever report on the human rights of African women. The report celebrates important achievements such as provisions on sexual and gender based violence, economic, social and cultural rights and the principle of non-discrimination in constitutions, polices and in legislations across the continent.

What good is Ngũgĩ, revered as a literary great, if he is unable or unwilling to respond to the most basic of decolonial questions: Can the oppressor leave so that the oppressed can engage? The time for grandstanding and sloganeering about decolonization has come to an end. The time for praxis is now.

Kenya’s much-awaited elections on August 8 have thrown up the usual crowd of crooks in designer suits shouting themselves hoarse with the well-worn promises to deliver a sparkling new nation of milk and honey. It is all nonsense.

International presence and pressure is necessary to ensure a fair re-trial, set to continue on March 13, against the Gdeim Izik Group from Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, who Amnesty International says were “unfairly convicted.” The Group strenuously denies the charges, claim that they are politically motivated, and insist that confessions used at the trial were obtained using torture.

Development capacitation through local resource exploitation, mass industrial production and domestic prosperity-generation is what Africa requires to become the self-actuated mover of its own development  that does not depend on the vagaries of external demand for primary commodities. But sometimes even such initiatives are resisted by anti-African development leaderships.

Pambazuka News 811: Exclusion: Afrophobia, war criminals and tribalists

The Tanzanian activists had entered Malawi legally for a cross-learning trip with Malawian colleagues at the defunct Kayekera uranium mine in the Karonga region. Malawian authorities had approved the mission beforehand. The arrest and detention comes at a critical time during Malawi’s own domestic debates about the harmful impacts of mining on local communities.

Does the ANC leadership, many of whose members lived in exile in other African countries for many years, bother to tell their stories to the new generation that is growing up in South Africa and who know almost nothing about the role played in the struggle against apartheid by the poor African countries whose people constitute the “immigrants” they now despise and harass?

On January 18, 2017, the regime in Ethiopia signed a Memorandum of Understanding to pay SGR Government Relations, Lobbying (Washington, D.C) $150,000 per month for lobbying services for a total of $1.8 million. Why is the regime in Ethiopia spending so much money to lobby the Trump Administration, when some 20 million Ethiopians are starving?

In Africa the ‘collapse’ of the Soviet block had profound implications. At that time in the late 1980s and early 1990s Africa, and particularly Southern Africa, was involved in a process of decolonization by way of armed struggle, in which the Soviet block played a decisive role.  The contribution of the Soviet block and Cuba to the decolonization of Africa remains a testament to the progress of humankind.

Zimbabwe is heading to elections next year, but anyone who hopes that the polls will translate into a better life for the majority of the people is deluded. Elections are merely contests for state power and never about finding the best vision and leadership for the country. With the ruling ZANU-PF party determined to remain in power, the likelihood of election-related violence in Zimbabwe is high.

South Africa recently discovered that 17 banks were colluding to manipulate the national currency to make super profits. Often, government officials are part of such scandals. What is needed is a unified, Africa-wide solidarity network from below and beyond borders working together to get governments and institutions to ensure that damaging profiteering is stopped.

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