Pambazuka News 720: Cecil Rhodes: The evil face of white supremacy
Pambazuka News 720: Cecil Rhodes: The evil face of white supremacy
The key lesson of Walker’s rare gesture is that every people creates its artefacts for its use and that people should not, through violence and other oppressive means, be deprived of the basic human right to cultural development and self-determination of the location of their own artefacts.
Cecil Rhodes is back in the news, following Black student protests to have his statue removed from the University of Cape Town. Rhodes’s unparalled evil legacy is still palpable across Africa. By splashing Rhodes’s statue with human excrement, the brave Black students have hit a raw nerve in the ‘sensitive’, ‘innocent’ and ‘pure’ white body.
Besides giving a good general description of what it is like to grow up in a mud hut in the rural African countryside, with barely enough money to eat or to attend school, the book also describes the unique culture and political setting of Swaziland, Africa’s last absolute monarchy.
Goodluck Jonathan has earned the dubious distinction of being the first president in Nigerian history to lose an election. In many ways, Jonathan was the architect of his own downfall. He made critical mistakes that turned the public and allies against him, and led them to gravitate towards the opposition. Here’s where it all went wrong:
Lt. General Roméo Dallaire (Rtd) was the Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) during the genocide 21 years ago. He warned the U.N. of the forthcoming massacres, but he was ignored. The genocide and the failed international response haunt him to this day.
Without the leaders prioritising human life over political power struggles and police performing their duties without fear or favour, nothing else will end the misery for women of Glebelands in Durban - home to about 22 000 rural migrants where police and gangster violence are rife.
The book is a tale of opportunism, spoliation, misappropriation and dispossession. The arrival of Chinese in Africa in drovees lately is arguably the latest chapter in a very long narrative of empire building through emigration.
The danger of focusing solely on Zuma, and seeing all of the scandals as simply being linked to his clearly flawed personality, is that it runs the risk of missing the point that the events surrounding him are symptoms of much deeper problems.
Western countries have relied heavily on military force in their purported war against terrorism, but the root causes of the proliferation of terrorist activity will not be addressed solely by military means. Social, political and economic factors need attention.
Although it starts with a bang, bringing to light some shocking and unfortunately typical facts about capitalistic accumulation, ‘Tyranny of experts’ is a frustrating book because of the author’s black and white approach, his libertarian dogmatism, his apparent lack of awareness of the history of certain political ideas, and his method of reasoning which favours numerous anecdotes over systematic analysis.
There is insidious fear across Kenya from rising costs of living, rampant spectacular crime, bizarre terrorist events and a sense that the future is clouded. The fear is making people angry and hateful, as depicted in this fictional account.
With “Food Safety” being the theme of this year’s World Health Day on April 7, 37 laureates of the Right Livelihood Award from across the world have endorsed a declaration on the future of nutrition, denouncing Golden Rice and Genetically Modified Bananas as “false miracles” to achieving food security. Golden Rice is a genetically engineered rice variety offered by GM proponents as a cure for Vitamin A deficiency (VAD), while GM bananas are proposed to compensate for a lack of Vitamin A and iron.
Some say the tree of corruption in Kenya was planted by Jomo Kenyatta, watered by Moi, looked after by Kibaki and its fruits are now being harvested by the government of Uhuru Kenyatta.
They point out that organizations located in the communities they serve have the trust, networks, and cultural understanding to accomplish what international organizations cannot.
Some £600 million in UK aid money courtesy of the taxpayer is helping big business increase its profits in Africa via the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. In return for receiving aid money and corporate investment, African countries have to change their laws, making it easier for corporations to acquire farmland, control seed supplies and export produce.
There was no basis whatsoever to kill non-combatant prisoners. Killing was never an option.
The mobile revolution. Geopolitical power shifts. A radically altered global economy. As the world changes, so does the way people campaign for human rights. To remain effective, Amnesty International (AI) needs to respond and adapt. That’s why we’re strengthening our International Secretariat office in West and Central Africa. And why we need your campaigning expertise.
Pambazuka News 719: State capture: Men of power above the law
Pambazuka News 719: State capture: Men of power above the law
A third woman has reported Standard Group journalist and PEN Kenya Secretary General Tony Mochama to Nairobi's Central Police Station for alleged sexual assault. The alleged assault occurred on September 21st 2014, at the National Museum, during the Westgate Memorial Service of Storymoja Hay Festival. The OB Number is 74/17/3/2015.
Human rights groups in Kenya are conducting their own investigation into the mysterious disappearance and death of a man linked to the crimes against humanity trial of Deputy President William Ruto at the International Criminal Court. In their preliminary findings, the groups say Meshack Yebei was murdered in a carefully planned scheme to obstruct justice in the Ruto case.
The EU along with NATO and led by the US are responsible for the current chaos in Libya. This pattern of sanctions, massive bombings, ground interventions through direct occupation or proxy forces have failed throughout the entire region of North Africa and the Middle East.
In spite of communities such as Jane-Finch being in the low-to-medium range for violence-related requests for law enforcement’s intervention, they are targeted and over-policed by the cops, especially the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy police division, an occupation army-like formation.
The development of South Africa’s renewable energy sector provides a case study for understanding the inter-relationship that exists between social and economic development.
Russia is looking to extend its footprint in Africa by supporting the construction of a huge nuclear power plant in Egypt. Nuclear energy is seen as a viable option for African economies.
A petition has been launched demanding that French universities not succumb to pressure to ban anti-apartheid activist and scholar Prof Farid Esack.
By Dhiru Soni, Ahmed Shaikh, Anis Karodia and Joseph David
2015-03-16, Issue 718
Nigerians are already looking beyond the March 28 presidential election, which the opposition All Peoples’ Congress and its presidential candidate General Muhammadu Buhari are expected to win.
The South African police force still carries with it the brutally violent culture and practices which characterised apartheid policing. These trends are unlikely to be reigned in by a government that is progressively paranoid of people power, leaving the boys in blue to become further removed from the law that they are supposed to uphold.
Changing the situation of Africa’s youth will require high levels of commitment both within the nations of Africa and the rich countries of the world. Fortunately, across Africa, there is growing recognition of the centrality of youth issues in the development agenda
Since the events of 11 September 2001, US policies that were supposed to prevent further atrocities have in fact encouraged them. The US, aided by its ally nations, has committed untold numbers of human rights violations under the guise of ‘the war on terror’. These policies need to be re-examined.
A timely release documenting the voices of those people affected by the numerous and complicated conflicts in this eastern Africa nation, the book gives the reader a chance to see the state of a nation in transition, from the perspective of the masses.
There is serious concern about the protection of migrants in South Africa, especially African migrants. It seems that people from other parts of the continent can be killed with impunity.
Ridiculous claims that he staged his own abduction and subsequent disappearance should be treated with the contempt they deserve. The Harare regime knows where the activist is.
Africa has been rising a long time. This is the continent that liberated itself from the shackles of European colonialism. It is the land of glorious ancient civilizations. But the new ‘rising’ parroted around nowadays is merely about the monetary fortunes of foreign looters and their local lackeys.
The apparent calm in the West African nation is deceptive. Many unresolved issues have created seething tensions that make the likelihood of renewed violence real. A transitional phase is required, for all actors to prioritize the birth of a new contract and prepare a new electoral cycle by building on past failures.
The tactics that the once revered liberation party ruthlessly deploys to protect its corrupt bigwigs and their business associates from justice are simply shameful. President Zuma and allies have now become fully untouchable by anti-graft prosecutors and investigators.
There is no legal instrument or method to circumvent the presidential terms limit under Article 101 of Rwanda’s constitution, save for a coup which would suspend or abrogate the constitution in its entirety. By the letter and spirit of the 2003 constitution, while the length of a presidential term may be decreased or increased from the current seven years, the two terms limit cannot be legally lifted.
Ethiopia’s rich heritage in music immortalized in vinyl records is vanishing into the international collector scene alongside other artifacts. There is a need to reclaim and honor the vinyl classics as part of the ancient nation’s cultural memory.
Tanzanians will go into an election likely to be very competitive this October. One key concern is that the top political parties keep well-trained militias, despite the law prohibiting this. This has caused security fears around the election.
Working towards a radical way of relating to each other, men and women traverse spaces of war as well as of pastoral, agricultural and domestic care - learning with and from each other whether in the battlefields or making food.
The intervention by President Mugabe’s wife in vendors’ clashes with the police is just talk. Vendors have become the vanguard of Zimbabwe's informal economy, but they lack recognition, support or protection from a State that disproportionately invests more in the formal economy and draws resources away from the poor.
Obama is wrong to say that the country must remain united at any cost because he does not understand that underlying the fear of violence is the fact that Nigeria is a failed colonial fiction. Break up is the only way.
Pambazuka News 718: The challenge of Africa's unfinished liberation
Pambazuka News 718: The challenge of Africa's unfinished liberation
The influential American scholar falsely attributes to the UN cultural agency UNESCO a mandate it clearly does not have. What is more, he supports an outdate and unfair system that allowed rich countries which financed many explorations and excavations of archaeological sites to loot artefacts.
Whether Buhari takes the Nigerian presidency in next week’s hotly contested elections or Jonathan remains is all but irrelevant; real change will only happen when the masses band together, organize and demand better futures instead of lining up behind the rich and powerful whose futures are already secured.
Bangui,
Who could remember to smile
when those guns fed us lead
In Bangui our hearts bled
Crying for sanity
Bangui,
Who remember's Stanley's fatal whip on our backs
Chopped arms, now firearms in Bangui
Lighting Ubangi with flowing dead blood
Bangui never dies
Determined to silence the ghosts of Brazza
Leopold, Bozize and Bokassa
I stand bold with African pride
I have died many times before
Made to kiss the aroma of mother Congo
And still I germinate
Bangui, I am a seed
I will never die
I will never wither
I will gyrate in the rhythms of Cavacha, Rhumba and Samba
Let the dust of the boots drown in Ubangi
Bangui
The Pan African Congress was held 21 years after the previous one. Its resolutions capture the Congress’s desire to re-ignite the Pan African spirit, enthuse commitment to our African identity and inject energy into the Pan-African Movement.
Ailing Swazi opposition leader Mario Masuku is in prison since May in Africa’s only absolute monarchy, where even mere expression of support for the opposition is considered by the regime as engaging in “terrorism”. Progressive forces throughout the pan-African world must demand the release of this man and many other Swazi prisoners of conscience.
This week the government of Joseph Kabila has been arresting young people in sustained efforts to frustrate their organizing for change.
Food sovereignty activists are to protest a secret elite meeting being held in London convened by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
What was the real intention behind Morocco’s decision to hold an international forum in occupied Western Sahara, Africa’s last colony? Peter Kenworthy judges it to be a legitimization of Morocco’s occupation by both the occupier and the attending heads of state and international figures.
Every neo-liberal ideology promotes the false belief that there is no alternative to capitalism. But although socialism has been persistently assaulted by imperialists over the years, people who live under this system are by far better off than those who do not.
The recent diktat by Nigeria’s first lady that her husband’s political opponents be stoned is yet another red flag that the bungling government in Nigeria is not sincere in conducting violence-free elections.
The sudden death of the well-known community radio journalist and activist has left many people within progressive movements in Haiti shaken. The work he leaves behind is testament to Sony’s total commitment to the transformation of the lives of the country’s masses.
Farmer organizations, indigenous groups, trade unions and other civil society organizations, under the umbrella of Our Land Our Business, call World Bank’s annual Conference on Land and Poverty a sham.
"The officers used brutal force to arrest us. Out of eight human rights defenders arrested, I was the only woman. One of the arresting officers sexually molested me by grabbing my private parts before shoving me into a waiting truck full of anti-riot police who had been brought to disrupt our peaceful protest. We were later released without charge."
While some African countries have made significant strides in expanding opportunities for women and girls, continued inequalities remain, particularly in the areas of women's political participation and economic opportunity. Gender inequalities are still deeply entrenched in many societies.
Post war northern Uganda has been economically and politically deprived leading to the exclusion of especially women in political processes. The inequity in access to resources and to positions of power between the sexes affects the structure of the country as a whole and must be corrected.
He claimed to be a different kind of soldier and promised not to hang on to power, and never to install a dictatorship. Who said that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely?
Reading Fanon’s thought, one cannot help being absorbed and shaken by his truth and foresight on the bankruptcy and sterility of national bourgeoisies who have tended to replace colonialism with a new class-based system replicating the old colonial structures of exploitation and oppression.
Ethiopianism is at the heart of the quest for total African liberation and unity. This glorious early resistance should offer a powerful inspiration for the African people to confront current challenges that are more subtle and insidious than those faced during slavery and colonialism.
With his vast wealth provided by tax payers and intolerable acts the man should be consigned to an old-folks home, not a position of power.
The Network in Defense of Humanity say the US threat against Venezuela is explicitly a declaration of war against the Bolivarian Revolution and a step forward in the US escalation to crush the anti-imperialist voices.
The new wave of ‘looting’ of land and other natural resources will likely continue on a scale hitherto unknown. Whatever the supposed benefits of this trend, urgent attention ought to be turned to the thousands of people in Africa and other emerging nations who will become landless in the countries of their birth.
To what extent can an Afrikan police chief be realistically more committed to fighting institutional racism than a white one? Merely having an Afrikan person at the helm will not end police brutality.
Talk of affirmative action is now being replaced by “diversity.” This vague concept of diversity paves the way for an increase in the daily use of institutional racism, not only by employers but by other white people in powerful positions.
Two years ago, crimes against humanity suspects Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto took power in Kenya. The duo who cut their political teeth under the tutelage of brutal despot Daniel arap Moi, the self-styled “professor of politics”, have spared no effort to push the country back to the dark days of autocracy.
Pambazuka News 717 Special Issue: Intersectionality in social justice struggles
Pambazuka News 717 Special Issue: Intersectionality in social justice struggles
NGOs and activists need to give themselves a really hard look. They cannot possibly be partners of, and stakeholders in, systems that oppress and dehumanize the large majority of people. They must choose the side of those who are struggling for a better world and against those who want to maintain the existing world. Neutrality is betrayal.
Neo-liberal NGOism and the consultancy culture, with their emphasis on policy – more “action,” little thought – and prescriptive prognosis, has taken a toll on our intellectual thinking, the result of which is that we have abdicated analyzing and understanding the world.
LGBTIQ struggles are connected to universal struggles for liberation of people from the hegemony of the white-male capitalist world and its allies. But the oppressor – and even activists – have split this struggle and reduced it to a question of identity.
Can Africans with dot-connecting talents now more forcefully consider an eco-socialist model? We need to recover the socialist traditions of Fanon, Lumumba, Cabral, Rodney, Ruth First, Sankara and Chris Hani; and to these add environmentalist, feminist and other intersectional activisms. Or perish.
Ensuring the education of the girl-child must be achieved through a crosscutting strategy that links various development priorities and engages a variety of stakeholders.
Twenty-five experts have petitioned the Federal Government of Nigeria to declare Ogoniland an ecological disaster zone and clean up the environment. The petition, signed by environmentalist Nnimmo Bassey and other laureates of the Right Livelihood Award, (often referred to as the the “Alternative Nobel Prize”), comes as controversy ignites over reports that a Nigerian oil company, Belema Oil, may recommence oil extraction in Ogoniland, over 20 years after Shell suspended its operations. For the full petition please click .
Zambia’s new President Edgar Lungu, elected less than two months ago, collapsed last weekend and was flown out of the country for specialized treatment. In a country that has lost three presidents in ten years, why did the voters ignore reports about Lungu’s poor health?
The “revolutionary” lynching and sodomization of Gaddafi amidst manic chants of “Allahu Akbar”, lauded by many at the time as some sort of a warped triumph of the good of popular will over the evil of dictatorship, was nothing but a gory precursor for the future of the country and the region.
Leading human rights organisations including Crisis Coalition, Zimrights and the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights have expressed their utter sense of shock at this latest development.
The 11-year-old case against the former Prime Minister marks the first time that any Somali government official has been held accountable for the atrocities perpetrated under the Siad Barré regime.
Dr Odora-Obote’s arguments and the positions of the Government of Rwanda aim to ensure that the Rwandan people, who were victims of the genocide and continue to be victimized by the regime at home and outside, will never be afforded the right to know the truth.
What Nigerian students are is just the beginning of bigger repression that the present governance structure has in store for them.
Attorney General Githu Muigai has armed himself with such massive powers that he has virtually secured impunity for himself and his staff. This megalomania, which flouts the constitution, seems designed to protect the interests of the increasingly tyrannical Jubilee government.
The students’ body says the unsanitary conditions of school toilets in poor urban neighboruhoods and in rural areas have remained unchanged 21 years after the end of apartheid.
The exclusive meeting in London and the focus of the report on how private interests can profit from essential life processes in African agriculture exposes the agendas of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID. It is disappointing that the African Union is willing to endorse such blatantly neo-colonialist plans.
The courts in Burkina Faso have paved the way for a proper identification of the remains of the martyred revolutionary leader who was buried in 1987 without an official ceremony or an explanation of the circumstances of his death. His widow Mariam is demanding a broader inquiry into the assassination of the much-adored revolutionary.
Now is a good time to re-evaluate individual and collective efforts at “making it happen” for women and girls. It is not enough to shout the slogan.
This convergence will derive key proposals for social action for full transformation of the structures and relationships that lead to violence in Kenya. It is expected that the outcome of the dialogue will be tools for partners seeking to achieve long-term results to post conflict transformation in Africa.
NGOs do a good job, certainly, but they cannot escape the charge that often they are focused on professionalising “development” and people’s struggles through their constant supply of statistics, reports and case studies. Rarely do these organisations tackle entrenched structural injustices underpinning the problems they attempt to solve.
It is very true that decades of organising in Africa have assumed, quite wrongly, that social problems are discrete challenges only facing specific groups – and that they should be tackled as such.
Pambazuka News 716: War games: Libya, South Sudan - and cricket
Pambazuka News 716: War games: Libya, South Sudan - and cricket
Tanzania’s general elections are set for October 2015 and the liberation party CCM that has ruled since independence already has 20 presidential aspirants. One of them is the young and ambitious January Makamba, whose announcement to stand for presidency has caused some excitement in the land. What chances does he have?
Debate about the quest for justice following the Rwandan genocide of 20 years ago continues. A former defence counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) adds his voice, responding especially to former Prosecution official Alex Odora-Obote’s defence of the Tribunal.
As the British Empire travelled around the globe, annexing land and enslaving people, bloodshed was always closely followed by cricket. It is for this reason that cricket has the power to bring people and nations together and it is for this reason that this legacy, left behind in the greedy and brutal pursuit of power and wealth, can be considered a gift. The Cricket World Cup is under way in Australia and New Zealand, 14 February - 28 March, 2015.
It is the Israeli Apartheid Week in South Africa. The children of celebrated liberation heroes have come out to support the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel, denouncing the Jewish state’s brutal colonial occupation of Palestine. The campaign is supported by 85 South African organizations and institutions.
'Strive to be Happy' is an inspirational work replete with didactic messages. Throughout this book Lamnyam’s voice sounds like that of a quiet peace-maker calling for non-resistance as a modus operandi needed to ward off the pangs of pain occasioned by social injustice, exploitation and disenfranchisement.
Just over a month after being elected president on Jan 20, Zambia's new head of state has said he will crush members of the ruling party who will not be happy with his decisions. A Zambian commentator finds this threat disturbing.
The Ghanaian government's failure to pay its bills has affected the ability of the country’s national power to provide electricity to its customers, despite Ghana’s much-touted participation in the Millenium Challenge Compact. It is time to demand accountability.
Following increased ISIS violence in Libya, the Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Al Sisi, a US ally, has called for intervention by the "international community". But another aggressive Pentagon-NATO operation in Libya would be just as disastrous as the war of regime-change in 2011.
Man claiming to be a human rights activist is currently in South Africa as a guest of the pro-Israeli lobby. His agenda is to undermine the current nationwide 11th international Palestine solidarity campaign, Israeli Apartheid Week.
The November 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 .
For the past decade, Nike has used this annual sacred period of remembrance as nothing more than a marketing tool to sell even more of its obscenely overpriced athletic shoes. But this year the annual release of its Black History Month line of sneakers and apparel was met with righteous indignation.
A coalition of 76 civil society organisations from within and outside Africa has written to the African Union seeking immediate publication of the report of the AU Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan (AUCISS), whose findings they believe will make a critical contribution to the the peace process in the war-torn nation.
The Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR), Osun State Chapter hereby calls on the authorities and Prof. ‘Tale Omole-led administration of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife to reinstate six student activists currently under politically motivated suspension.
Another multinational military deployment in Libya is being suggested, following the spread of ISIS violence to parts of that country. But the world must not be railroaded into another UN-supported deployment of troops to back Western military and economic interests in Libya. There should be clear opposition to proxy wars in Libya and for the UN to expose and expel Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia from their mischief-making in Libya.
A life-sentence in prison, torture and no medical treatment is the price Sidahmed Lemjayed and 22 of his fellow Saharawis have had to pay for fighting for independence and against the exploitation of resources in their homeland, Western Sahara.