Pambazuka News 701: 'You cannot kill ideas: The return of Thomas Sankara
Pambazuka News 701: 'You cannot kill ideas: The return of Thomas Sankara
Jamaica was in serious need of money, but PM Manley resisted Kissinger’s pressure to denounce Fidel Castro for sending troops to Angola, in exchange for US dollars. It was a principled stand in support of Angola’s liberation, which had wide ramifications for Southern Africa.
The revived regional integration process is on course. But it is largely a project of politicians and bureaucrats. There is scant involvement of the people. For the community to integrate meaningfully, the process needs to be grounded in the aspirations, needs and futures of the citizens.
The worsening Ebola crisis in West Africa exposes the extent of capitalist plunder of the continent. The natural wealth of the affected countries has over the years been looted by foreign corporations, with puppet governments investing little in health care. The people ought to organise and severe links with the imperialist centres
For over 50 years, we’ve been campaigning for human rights wherever justice, freedom and truth are denied. We’ve reshaped policies, challenged governments and taken corporations to task. In doing so, we’ve changed thousands of lives for the better. Join Amnesty at our new regional office in Kenya and you will too.
President Blaise Compaore’s ouster last week by popular revolt was the culmination of the people’s opposition to his regime, starting in 2011. The regime contrasted sharply with the short-lived government of Thomas Sankara. But Compaore’s exit does not necessarily mean restoration of Sankara’s revolution.
In this short but bold message to mark 27 years since the assassination of revolutionary President Thomas Sankara on October 15, his widow outlines some of the challenges facing Burkinabes under the failed Compaore regime and urges continued resistance.
Pambazuka News 700: Strategies for change: Build solidarity, confront power
Pambazuka News 700: Strategies for change: Build solidarity, confront power
Nearly two decades of foreign interventions have failed to build peace or a viable state. International engagement has served to deepen the humanitarian and political crisis in Somalia.
The assertion that people under 40 have lost nothing to apartheid is one of the most extraordinary statements from the mouth of a cabinet minister since 1994. The pretense that apartheid’s consequences came to an end in 1994 is sheer denialism that is so out of touch with reality.
Under the guise of ‘mediation’ the ANC is seeking to split Cosatu and weaken the workers’ movement. For the ANC and the SACP, the prospect of Numsa and its radical proposals gaining dominance in Cosatu is an intolerable threat to imperial capitalism and the electoral dominance of the alliance itself.
No case of Ebola has been reported in Kenya, despite several scares. But that is not how tourists see it. The numbers of arrivals are going down.
Over 11 million South African citizens are currently in debt, due to the entrenchment of aggressive capitalist policies. Most debt experiences, such as the author’s, are extremely painful. It is time for the country to rise up against big banking and end the cycle of debt.
Marta Iñiguez de Heredia, from the University of Cambridge, interviews three members of Lutte pour le Changement (Struggle for Change, or LUCHA), which self-identifies as a citizens’ movement. Their members speak about their ideas and the trajectory of this movement since its creation in 2012.
In his role as a philosopher, intellectual, political figure and teacher, Nyerere’s philosophy was centered on humanity and unity of the African people to achieve liberation and build African societies. His legacy remains highly relevant in today’s struggles for unity, justice and peace.
Protest art may not necessarily spur revolutions, but as a change agent its immense value lies in speaking truth to power. It is also educational, cathartic and empowering in situations of injustice.
We're looking for a campaigner to contribute to our campaign against human rights violations in Central Africa. Working as part of the West and Central Africa Team at the Regional Office in Dakar, you will work on a range of projects, including our campaign on impunity in Central African Republic, conditions of detention in Chad and the rights of LGBTI groups in Cameroon. You will act as a focal point providing advice and support to our worldwide membership, including devising campaigning strategies, preparing written and other campaigning materials and providing research support.
Cuba’s exemplary conduct in the world has made the yearly UN vote on the U.S. embargo a singular opportunity for all the world body’s members, except Israel, to chastise the superpower that seeks full domination of the planet. It is the rarest of occasions, a time of virtual global unanimity on an evil in which the Empire is engaged.
The UN has over the past decades appeared to pursue a just solution to the crisis in Western Sahara, Africa’s last colony still illegally occupied by Morocco. But it now emerges that Moroccan diplomacy at the world body has employed corruption to push its agenda against Western Sahara.
The UN has extended the presence of its deeply resented occupation force in Haiti for another year. Progressive forces need to organise in a global solidarity campaign to end the occupation and to restore the right of self-determination to the Haitian people.
Mazrui was a Creolite, that is, one who had the capacity to mix languages, and became entangled in the cultures as well as the identities of these languages. He was a language bargainer, shopping for the appropriate genre in which to negotiate in the marketplace of ideas.
There is nothing inevitable about the Ebola epidemic now devastating parts of Africa. Like other disasters, it too is the product of history, of the decisions that governments have made in the past as well as the present.
With the connivance of the ‘international community’ and a phalanx of aid people, successive Ethiopian regimes have succeeded to hide the reality of famine facing millions of its people every year. The regimes have also prevented critical interrogation of the political dimensions of these recurrent food crises.
30 years after images of Ethiopian famine haunted British TV screens, they still shape how we see Africa - and ensure we fail to understand.
Varying Western mainstream media styles of reporting on Ebola confirm how narratives are spaces of domination. The African Ebola patient is classically “othered” and portrayed as a villain and perpetrator, while the American Ebola patient is depicted as a victim.
Last week, heads of state from Latin America and the Caribean met in Cuba explore ways to help the fight against the Ebola outbreak in Africa and to avoid its propagation to other regions.
The Bill discriminates against people on the basis of their sexual orientation, denying them equal rights to which they are entitled under international law. It will have a devastating impact upon the lives of LGBT people in the Gambia
SIHA is calling for action from both parties within and outside Somalia to prevent stoning and other form of torture and violence from continuing to cripple the ability of Somali people to lead viable lives
The UN is a by-product of a murderous war started by European powers vying for supremacy. It has become the epitome of what it was set up, in theory, to eradicate: the predatory behavior of powerful entities. Haitians should now review their membership.
Pambazuka News 699: Celebrating Ali Mazrui, 1933-2014
Pambazuka News 699: Celebrating Ali Mazrui, 1933-2014
Parasitic banks, unscrupulous credit providers and their leech-like attorneys, spawned by an obscenely bloated capitalist system, suck the life-blood from increasingly impoverished lower classes in South Africa with utter impunity. Some 11 million over-indebted people are victims of this economic violence
Early this month, a young Kenyan man who has been fighting for the right to be a woman, won an important victory. A court ordered the national examinations council to issue her with a new certificate with a female name and without a male gender marker. Here is her incredible story, in her own words:
Imperialist responses to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa have featured high rhetoric and fear-mongering. It is these same forces that are responsible for the plunder of Africa that exposes the continent to epidemics. In contrast, Cuba has shown outstanding internationalist solidarity.
Ali Mazrui in his ability to comprehend present complexities, anticipated some major scientific theories and predicted a number of dynamics and events in international affairs.
The South Sudan peace talks which are currently taking place in Addis Ababa under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) are inadequate and badly suited to the task at hand. Citizens are completely absent from the process, warring groups feel no pressure to halt the violence and huge sums of money are being wasted. The peace process should be taken back home.
Libya is still in turmoil. The present situation is the direct result of the war of regime-change led by the CIA, the Pentagon and NATO during 2011. U.S. policy is designed to overthrow all of the sovereign and anti-imperialist governments throughout Africa and the Middle East.
A new BBC documentary has sparked international debate about the facts of the Rwandan genocide. This week legislators in Kigali voted to ban the BBC in Rwanda, outraged by the documentary, which deconstructs the official narrative. But the documentary actually tells the truth the Kagame regime suppresses.
Ghana’s proposed seed laws are the latest manifestation of a worldwide push by corporations to takeover food systems. Currently, 70 percent of the world’s food is produced by small-scale farmers. But in recent decades they have lost land, markets and livelihoods to corporate investors.
This latest move by the occupying power Morocco is in violation of the international law principles applicable to mineral resource activities in Western Sahara, which is Non-Self-Governing Territory.
He was a scholar in the finest traditions of great scholars: devoted completely to his vocation; searching analysis of broad relationships between religions, ideologies, and state systems.
Prof Mazrui was widely published and here we reproduce his keynote speech in 2005 at the Fourth Annual Conference organised by the Globalization for the Common Good Initiative. GCGI Founder Prof. Kamran Mofid shared this speech with Pambazuka News in memory of his friend.
Mazrui’s humanism was based on the dignity of all human beings regardless of race, religion, region or gender. It was a humanism linked to the quest for reparative justice, peace, self-determination, the rights of women, secularism and prosperity for all.
A renowned scholar, teacher and public intellectual with expertise in African politics, international political culture, political Islam and North-South relations, Mazrui’s prolific writing over the past half century has shaped ideas about Africa and Islam among scholars and the general public, earning him both international acclaim and controversy.
Ali Mazrui had many followers around the globe but he also had many detractors. His BBC series “The Africans”, watched by millions around the world, won him many admirers in Nigeria, but they also won him enemies who accused him of being nothing more than a propagandist for a religious cause.
The Pakistani teenage girl won the Nobel Peace Prize this year. US corporate media is engaged in a sinister plot to deliberately silence her in the way it doesn’t report her criticism of US. Even more insidious is the media’s complete disregard for her clearly socialist politics.
What was unique about Ali was that he was always bubbling with new ideas, which he tested on the students, his colleagues and the public in general whether in the lecture halls, academic journals or the columns of newspapers
White persons are revered in East Africa. Local black people go to ridiculous lengths to please whites, thereby promoting the baseless concept of white supremacy. It is a practice deeply rooted in colonialism.
Pambazuka News 698: Haiti and Cuba: Separating heroes from villains
Pambazuka News 698: Haiti and Cuba: Separating heroes from villains
The much-canvassed clan-federalism as a strategy for state building in Somalia will yield disastrous results for the country. Clan federalism is not supported by the Constitution, which prescribes that Somali territory and sovereignty are inviolable and indivisible
Kenyans have vested much hope in their new constitution to bring about social justice and manifest the rule of law. Four years after its promulgation, questions arise as to how much that hope is justified
President Mugabe’s wife has been concealing a crime, which itself is illegal in line with Zimbabwean laws. If the allegations are true, she should divulge the names of the culprits to facilitate investigations.
Civil society groups aim to raise $3000 for lawyer's fees to pursue a case against the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, which claims to have been allocated a wetland in Nairobi to build luxury apartments.
The poetry is a journey into the quest for self-determination. Resonating with Ngugi's ‘Re-membering Africa’, Onsando's text focuses on selves that constitute Africa's dismembered self.
Ugandan women rights activist Hope Turyasingura is dead. Turyasingura is former chairperson of Center for Domestic Violence Prevention. This poem celebrates her.
To be a woman in Kenya is to be repeatedly un-homed. This society refuses the right of women to be at home, as the increasingly frightening statistics on domestic violence indicate
‘Arrow of God’ presents a highly imaginative and anticipatory power of Achebe’s insight to the turbulent trajectory of post-(European)conquest African history and politics. This insight anticipates the catastrophe of the Igbo genocide.
On this International Day of Rural Women we, the undersigned organisations, call on African governments to end discrimination against rural women in Africa, especially in their access to traditional leadership roles and inheritance rights.
Sudanese security forces are holding the students following a crackdown that raises many questions. Some of the students are reported to have been tortured.
Evidently, the existing nation-state model does not successfully handle the global challenges facing humanity. Cosmic state theory proposes a different human organization: a supra-state transcending family, state, market, school, gender, race, party, religious and tribal affiliation. The cosmic state is founded upon the values of peace, justice and sustainable human progress.
Britain has a long history of protecting its own interests over the interests of the nations it has occupied, most notably in Africa. This legacy has become relevant recently during Scotland’s referendum for independence. Did Britain adhere to history and intimidate Scotland into voting ‘No’?
The most horrific police brutality targeting ordinary citizens is a deeply distressing reality in ‘liberated’ South Africa. There is no justice for those who fall victim to these agents of state terror –reminiscent of the dark days of apartheid. How long will this go on?
Cuba recently sent a medical team of 165, consisting of 63 doctors and 102 nurses, to Sierra Leone to support efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak. It is a mission they were happy to undertake and it goes right into the heart of Cuba’s people-to-people solidarity.
Cuba’s contribution to the development of post-independent Africa has always been based on solidarity, liberty and anti-white supremacy. By this principled stand, Cuba builds on and sustains the spirit of the Haitian revolution.
6 October is the anniversary of the first act of terrorism against civilian aviation in the Western hemisphere – the unparalleled Cubana air disaster on the coastline of Barbados on October 6, 1976. Cubana flight 455 was hit by two bombs just after take off from the then Seawell Airport (now the Grantley Adams International Airport) in Barbados
The Cuban government estimates that this economic war against their country has cost their nation one trillion, 112 billion, 534 million dollars [$1,112,534,000,000].
The annual festival has been exploited and co-opted to promote Canada’s multicultural agenda that pushes an illusion of social cohesion and equal opportunity despite widespread discrimination against racialised communities
The white supremacist, colonial/capitalist, patriarchal ruling classes of the U.S. and Europe are clear, even if we are not, that war and repression will be used with brutal efficiency to maintain their hegemony.
President Kenyatta had invested over a year of his presidency badmouthing the ICC to only recently sit subdued in The Hague for his case proceedings. But this was only after much national ‘fanfare’ and grandiose but empty symbolisms and rhetoric that pretended to pursue and protect the sovereignty of the state and people of Kenya
People from countries around the world whose troops are stationed in Haiti under a UN mandate ought to wake up to the reality that this is an occupation force, serving imperialist interests and deeply hated by the Haitian people on account of serious, well-known human rights abuses over the past decade
This week the UN Security Council extended the mandate of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH. This deployment is not based on any principles of humanitarianism, but rather is an imperialist occupation which seeks to make sure that the island’s government can implement and maintain repressive policies favourable to international investors. The occupation force must be withdrawn.
The situation in Haiti is very bleak, and extremely serious, Haitian activists say. The current regime is very repressive and has refused to hold elections. But it continues to enjoy the support of the US and UN despite the cries of suffering Haitian people
Jean-Claude Duvalier, or ‘Baby Doc’, died on 4 October without facing justice for his wanton crimes against the Haitian people. Uneducated in the affairs of governance, he ran the country with an iron fist until the people deposed him.
The departure of the first batch of Cuban medical personnel to fight the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone rekindles in the mind of Fidel Castro memories of Cuba’s military support for the liberation struggle in Angola. It is continuation of the Black revolutionary tradition
Pambazuka News 697: No easy victories: From Ebola to the World Bank
Pambazuka News 697: No easy victories: From Ebola to the World Bank
Are assassinations, manipulation of the criminal justice system and intimidation used regularly to protect greedy officials plundering the KwaZulu-Natal public purse? It would seem so when reviewing incidents of violence relating to housing and tender allocations over the last six years in poor communities across Durban.
Karuturi has seemingly lost control of its operations in Kenya, the Netherlands and Ethiopia, there is not much left for the company to hold onto, except some small operations in India – and a whole lot of debt.
This Friday, a new civil society campaign, 'WorldVsBank', featuring protests and teach-ins, will take place at the Bank’s Annual Meeting in Washington and ten other countries, including South Africa’s three largest cities. The campaign arises from widespread recognition all over the world that the Bank has made the world a worse place socially, politically, economically and environmentally.
This is part of the global campaign to isolate Israel through boycott, divestment and sanctions because of the Jewish nation’s murderous violence and apartheid against the Palestinian people.
World Bank President Kim has vehemently rejected legitimate demands to establish accountability even in the most egregious cases of racial discrimination, which numerous Bank reports say is “systemic”. Now there are rumours that Asians have taken over at the Bank and worsened the racism.
AbM have survived nine years of repression. Despite their heroic victories and struggles in communities, the ruling party and the state continue to unleash violence and lies against the movement. This must stop.
Farmers, indigenous peoples and NGOs take to streets in ten cities demanding an end to World Bank’s morally bankrupt development
As a response to the Ukraine crisis, Western countries have imposed bans on exports to Russia, which have especially affected the country’s food import. President Putin turned to other nations and African countries are ready and willing to fill in the gap.
Comprehensive public education about Ebola is required, including its possible links to biological warfare research in the West. As for the response to the present outbreak in West Africa, the AU and ECOWAS have horribly failed the people of that region and Africa.
Ethiopia will hold national elections next year. It is certain that the US-backed TPLF regime will rig the poll and proclaim a landslide victory. A look at the present repressive political climate shows clearly that there is not a chance for a free and fair election
Members of Parliament on 15 September scrapped the proposed tax on kerosene, which would hurt low-income earners. But last week President Museveni revoked Parliament’s decision, saying the government needs taxes from kerosene to finance its Shs15 trillion budget. Call, SMS or email your MP to reject Museveni’s move
Landless citizens of a location just outside Nairobi have been fighting for their rights to land since Kenya’s independence 50 years ago. Successive governments – including those of two presidents, Jomo Kenyatta and his son Uhuru, who come from the area – have failed to give these people justice.
There can be no excuse for the sexual assault of woman. And no one should be silent regarding the violence allegedly perpetrated by Kenyan columnist and writer Tony Mochama
Small farmers and seed sovereignty activists have for years stood against Monsanto and other GMO giants, the Mexican government, the US government, and the World Trade Organization in a protracted resistance to protect the staple food, maize. They have won some difficult victories
Russia has provided funding for the purchase and supply of medical modules, medicines and disposables for 60,000 people in countries most affected by the Ebola outbreak. More medics and volunteers are expected to go to West Africa in the coming days
Global attention to the crisis that broke out in South Sudan nearly a year ago has almost entirely disappeared. But difficult negotiations are ongoing, despite periodic outbreaks of fighting. To find lasting solutions, the stakeholders need to appreciate the complex realities leading up to the crisis
East African countries have joined the ranks of oil and gas producing nations. How can these countries avoid the ‘resource curse’ that many African nations have been facing and instead turn their resource wealth into opportunities for their citizens?
New report shows that resources are transferred from small-scale farmers to multinational agribusinesses. The farmers are trapped in a cycle of debt and dependency on costly external inputs with limited long-term benefit.
Survival has uncovered serious abuses of Baka “Pygmies” in Southeast Cameroon, at the hands of anti-poaching squads supported and funded by the WWF. Instead of focusing on organized poaching, these squads arrest, beat up and torture Baka people who hunt only to feed their families.
Is the government scared of facing Fanmi Lavalas party in a free and fair election? It seems so. President Martelly was elected in 2011 and parliamentary elections have been due for three years. Aristide’s party presents a clear problem for the US-backed regime
Elections are coming up in Nigeria in February. A quick look at the situation in the country today shows that the elections is ill-prepared for a successful exercise in terms of personnel and funding. But there are also other worrying concerns nationally that will likely complicate the mammoth exercise
The Ebola outbreak is a “Rwanda moment” for Africa. But leadership on this issue from around the continent has been at best too little too late, exposing Africa to external militarization of responses to the epidemic that could creep into other important policy spheres like the economy or upset the regional geopolitical balance
The two Summits held last month ended on different notes. But while the world’s leaders failed to live up to people’s expectations, the people on the other hand showed that they will no longer sit idle waiting for a solution to the climate crisis – they are ready to find solutions
What last month’s march did, better than any other event in history, was demonstrate the unity of activists demanding genuine emissions cuts and government funding of an alternative way of arranging society. They offered a transformative view of a world economy that must go post-carbon and post-profit if our species and countless others are to survive.
Pambazuka News 696: The quest for social justice in South Africa
Pambazuka News 696: The quest for social justice in South Africa
A new book called ‘The Coming Revolution’, argues that, contrary to the dominant narrative in western media, the South African revolution remains incomplete.
Discipline, loyalty and duty are among key values of any military in the world. But the recent mutiny in Nigeria and the harsh punishment meted to those involved warranted a deeper assessment of the military as whole
Civil society groups and individuals are piling pressure on the Kenyan justice system to investigate and prosecute a well known writer and newspaper columnist Tony Mochama who allegedly sexually assaulted the celebrated poet
Many Haitians believe that the current political prosecution is a smoke screen to divert attention from the failure of the Martelly government to hold elections. It is also an attempt to exclude the popular Lavalas Party from participating in elections that many observers believe they would win.
On 23 September 2014, human rights lawyer Ms Wendy Wanja Mutegi was forced to cancel her scheduled community meetings for fear of attack from a group of men who had threatened to harm her if she does not halt her advocacy work on behalf of an indigenous community in Eastern Kenya.
Nigerian security forces have consistently failed to deter and halt attacks on civilians, including mass abductions. There is also mounting evidence of grave human rights violations and possible war crimes, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and acts of torture, committed against civilians by the security forces and local vigilante groups
There is just too much scaremongering about Ebola in the West, meant possibly to boost the humanitarian industry. The realities of public health concerns throughout Africa have been given little attention