Pambazuka News 790:The spirit of Biko: Struggles for Black dignity continue

My father is a man of principles and a stubborn man. I am terrified that he will take his hunger strike to its end. I do not want him to die.

The current student protests have their antecedents in the youth movements of 40 years ago. These students are fighting for their lives, their dignity and their humanity. Their resistance to white supremacy should provide inspiration to Black girls colonized in the US, Europe and around the world.

Deeply hurt by Britain’s overwhelming support for Nigeria to crush the Republic of Biafra, Dr Ibiam renounced and returned to the British head of state the three insignias of knighthood that both she and her father, King George VI, had earlier conferred on the esteemed missionary physician for services to church and state.

When successful, cooperatives can strengthen and liberate individuals and communities in the most fundamental ways. History shows that the benefits people of African descent around the world can gain include economic empowerment, employment, skills acquisition, community agency, self-confidence and cultural revival. All these will contribute to the progression from disempowerment to empowerment and full self-determination.

President Museveni’s government wants to change the law to allow prospective investors in the mining industry to access private land that contains minerals without negotiating with the land-owners. His argument is that minerals in the soil belong to the government and that the people occupying the land have no say in the matter. The people must resist such tyranny.

South Africa’s population is 86% black. Yet between 2010-2014, the Department of Politics at the University of Cape Town has graduated only two black MA students. In 2015, 97% of black applicants were denied admission to the Masters programme. To-date there is not a single black South African enrolled in the programme. Has this exclusion become a way of carving out the task of thinking and intellectual production as an exclusive white preserve?

One of Pambazuka News’s frequent contributors, Odomaro Mubangizi, once in a while stops writing and instead tries to sketch out his thoughts about topical issues of our world.

In one province in Gabon, the stronghold of President Ali Bongo, the results declared by the Gabonese Electoral Commission indicated  that 99.83% of the electorate turned out to vote, and that 95.46% of them voted for Ali Bongo! The question is: how can we ensure that election results in Africa are not dependent on an electoral commission or constitutional court that is in the pocket of the incumbent?

The intersectionality of people’s struggles on climate change calls for concerted efforts towards climate justice. Across the world, communities are made vulnerable by intensified exploitation of natural resources and overproduction for profit. There is a need to launch and strengthen grassroots educational and advocacy campaigns to deepen understanding of the relationship between climate change and human rights.

The Nkrumah years of transition from 1951-1956 and the independence period of 1957-1966 set the standard for African development and political imperatives related to inter-state integration and women’s affairs. Nkrumah was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the US on 24 February 1966. Genuine African liberation, unification and socialist development can only occur after a fundamental break with world capitalism.

What might be there in the Igbo gene to account for the dialectics of Igboness in Nigeria: the unchallenged warriors of the Nigerian space in territorial terms but the quickest to get sucked into homeland insularity at the slightest provocation? How could so educated, so successful in business and so globally mobile and established an ethnic group misread the Nigerian text every now and then?

Pambazuka News 789: Rethinking leadership: Beyond the farce of neoliberal rhetoric

Celebrated pan-Africanist Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana organized a historic conference for women in Africa and the diaspora in 1960 to celebrate their contribution to the liberation struggles, but also to create a platform for reflection on their future role in a free, socialist and united Africa. The meeting underscored the deep conviction among pan-Africanists about the revolutionary role of women, highlighting the fact that the liberation of Africa is impossible without the complete emancipation of all the women of the continent.

People not versed in the complexities of the diplomatic world of distorted mirror images in Geneva or Accra or Nairobi may wonder in awe at the agreements negotiated in their name by their representatives in multilateral forums like UNCTAD. But, truth be told, UNCTAD is in no position to deliver the mandate that it got in Nairobi.

The argument that France is waging war on Islamic dress codes to prevent the enslavement of women is just one more example of disgusting hypocrisy in the service of imperialist interests. Instead of representing liberation of women from all the ways they are already enslaved, it amounts to screaming about the domination of Muslim women by Muslim men just so that these women can be forced to accept forms of oppression that patriarchal, imperialist French society considers proper.

The Toronto-based shoemaker took advantage of European colonialism to rapidly set up across the continent, squeezing out local footwear producers, working with apartheid South Africa and even reaching out to Uganda’s Idi Amin.

Nigeria’s ruling elites are blithely pursuing a neoliberal path of self-destruction, setting the stage for a national meltdown unless diverted by some miracle. Unaddressed grievances have spawned numerous violent movements actively championing secession of their regions from the federation. The nation-building project has failed. And as no sensible alternative is being offered, the result in the long-run could be utter chaos.

Does it make any sense for Israel to claim to be strengthening its historical ties with Ethiopia, when thousands of Ethiopian Jews in Israel are treated like second-class citizens? Prime Minister HeilaMariam Desalegn should have had the courage to call for the respect of the human rights of these citizens who in the first place were assisted to migrate to Israel by the Jewish state itself.

Videos depicting the senseless murders of unarmed people of colour have given birth to a new social movement, #BlackLivesMatter, while bringing to light a reality incomprehensible to white communities; the lives of people of colour have systemically been deemed disposable.

Leadership is about how those in top positions exercise power and influence. Leadership must serve both women and men, young and old, the empowered and marginalised, weak and strong, poor and rich. The kind of leadership we need in Africa must be transformative. It must first address the question of inequality, exclusion and identity.

The first African People´s Tribunal on Transnational Corporations, that recently took place on 16th and 17th August in Manzini, Swaziland, was perhaps one of the most counter-hegemonic and brave events to bring some hope to mining affected communities in Southern Africa.

I see the idea of walking away from racial injustice head down and shoulder slumped to be beyond comprehension. It is that mentality that has allowed institutional racism in the World Bank to outlast apartheid. As of today, September 8, 2016, I will be on a hunger strike until the Bank fully restores my professional identity, and agrees to redress the irreparable damage it has caused my person and profession.

As an example of leadership for Africa, the AU is seriously wanting. Yet this is not just an intergovernmental organization. It is a rallying point for the actualization of the African people’s deepest aspirations for freedom, dignity, unity and shared prosperity. In a hegemonic globalizing world, the AU needs a revolutionary leader with global stature to uphold and protect the principles and vision of the Constitutive Act.

Since assuming office on May 29, 2015, President Buhari has lived up to his campaign promise of tackling corruption headlong and providing a fresh template for instilling transparency and accountability. Nigeria could be a model for fighting this monster that gobbles up some $2.6 trillion annually from the global economy.

Black August is inseparably linked to the legacy of the assassinated prison leader, revolutionary, Marxist and Black Panther Party Field Marshal George Jackson. Black August is very important to the global African struggle for liberation. It is positively affirming the necessity of a politics that is all about ending oppressive relations in society and the use of all available means, including armed struggle, to create a just society.

Nigeria is gripped by the familiar anxieties of an economy in distress. This escalating crisis has demystified a president once thought capable of astute, if not magical, economic management. In their desperation for respite, many Nigerians are now paradoxically yearning for the corruption that they and their leaders blame for their economic woes.

The first African People´s Tribunal on Transnational Corporations, that recently took place on 16th and 17th August in Manzini, Swaziland, was perhaps the most counter-hegemonic and brave event to bring some hope to mining affected communities in Southern Africa.

Pambazuka News 788: Viva Motherland! Only Africa can heal Africa

The Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), the dominant group within the ruling coalition, rules over a deeply divided and aggrieved populace. The TPLF has carried out egregious human rights violations; the regime has become even more repressive with each year by systematically limiting political space, taking 100% parliamentary seats in the Lower House. Ethiopians are sick and tired of the regime in Addis.

Only Africa has solutions to African problems. That requires a healing leadership. We need to mobilize the people to reform the current leadership mindset, which is only destructive. Africa needs to address issues of civic education, of citizens being able to elect leaders who will make a difference, and to ensure we have institutions that make it impossible for anybody to act as if there were no laws.

In our drab world, with its wars, hunger and disease, athletics and other sports reveal to us the wonder of what we could be enjoying in this life if only we weren't so stupid as to waste our time, energy and resources on horrible things like war and selfish politics.

The ouster of Brazilian President Dilma Roussef and the ongoing process of impeaching her are in fact a coup organized by the wealthy classes in the country with the support of their foreign masters. The objective of this is to roll back important reforms aimed at bettering the lives of the people and instead place in the hands of the oligarchs Brazil’s key industries and resources.

Where is the Pan-African spirit? The absence of African solidarity with African Americans who are being killed in US cities by state security forces driven by white supremacy is deeply saddening. From all over Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia, Black people must rise up to condemn the killing of our sisters and brothers in the US and offer any support we can to the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

Once we rid ourselves of the false notion that the market economy, as a system, could be objective or benevolent, and we distinguish it from the market as one economic institution instead of a system, we can aptly move towards rejecting the market economy while embracing healthy regulated markets.

On Saturday, August 13, the world celebrated the 90th birthday of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro Ruz, the only individual ever to be acknowledged by the UN as a “World Hero of Solidarity.” It is very hard to think of a more important world leader than Fidel.

Libya once was a proud nation that rejected US military presence on the continent, seeing it as an obstacle to Pan-African unity. With the country destroyed, the US has been able to further expand militarily all over the continent. And it has been President Obama, not George W. Bush, who has presided over the rapid neo-colonization of Africa.

Over the past two decades, Russia's efforts to regain its Soviet-era influence in Africa have achieved little success because "times have changed significantly, for example, a new economic and political environment, new emerging challenges, new competitive conditions and new bases for cooperation," according to Nataliya Zaiser, a Public Policy Advisor at Squire Patton Boggs Moscow office covering Russia, the Eurasian Union and Africa, and also the Chair of the Africa Business Initiative.

Pambazuka News 787: Revisiting Biafra and Africa's big-man politics

To tell whether Prof. Mahmood Mamdani has failed to implement the doctoral programme at Makerere Institute of Social Research requires that one is either a doctoral student, a teacher on the programme, or has done fieldwork at MISR with a research question on Mamdani’s ambition and its logistical requirements. Anything other than that is sheer gossip.

Heads of State from East and the Horn of Africa have endorsed a proposal to deploy a rapid protection force to South Sudan, which would later serve under the UN mission (UNMISS) with an enhanced mandate. But this is unlikely to solve the crisis in the world’s newest nation. UNMISS has serious weaknesses and, perhaps more importantly, the South Sudanese conflict is largely economic.

Municipal elections in South Africa returned the poorest result for the ruling ANC party since coming to power at the end of minority white rule in 1994. But the ANC is not the only once-dynamic party in Africa that has been ruined by party leaders who get infected with a sense of entitlement after they have led their parties through successful struggles against white rule.

A massive government crackdown on protestors and dissidents is underway in Ethiopia, but the international community has turned a blind eye to this reign of terror. The first, and possibly most far-reaching and effective, response by the international community should be to openly condemn the regime in Addis Ababa and withdraw the unwavering support for the repressive government.

Last week’s local government elections in South Africa were marred by racial slurs, ethnocentric witch-hunting, mudslinging and outright physical elimination of political opponents. The country’s electoral commission remained indolent and incapable of taking bold steps to put an end to the blatant abuse of citizens’ right to choose their own leaders. Free and fair elections remain a big challenge in the rainbow nation.

The World Bank should not be applauded for its new PR driven recruitments and promotions. Instead it should be held accountable for mistreatment of over 1500 black staff. The systemic racism for over half a century calls for bold and immediate actions. Establishing a high level external commission is the first critical step.

Prime Holdings, a corrupt company discredited a decade ago, is inexplicably back in business handling huge government contracts. Meanwhile, Crystal Ventures, a company owned by President Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front, dominates the commercial scene. 

In the September 17, 2014 issue of the Chicago Suntimes, President Kim wrote a letter to the editor to counter Reverend Jesse Jackson’s article titled “Apartheid Avenue Two Blocks from the White House.” That letter has since been removed from newspaper’s website. We republish it here.

Nigeria’s problem, which has led to the current calls for restructuring of the country, is failure by the ruling classes to meet the basic needs of their people. There is no evidence that restructuring, whatever it means, would solve this basic problem. Official corruption, mass unemployment, ethno-religious conflicts, an economy that over-relies on oil, are Nigerian realities that cannot be addressed by restructuring.

Swaziland’s King Mswati III passes suppression, unaccountability and royal opulent spending in the face of drought, starvation and poverty, as traditionally “Swazi” values.  Sonkhe Dube, a young exiled activist, begs to differ.

Talk of breaking up Nigeria is lazy. The country should restructure in a way that every part will, at all times, be appropriately represented in government. This was the central idea in the late General Sani Abacha’s well-thought-out provisions that would have restructured Nigeria from a country of contending ethnic nationalities into a modern nation-state in just 30 years.

 

#BlackLivesMatter has illuminated the crisis of contemporary whiteness in its full flesh by giving white people a glimpse into some of the worst excesses of white supremacy: the execution of people of colour by state actors with impunity.

Nigeria is an artificial country that was put together by non-Nigerians.  No one sought the consent of the people that were literally gaveled into existence as “Nigerians” when the state was originally constituted. With the resurgence of demands for secession of the Igbo nation to form the Republic of Biafra, the time has come for a candid discussion about the future of Nigeria.

What sort of intellectuals would write a book about a genocidal war in which more than three million lives of their own brothers and sisters were wasted without even acknowledging in the index that the word ‘genocidal’ was used in the text by some authors to objectively describe the atrocities?

Prosecution efforts so far have exacerbated, rather than alleviated, ethnic and regional divisions. Credible prosecutions against those most responsible on all sides of the conflict would offer a clear statement to all citizens of Côte d’Ivoire that the justice system is blind to ethnicity and is there to serve and protect all its citizens.

Pambazuka News 786: Can the leopard, er, Empire change its spots? 

Britain was heavily dependent on colonial wo/man-power, raw materials and even financial contributions. Black people conscripted by Empire suffered racial discrimination throughout a war which was supposedly fought against Hitler's race theories and in the name of freedom and democracy. These contributions are hardly acknowledged.

Having failed to prevent Patrice Lumumba from taking power in Congo, a cabal of European and American politicians and businessmen saw the maintenance of indirect white rule in Katanga as the only means of ensuring their continued profiteering from Congo’s huge mineral wealth. Perpetuating a façade of African nationalism the white lobby supported autocrat Tshombe to plot for secession.

Dr. Munyakazi is dangerous to Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who justifies his ruthless totalitarian regime by claiming to be the savior who stopped a genocide.  He is also dangerous to the Holocaust and genocide industries, whose false equation of the Holocaust and the Rwandan massacres is at the ideological foundation of “humanitarian” war ideology.

Sanders squandered his most important historical moment. He had a chance, one chance, to take the energy, anger and momentum, walk out the doors of the Wells Fargo Center and into the streets to help build a third-party movement.

In a long-running dispute, powerful people within the administration of the University of Sierra Leone are doing everything they can to push out Prof Ibrahim Abdullah. The latest report of an illegally constituted committee reveals the extent to which Prof Abdullah’s enemies are willing to go to deny him justice.

The article explores the problem of police violence in Kenya and links it to the structural conditions, informed by colonial legacy and most recent failure to de-colonise and democratise policing. Particular emphasis is placed on Constitution, adopted in 2010, and how its radical potential for police reform was wasted by current administration.

For over a century, Europe has been involved in the mass murder of millions of people across Africa in connivance with local elites. The only way to stop these mass murders by empire is for African people to construct for themselves a civilisation where African life is fundamentally sacrosanct. 

Brexit appears to reveal a growing dissatisfaction with globalization. But, on the basis of debates leading to and in the aftermath of the referendum, it seems that Britain’s decision to quit the EU is a mere hiccup in regional integration processes. Regionalism as a product of globalization is unstoppable, including in Africa.

Prof Ali Mazrui was known for making penetrating comparisons of seemingly unrelated individuals, things and groups. It is fair to say that he was also a great classifier in general; nothing was unclassifiable for Mazrui whether it was racism, sexism, Africanity or slavery.

Morocco is seeking to rejoin the African Union, but its motives are suspect. As suggested by an arrogant letter to the AU Chairman, Rabat could be intending to use its membership to strengthen its colonial claims over occupied Western Sahara, an AU founding member state. Moreover, as an ally of Western powers Morocco could be used to sabotage effective African unity from within the AU.

During this recent workshop on decolonizing publications and creating writing cultures, particular dilemmas and nuanced opportunities for the decolonization of knowledge were revealed and they are expounded at length in this reflection. It is our hope that this detailed reflection can serve as a rubric of important lessons for critical and Pan-African scholars who are immersed in decolonizing projects in their respective spaces and institutions.

This book is a useful contribution that will enlighten those people who want to understand why Nigeria is not working and what needs to be done. Persons in positions of leadership in the country may find it a useful guide in tackling some of the problems troubling the nation.

Racial discrimination in the World Bank is a far more systemic and serious issue than any official is willing to admit. Successive Presidents have treated it as a can of worms that’s best kept closed. The Bank’s Administrative Tribunal exists to keep the can closed with a judicial seal and to shield senior management from accountability. 

The renewed bombing of Libya signals the escalation of war against the peoples of the Global South and those oppressed nations and communities within the imperialist states themselves whether in Europe or North America. To counter these provocations an international anti-imperialist movement must be built.

Emancipation Day sends a clear message to the labouring classes that capitalism exploited their ancestors’ labour under chattel slavery and is doing the same to theirs under wage slavery. It is the responsibility of the revolutionary organizers to use Emancipation Day to strengthen the class consciousness, feminist commitments and anti-racist opposition of the labouring classes.

Efforts to end the growing violent conflict in Mozambique have stalled, largely because of the hard line positions taken by the government and the armed opposition group Renamo. There has been an increase in attacks and deaths by Renamo in recent months.

Pambazuka News 785: Name the enemy, It is white supremacy

Was it Africans who went to the Americas and butchered tens if not scores of millions of native Americans? Was it Africans that used their religion to hide their intent to steal as much territory as they could all the while denigrating the beliefs and cultures of innumerable peoples? Who was it that did so much raping that the bloodlines of Latin America changed forever?

A wave of homegrown leaders, movements and activists is sweeping across the continent and bringing with it African solutions to Africa's LGBTI people. Their efforts and alliances have resulted in palpable change in legislation, court decisions, health policies and shifting public opinion across Africa. They need support.

Opinion is divided over the legacy of the AU Chairperson. It is arguable that she has resolved some of the historical challenges of the Commission and predictably either failed or worsened others. However, on the whole, Dlamini-Zuma has demonstrated what leadership can do if it is impelled by a clear vision.

The name of Islam, a religion of 1.6 billion people, has been used to not only commit terrible crimes but is also tarnished by politicians, the media and commentators who are angered by those same crimes. That serves the interest of the perpetrators. Acts of terrorism are never committed by “radical Muslims”. They are committed by criminals.

As he did last year, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim has announced another recruitment of Africans. But this is a PR gimmick meant to cover up deeply rooted racial discrimination against Black staff at the Bank. The Bank’s latest diversity report stresses that the Bank will not make substantive progress in eliminating subtle as well as overt racism unless more systemic changes are made.

Tanzanian President John Pombe Magufuli has captured global attention for his zealous pursuit of accountable and reformist government. But Magufuli is no revolutionary. His many years as a key minister in a neoliberal Tanzania tied to the apron strings of Empire speak volumes. Some of his current policies support the private sector while in fact pushing the poor deeper into destitution.

The job of a US president is to protect and enhance the American Empire. But sadly, African leaders continue to waste time expecting manna from Washington. Decades of being let down by unfulfilled promises from American (and Western leaders) appear not to dampen enthusiasm to keep on expecting a miracle.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim is eyeing another 5-year term in 2017. He is the first Bank chief to be personally accused of racism against black staff. Believed to have been endorsed for his first term by Hilary Clinton, Bank employees are freaking out about the possibility of having Kim at the helm for a further five years, which they fear would be a forgone conclusion if Clinton wins the US presidency.

How can a small club of extremely rich white men who have bullied markets, governments and competitors in the most undemocratic ways, now be looked upon to decree on democracy and accountability merely by the size of their bank balances and trust funds? This perhaps is the most insidious form of state capture.

To celebrate the 15 anniversary of Pambazuka News, Fahamu the publisher in conjunction with the Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies, University of Nairobi, organized a public lecture on 25 July 2016 delivered by one of the longest and most prolific contributors to Pambazuka News, Horace G. Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse University. Here’s the Audio on Soundcloud, Presentation on Slideshare and a  Video on YouTube of the lecture.

The pervasiveness of anti-blackness across the globe suggests that whiteness is not only spread through white people’s bodies but is also a system that survives on consuming and destroying other bodies. The only truly human body is the white body. Capitalism is the logical consequence of this. The challenge for societies across the globe is to nurture and defend alternative versions of being human.

The continuing support across the world for the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process demonstrates that it is still relevant and useful. More work is needed, however, to enhance the support which the process deserves, and especially to deepen its understanding by all key stakeholders.

Regardless of where in the world Black people are killed or brutalized, the violence is rooted in the white man’s diminution of African life. With their long history of struggle, the people of Biafra who seek to break away from neo-colonial Nigeria want to build for themselves a new civilisation where African life, all human life, fundamentally, is sacrosanct.

Fraudulently under-reporting the price, quantity of a product or service and the value of a commercial transaction in invoices are resulting in Africa and developing countries missing out on billions of dollars in tax revenues, foreign exchange and ultimately development.

In an antagonistic relationship defined by an imbalance of power between two forces, the oppressor and the oppressed, who is illegitimate? Protests by students, workers and other oppressed classes can never be illegitimate. In any case, it is not the part of those enjoying the privileges of the status quo to decide how the oppressed should understand and deal with their reality.

Inside the deeply corrupt, incompetent and brutal dictatorship in Zimbabwe, brave voices can still be heard risking life and limb to question the regime and rally the people towards the change they desperately need. With these efforts, Zimbabwe shall rise again. The spirit of Nehanda who inspired the nation’s liberation struggle still lives.

Pambazuka News 784: Our resources, our lives: Resisting the new colonialism

Isn’t it an interesting coincidence that Britons have voted to leave the European Union exactly 50 years after the British government helped ruthlessly crush the Biafra secession in Nigeria? Aren’t all people, whether Biafran or British, entitled to the same right of self-determination?

Jamaica has one of the highest rates of police killings in the world. Physical assaults, arbitrary detention and arrests, torture, humiliation, sexual assaults, extortion, robbery, intimidation of witnesses and fabrication of evidence are also common. The working-class communities that bear the weight of this brutality need to collectively and systematically organize in order to combat it.

The defence of national sovereignty, like its critique, leads to serious misunderstandings once one detaches it from the social class content of the strategy in which it is embedded. The leading social bloc in capitalist societies always conceives sovereignty as a necessary instrument for the promotion of its own interests based on both capitalist exploitation of labour and the consolidation of its international positions.

After many years of running oil palm plantations, the world’s largest food company Unilever sold the lands it had grabbed mostly to foreign companies. The communities living next to and within Unilever’s former plantations are amongst the poorest in Africa. Now they are mobilizing to fight their grabbed land.

Last week Mozambique invited former Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to mediate the simmering conflict between the ruling party and opposition. The impact of this conflict with the potential to disrupt neighbouring countries seems to have gone unnoticed by SADC. The regional bloc should take a firm, impartial leadership position on this matter.

 

UNCTAD 14 presents a free market driven neoliberal trade paradigm which stands in stark contrast to the food sovereignty paradigm where smallholder farmers are social, cultural, and historical actors that make decisions based on a diversity of personal, ethical, and cultural factors and not just based on profit, business and markets.

Africa is facing a new and devastating colonial invasion driven by a determination to plunder the natural resources of the continent, especially its strategic energy and mineral resources. That’s the message from a damning new report from War On Want ‘The New Colonialism: Britain’s scramble for Africa’s energy and mineral resources’ that highlights the role of the British government in aiding and abetting the process.

It is time for the citizens of the world to effect the paradigm shift required to bring about a peaceful resolution to the world’s most infamous conflict.

There are 2,600 Mauritanian workers employed by Kinross Gold of whom 1,041 are permanent, costing the company $36 million, while there are 130 expatriate employees who cost $43 million.

Tagged under: 784, Resources, Yves Engler, Mauritania

Western governments, leading political parties and the world’s largest human rights organizations have recently recognized BDS as a legitimate means of nonviolently advocating and campaigning for Palestinian freedom, justice and equality.

An internal IMF report admitting the destructive nature of neoliberalism may have come too late for many African countries. The neoliberal structural adjustment programs have led to economic hardships, political instability and conflicts in most African countries where they have been implemented.

Mudimbe’s initial gesture of philosophical skepticism - in relation to the western imperial project - or even disapproval had been well received in the academy and largely accounts for his formidable international reputation. But his latest philosophical position might be considered to betray signs of satiety and self-contradictory reaction.

It is very disturbing that the very same municipality that gave permission for people to build and provided the building material is now illegally and violently tearing these shacks down. If the govrernment continues to rule impoverished people in a violent, unlawful, corrupt and criminal way, there will be a risk of retaliation from the oppressed.

Russia is implementing a number of large-scale projects in Africa. At the same time Russian companies are interested in projects focusing on mineral extraction, the energy sector, construction of large manufacturing facilities, human resources training, healthcare development, agriculture and food security, cooperation in digital technology and communications.

Ethiopian authorities have reportedly engaged a British law firm to handle a dispute over the use of the waters of the Nile. This is inappropriate. Any dispute over the Nile should be dealt with under international law. Moreover, a law firm based in a former colonial country can never be expected to be independent of the interests of the country in which its primary interest lies.

The world has edged closer to placing the same value on the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people as it does on human rights. Sadly, not all states, including many African countries, are on the same page.

Pambazuka 783: AU Summit, whose union is the African Union?

Started 10 years ago, South Africa’s shack dwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo has mounted a remarkable struggle – often at a terrible cost - to protect and promote the rights of impoverished people in the towns. This inspirational story shows what poor people can achieve when they organize themselves outside the state, political parties and NGOs.

There seems to be consensus that Nigeria is not working for Nigerians. This is not because Nigeria is unworkable, but because it has been rigged to fail. Forty-six years after the atrocious Biafra War, low-intensity conflicts by state and non-state actors are raging across the country. Nigeria needs to be renegotiated.

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