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CONTENTS: 1. Features, 2. Advocacy & Campaigns
Features
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.
 When one Jewish person is attacked because of his identity, the entire Jewish community feels assaulted. They do not forget the holocaust. People of African origins have suffered far more than any ethnic or social group since the beginning of time. But they are yet to develop their version of “never again” frame of mind. They have the most potent weapon to fight racial injustice: moral capital.
 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?
 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.
 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.
 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?
 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.
 The intersectionality of people’s struggles on climate change calls for concerted efforts towards climate justice. Across the world, communities are made vulnerable by the 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 world appears to have hardly changed in 50 years…
 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.
 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?
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.
Advocacy and Campaigns
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.
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Henry Makori and Tidiane Kasse - Editors, Pambazuka News
Yves Niyiragira - Executive Director, Fahamu
Websites: Fahamu.org, Pambazuka.org
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