Pan-African Postcard
RSS FeedFear and loathing lurk below the rationality
L. Muthoni Wanyeki
2010-03-18, Issue 474
While debate on Kenya's constitution could theoretically be open, L. Muthoni Wanyeki laments the lack of honest discussion around taking it forward.
Make way for a new Nigeria
Horace Campbell
2010-03-18, Issue 474
As the cultural and political world of the old ruling forces in Nigeria collapses, Horace Campbell calls for the country to look to the work of visionary leaders like the late Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem to create ‘new definitions of independence and emancipation’. Nigerians of all classes should ‘tap into the inherent strength of their linguistic and religious diversity,’ says Campbell, ‘and organise from the grassroots’ to bring about the ‘transformation that the country yearns for’.
Demands from Jos, Nigeria and the world: Invest in caring, not killing
Horace Campbell
2010-03-11, Issue 473
Following the tragic killings of predominantly women and children in Jos, Nigeria, on 8 March's International Women's Day, Horace Campbell honours the memory of the victims along with 'the millions of poor women whose lives are devalued everyday'.
What is the Tea Party Nation?
Horace Campbell
2010-03-04, Issue 472
In the wake of the rise of the conservative Tea Party Nation (TPN) in the US, Horace Campbell discusses the resurgence of racist, anti-civil rights political sentiment under the support of 'big capitalists'.
Remembering Ndeh Ntumuzah: An African freedom fighter
1926–2010
Horace Campbell
2010-02-25, Issue 471
A former leader of liberation movement, the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon, Ndeh Ntumuzah was a freedom fighter who devoted his life to the struggle for African independence and emancipation. Horace Campbell pays tribute to a ‘remarkable Pan-African spirit’.
Twenty years of freedom: What we can learn from Nelson Mandela
Horace Campbell
2010-02-18, Issue 470
Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, freed by the popular struggle of a network of activists that delegitimised South Africa’s apartheid system, writes Horace Campbell. Campbell celebrates Mandela’s major contribution to African politics, South Africa and the ANC, ubuntu, and honours those who live out this principle – ‘grassroots liberation forces who have continued the struggle for social justice and system change.’
Bar hopping for Zuma
Azad Essa
2010-02-18, Issue 470
Azad Essa crawls the bars of Durban trying to find punters interested in watching President Jacob Zuma’s ‘State of the Nation Address’ live on television. He finds that most people are more interested in the football.
AU’s peer review lets Uganda off scot-free
L. Muthoni Wanyeki
2010-02-11, Issue 469
If the African Peer Review Mechanism is not to degenerate into meaninglessness, writes L. Muthoni Wanyeki, Africa's governments, regional councils and citizens will need to revitalise its progress.
Loving each other won’t cure ‘negative ethnicity’
L. Muthoni Wanyeki
2010-02-04, Issue 468
While initiatives seeking to address ‘negative ethnicity’ in Kenya are ‘potentially useful and well meaning’, L. Muthoni Wanyeki believes that they fail to get to the core of the problem. There is, she argues, no real understanding of what equality and non-discrimination actually mean. Wanyeki deems there to be a misplaced focus on ‘whether or not we like each other’. She holds rather, that tensions in Kenya have arisen because there is an unhealthy cycle of discrimination and stereotyping that has become normalised. The focus in remedying this cannot then be on making Kenyans ‘like’ one another, Wanyeki argues, but on how to ‘regulate whether and how those feelings translate into actions; into discrimination’.
Al-Faisal’s gone, questions linger
L. Muthoni Wanyeki
2010-01-27, Issue 467
cc Wikimedia CommonsFollowing the arranged departure from Kenya of the Muslim preacher Abdullah al-Faisal back to Jamaica, L. Muthoni Wanyeki reflects on the curious circumstances behind the preacher's transportation out of the country.
Tales from a post-conflict zone
L. Muthoni Wanyeki
2010-01-14, Issue 465
L. Muthoni Wanyeki shares anecdotes from a friend working for a UN mission in a post-conflict African country. While the stories are amusing, says Wanyeki, what they really show is how hard it is ‘to re-construct even a semblance of normalcy following a war’.
Dictatorship more dangerous than climate change
Alemayehu G. Mariam
2009-12-10, Issue 461
Dictatorship presents 'a far more perilous threat to the survival of Africans than climate change', Alemayehu G. Mariam writes in this week’s Pambazuka News. But with the widespread acknowledgement that global warming ‘could affect Africa disproportionately’, and that the continent is ‘entitled to assistance to overcome the effects of greenhouse emissions caused by the industrialised countries’, Mariam argues that its dictators ‘are using global warming as their new preferred ideology behind which they can hide and ply their trade of corruption'.
South Africa's National Planning Commission and tackling poverty
William Gumede
2009-12-03, Issue 460
In light of South Africa's entrenched poverty, William Gumede argues that the country's National Planning Commission must operate 'like the command centre of a country at war'. Tackling poverty and achieving economic progress require harnessing every resource and talent at the country's disposal, Gumede writes, and instilling a culture 'where failure is not an option'.
Nyerere’s nationalist legacy
Issa G. Shivji
2009-12-03, Issue 460
Issa G. Shivji writes of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere's conceptions of nationalism in Africa, ideas which encompassed both the political through liberatory principles and the universal through transcending narrow identities. Debates around the economic success of his policies notwithstanding, Nyerere's greatest legacy, Shivji writes, was his sweeping vision of African unity.
Kenya's nationalist electoral system
L. Muthoni Wanyeki
2009-11-24, Issue 459
With a mere 30 days remaining until Kenya's Harmonised Draft Constitution makes its way to Parliament, L. Muthoni Wanyeki stresses that throwing out the idea of proportional representation altogether would ignore the efforts of the report's Committee of Experts to address potential concerns with the system.
Graça Machel returns
L. Muthoni Wanyeki
2009-11-18, Issue 458
cc W E FWith Graça Machel set to re-visit Kenya this weekend as a member of the Panel of Eminent Persons overseeing the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), L. Muthoni Wanyeki stresses the need for all Kenyans to ensure that those in charge are not permitted to paint a rosy picture of 'achievements' for Machel's team.
Will Kenya ever conclude its constitutional reform process?
L. Muthoni Wanyeki
2009-10-29, Issue 455
Why are so many Kenyans unhappy with the work of the Committee of Experts charged with determining options for resolving contentious issues around reforming the country’s constitution, L. Muthoni Wanyeki asks in this week’s Pambazuka News. And will their disgruntlement end up defeating and derailing the latest effort to finally conclude Kenya’s constitutional reform process?
The dreaded time in Kenya’s culture of impunity
Okello Oculi
2009-10-15, Issue 453
In this week’s Pambazuka News, Okello Oculi comments on the fact that although the local post-election violence tribunal in Kenya has experienced delays in its creation, the dreaded time for the perpetrators and the political figures who encouraged the post-election violence has come. Furthermore, Oculi argues that although in the past the Anti-Corruption Commission was limited due to the fact that it had no legal mandate, this is not so with the new tribunal. In this inspiring piece, Oculi tells us that although justice has been slow, it is coming through Kofi Annan’s pan-African reform vision.
Incitement or raising the red flag?
L. Muthoni Wanyeki
2009-10-15, Issue 453
Last week the BBC published a story entitled Kenyans 'rearming for 2012 poll', making public the fact that ethnic groups in the Rift Valley were rearming in preparation for future election violence. Apart from this being a very worrying story, the backlash this has had on Ken Walfula – who gave subsequent interviews to Kenyan newspapers on the matter – has been disconcerting, argues L. Muthoni Wanyeki in this week’s Pambazuka News. Ken Walfula is now facing charges of incitement and the circulation of false and alarming information from the Kenyan government. Furthermore, as Wanyeki points out, there has been both public and private discussion of rearming, such as that undertaken by the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation Monitoring Project. This is an issue the Kenyan government needs to take seriously, the author stresses.
Captain Camara: Butcher of Conakry?
Okello Oculi
2009-10-07, Issue 451
Following the troubling deaths of Guineans under the repressive rule of Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, Okello Oculi argues that Camara's action represents the latest incident of a 'lethal psychotic disorder' manifested by an African leader. Camara's actions are reminiscent of those of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, Oculi contends, and necessitate an immediate response from ECOMOG (Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group).
The heart of impunity
L. Muthoni Wanyeki
2009-10-07, Issue 451
Following the resignation of Justice Aaron Ringera from the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) last week, L. Muthoni Wanyeki argues that rather than celebrating a supposed triumph of 'popular will', we should actually question the opportunity costs associated with a prolonged stand-off.
Enshrining rights to food, health and housing
L. Muthoni Wanyeki
2009-10-01, Issue 450
Last week’s United Nations General Assembly Special Session saw President Obama place America back on a multi-lateral path. But something else important took place at the session, L. Muthoni Wanyeki writes in Pambazuka News – the opening for signatures of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, a treaty pushed for largely by newly independent states emerging from colonialism and aimed at delivering ‘real changes in citizens’ material condition and realities.’
Buganda’s Uganda or Uganda’s Buganda?
Okello Oculi
2009-09-24, Issue 449
As tensions between Uganda's Buganda region and the national state continue, Okello Oculi urges the country to resist the exploitation of ethnic and religious divisions in this week's Pambazuka News.
Kenya: Follow the spirit of the law
L. Muthoni Wanyeki
2009-09-24, Issue 449
Kenyans have plenty to be angry about with their parliament, Muthoni Wanyeki writes in Pambazuka News, from the ‘outrageous remuneration’ it has given itself, to ‘its refusal to stand up for justice for the families of the dead and displaced’ during last year’s political crisis. But parliament’s disappointing performance is partly down to ‘the limited options available to the House, as representatives of the people’ when ‘either the Executive or the Judiciary behaves badly,’ Wanyeki argues. If Kenya is to ensure government accountability to the people and ‘real checks and balances among the three arms of government’, constitutional reform is imperative, says Wanyeki.
Have you ever wished you were not Tanzanian?
Chambi Chachage
2009-09-17, Issue 448
Reflecting on the words of female participants at a recent gender festival, Chambi Chachage laments the continued bruising of African pride. The need to prove oneself as an African has never gone away, Chachage writes in this week's Pambazuka News, something which is only compounded in Tanzania by a 'collective imbecilisation'. It is now time that Tanzania and Africa as a whole make their own 'history' and 'herstory', to combat others' discrimination and restore the continent's pride, he concludes.
Organise more conferences for a United States of Africa
Okello Oculi
2009-09-10, Issue 447
If those in charge are not to continue blocking greater pan-African unity, there need to be more conferences on a United States of Africa, argues Okello Oculi in this week's Pambazuka News. Thoroughly dissatisfied with his own recent experience of a conference between African scholars in Dakar, Senegal, Oculi stresses that while politicians' direct involvement in academic events can be beneficial, it should not come at the expense of intellectual freedom to debate and critique.
Uphold Sudanese women’s human rights
An open letter to President al-Bashir
Mary Wandia and Lila Kiwelu
2009-09-03, Issue 446
Mary Wandia and Lila Kiwelu call on Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to withdraw the case against 13 women charged with ‘indecent dressing’ for wearing trousers, under Article 152 of the country’s 'archaic' criminal code. President al-Bashir must repeal the discriminatory provisions in this code, Wandia and Kiwelu write in Pambazuka News, and ensure that Sudan upholds its obligations as a signatory to the AU Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa.
The grand fall of the Grand Coalition Government
L. Muthoni Wanyeki
2009-09-03, Issue 446
In the face of an ever greedy, self-interested ruling class, L. Muthoni Wanyeki considers what the majority of Kenyans could do to challenge the seemingly relentless ravaging of the public purse perpetrated by those in office. Firstly, Wanyeki suggests a tax boycott, taking the cue from the Langata Residents’ Association’s response to the Nairobi City Council, and secondly, preparing for new elections, albeit within a political system still in need of broad change. With the political settlement evidently having long reached its limits, Wanyeki argues for the need for the Grand Coalition Government to be entirely deprived of funds if Kenya’s politics is to move forward.
Pirate bankers, shadow economies
Khadija Sharife
2009-08-06, Issue 445
‘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'.
Return of stolen king's head to Ghana
It is time for us to reclaim with dignity that which belongs to us
Ama Biney
2009-08-06, Issue 445
The preserved head of King Badu Bonsu II has been returned to the Ghana by the Netherlands, 170 years after the Ahanta chief was hanged for ordering the murder of two Dutch emissaries, Ama Biney tells Pambazuka News. The return of the head is not just of cultural importance for the Ahanta people, says Biney, it’s also a significant step in ‘setting right colonial wrongs’.
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