‘In Africa, political power is often used as a “get out of jail free” card, immunising the venal political elite through various mechanisms,’ Khadija Sharife tells Pambazuka News. But, says Sharife, while corruption may be ‘rampant’ in Africa, this is ‘only half the story’: Corrupt government leaders get away with graft much more easily and more frequently, thanks to international financial enablers, based in ‘transparent’ locations from London to New York. The key to addressing corruption, Sharife suggests, is to scrutinise unchecked and unregulated shadow economies 'in developed and developing countries alike'.

If you want to put Tanzania’s Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda on the spot, Chambi Chachage tells Pambazuka News, just mention ‘the Zanzibar question’ – whether or not Zanzibar should retain its own separate government. Pinda recently sparked national debate by suggesting that Zanzibar is not a country, when he said that he would like to see Tanzania ‘run by a single government instead of two’. If we don’t ‘take the bull by its horns’ and resolve the Union issue once and for all, says Chachage, it will surely ‘explode’.

Don’t be fooled by the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission, Wangari Maathai writes in Pambazuka News, its purpose is simply to ‘facilitate impunity, hoodwink and massage the victims and yet again, sweep the crimes under the carpet’. Impunity in Kenya started with the explorers and early settlers who demonstrated no respect for the rule of law of the people they encountered, says Maathai, and given that no leader since ‘has ever been made to account for crimes they commit against the state’, there’s little incentive for things to change now.