The draconian law passed by the National Assembly is likely to be easily replicated by the County Assemblies across the country, setting in motion a wave of intimidation and harassment of journalists and ultimately lead to censorship.

In the light of the British Prime Minister’s dismissal of reparations, activists must push the debate further and ask what should reparations entail? Fundamental to such a reparations programme must be the fact that we transform the system of capitalism which slavery gave birth to.

A man cannot hate the whip with which he is being flogged but then be expected to love the person doing the flogging. When such a black man, lying helpless bleeding on the ground expresses hate for the white person wielding the whip, it is only reasonable.

Mugabe’s infamous homophobia employs the same logic as racism. Nor is it any different from the extremism of Al Shabaab or Boko Haram, because rather than foster understanding and mutuality it can only lead to mayhem and violence. Contrary to his claims, his views do not represent Africa in its past, present or future.

Two events that caught the headlines in Ghana recently were Founder’s Day and the screening of the judicial bribery scandal video by investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas. What ideas link the two events?

A project that could potentially meet a number of national priorities would be if the government incorporated a new capital district somewhere in the centre of the country and moved Parliament there. Geography dictates that a site somewhere in the Free State would probably be most suitable for this purpose.

The video production/story is around women and FGM. The video narrative is an amalgamation of many women's stories. The story is created under the notion that "it takes a village to tell a woman's story; it takes a village for a woman's voice to be heard." The work is part of a wider project entitled "Dear Mother" created by Daapo Reo. .

In the US – and throughout the capitalist world - the value of Black people is declining, as the economic system no longer relies on cheap labour. Lack of jobs for Black people means a lack of need for Black people, which means the wholesale devaluation of Black life. And anything without value in the capitalist system is disposable.

Genuine democracy offers greater inclusiveness and accountability in reaching developmental, growth and industrialization goals; and makes states more effective, stable and robust against internal and external crises.

As Palestinians fight to overthrow Zionism, they need to understand Zionism as a form of racism, and as one of many global manifestations of settler-colonialism. Ending the occupation alone is not enough. Palestinians must aspire to create the first nation born in the 21st century that is truly founded on democracy, not demography.

Kenya is building huge infrastructural projects such as the Thika Highway and the Lamu Port. These have been accompanied by malpractice in construction, land grabs, displacements, environmental degradation with no or insufficient information to the public. The environmental impact assessments that should prevent such malpractices are ineffective.

This November marks 40 years since Morocco invaded and colonized Western Sahara, today Africa’s last colony. Abba Malainin was only a child when he had to flee the war on foot through the desert to Algeria, to refugee camps where his family and thousands of other refugees still live today.

All well-meaning Nigerians at home and in the Diaspora must now rise up and join to return looted wealth that is stashed away abroad, and to fight grand corruption at home. It is time bring back decency in government and restore human dignity to the people.

A committed revolutionary from his youth, Risquet led the Cuban delegation in the talks that resulted in the withdrawal of the apartheid army from southern Angola and the liberation of neighboring Namibia under settler-colonial occupation for a century. His last visit to Africa was in 2012 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Kwame Nkrumah’s death.

In May the ruling party claimed to have won an incredible 100 per cent of the seats in a country that has nearly 80 political parties that contested the elections. And the regime’s allies around the world keep churning out reports of rapid economic development – while turning a blind eye to the widespread repression by the dictatorship.

A lot has been achieved through the principled stand of the members of the shack-dwellers movement, with some of them paying the ultimate price for justice and freedom. Several other individuals and partner organisations have been an important part of the journey. The struggle continues.

The ANC has morphed from its earlier transition days as a ‘modern’ bourgeois political party designed to consolidate a class-based system of power overlaid with narrow racial interests to an inveterately factionalised, patronage-centred, corrupt, rent seeking and increasingly undemocratic ex-liberation movement.

The ‘gurus’ of South Africa’s business education sector need to learn to be increasingly adaptable – making sense of uncertainty and managing complexity. The qualities of openness, empathy, integrity and self-awareness should replace harmful elitist posturing.

Kenya’s newly discovered oil is located in a part of the country marked by extreme poverty, high levels of illiteracy and insecurity primarily arising from years of neglect by successive governments. With the discovery of large water reserves as well, hopes in the region are high that life is set to improve for the people. But how can these dreams be realised?

Criticism of The Hague-based court as targeting African leaders at the behest of Western powers, and the relentless efforts by the Big Men to escape accountability for alleged crimes, seem to frustrate international justice. The ICC might appear to be weak but it still has the teeth to bite.

September 25 marked the 4th anniversary of the death of Kenya's celebrated environmentalist and Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai. A tribute.

The ubiquitous ‘development goals’ chosen by the United Nations – first Millennium (MDGs) in 2000 and now Sustainable (SDGs) – were and are and will be a distraction from the real work of fighting poverty done by social justice activists, including Africans.

Report concludes that there is considerable scope for the City to improve the management of informal trade, and that any restriction or prohibition on trade is likely to negatively affect the way that traders make a living as it undermines the benefits that traders derive from permanence.

To much of the outside world, the self-declared republic of Somaliland is a success story that, although lacking international recognition, contrasts sharply with the collapsed nation of Somalia. Not so. In the past five years, the government of President Ahmed Mohamoud Silanyo has been engaged in a sustained campaign of self-enrichment and aggrandizement as it suppressed dissent and debased political debate through the overt promotion of tribal politics. The people must now mobilise to restore Somaliland to its founding tenets.

Tired of a stale diet of propaganda churned out by state radio, many Ethiopians rely on foreign broadcasters to follow events in their own country. Now the BBC has announced plans to broadcast in Ethiopian languages. This is welcome. But Ethiopians must continue the struggle to have their own independent and vibrant media.

Twenty-one years after the genocide, and despite a rosy picture created internationally of a healing nation, many Rwandan refugees are reluctant to return home for fear of persecution by the current regime. After those living in Zambia lost their official refugees status, Kigali is pursuing forced repatriation or issuance of Rwandan passports. Neither of these options is safe for the affected persons.

Despite Paris’s official condemnation of the failed coup in Burkina Faso, and a threat to impose sanctions if the coup leaders did not relinquish power, the incident once again brings to focus decades of French hegemony in ‘independent’ West Africa. Through political, security, economic and cultural ties, France maintains a tight stranglehold in Francophone Africa, both to serve its interests and maintain a last bastion of imperial prestige.

The much-hyped Sustainable Development Goals to be adopted by the UN summit starting this week in New York will not deliver the new economy that the world so desperately needs. Their creators want to reduce poverty and inequality without touching the wealth and power of the global 1%. They fail to understand a basic fact: Mass poverty is the product of extreme wealth accumulation and over-consumption by a few.

Somalia has seen renewed international interest this year, with visits from foreign leaders, international conferences on ending piracy and significant foreign investment. Bashir Goth links these developments to the global realization that the world economy suffers from Somali-based piracy, caused by neglect of the Horn of Africa nation during its 20 years of collapse.

Female Genital Mutilation leads not only to severe physical consequences but also psychological and emotional ones ranging from depression, to lack of self-esteem, isolation, solitude, marginalization, insecurity, memory loss and fear of sexual intercourse to post-traumatic stress disorder. A counseling psychologist working with girls in rural Kenya shares her experiences in this interview.

Ethiopia's sweeping anti-terrorism law has been used to prosecute journalists and bloggers, opposition politicians, and peaceful protesters. Many have been accused without compelling evidence of association with banned opposition groups.

Prisons should not become a death sentence, but a platform where those who have been found to have offended are rehabilitated so they could later be integrated and play a meaningful role in our society.

On September 13, 2015, President Edgar Lungu announced that he had drawn battle lines with Post Newspapers editor-in-chief Fred M’membe and vowed to ‘take him on’ using his powers as Head of State. In most jurisdictions, including Zambia, what President Lungu issued against the journalist constitutes a criminal offence of threatening or uttering a death threat.

Europe has come face to face with the world it created, having actively participated in the military destruction of other nations. The fate of the refugees now fleeing their ruined nations is not unlike that of millions of black people in South Africa rendered hopeless by apartheid and its successor ANC regime.

Civil society organisations from around the world have insisted that climate change is the biggest and most urgent threat to the Planet. A radical transformation of food systems is needed, away from an industrial model and its false solutions, and toward food sovereignty, local food systems, and integral agrarian reform in order to achieve the full realization of the human right to adequate food and nutrition.

Political succession remains a thorny issue especially in Africa, where presidents are reluctant to step down, and more so prevent the grooming of qualified successors. To understand why peaceful and democratic transition is often elusive in many countries, it is useful to explore the reasons underlying the reluctance of leaders to hand over power.

Any Left-wing party that comes to power in Namibia, Zimbabwe or any peripheral country today would be in the exact same position as Syriza: It would lack the political and economic power to bring about radical changes. The reality of a global system policed by imperialism makes it impossible for poor countries to break with capitalism and to begin to build socialism.

Pambazuka News Team is pleased to announce to its readers and supporters the launch of a new video blog called #PunchBack.

#PunchBack provides comment and analysis of current affairs from a pan-Africanist perspective.

We invite our readers to watch #PunchBack, share the vlog, engage with the issues raised and share your views with us.

A new post of #PunchBack will appear every two weeks in the Comments & Analysis section of your newsletter.

Welcome!

Click on this link to the first post of

The September 2015 issue of the International Refugee Rights Initiative’s Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter (formerly the Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter) is out. Find the full newsletter .

Explosions from Agip pipelines and resultant deaths have been recorded since 1995 and have escalated in the last three years.

Two months before the talks in Paris begin, people across the globe will gather to make connections, plan mobilisations and fight climate change together.

As a spokesperson for the South African Police Serivce, Colonel Naicker is expected to disseminate factually accurate information. But he he has conspicuously failed to do in his comments about the Glebelands violence. How on earth does SAPS expect anyone to take anything he says seriously given the disinformation he has disseminated about an extremely serious and tragic situation?

The numbers of unarmed Black youth murdered with impunity by state security agents in the US continue to rise. These killings demand a pan-African response. The African Union, which officially counts the Diaspora as its sixth region, ought to come out clearly and demand an end to these murders.

Large billboards at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport welcomed delegates with the beaming face of President Uhuru Kenyatta, the newly-elected Chairperson of the African Peer Review Mechanism Forum. Other costly marketing and logistical activities had already taken place. And then the Kenyan government announced it had cancelled the event.

African civil society groups have expressed disappointed at the sudden, unexpected and unexplained cancellation of the Summit that was scheduled for Nairobi this week. They say Africa had high hopes and expectations that this Summit would have reinvigorated the APRM’s purpose, institutions and processes, and addressed the critical challenges facing APRM.