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CONTENTS: 1. Features, 2. Announcement
Features
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.
 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.
 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.
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.
 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.
 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.
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.
 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.
 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.
Announcement
 Dear Reader,
With this issue, Pambazuka News takes our annual August break to recharge.
Our next issue will come to you on 8 September 2016.
We thank you for your continued support, which makes this distinguished publication a powerful platform for the voices of justice and freedom in the pan-African world.
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Thank you for your support.
Henry Makori and Tidiane Kasse - Editors, Pambazuka News
Yves Niyiragira - Executive Director, Fahamu
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