On 15 September, Rwandan political prisoners Victoire Ingabire and Kizito Mihigo walked out of Nyarugenge Prison in Rwanda’s capital, along with nearly 2000 more Rwandan prisoners whom President Paul Kagame had granted “executive clemency.” Members of local and international media surrounded them with still and video cameras as they emerged. 

The author’s essay seeks to bridge the gap between the concept of God and the worldly concepts of political economy by using a pan-African framework to conceptualise God as a global public good. 

A new Amnesty International report focuses on forced evictions of poor farmers in Swaziland carried out by local police. Land and forced evictions are central to Swaziland’s undemocratic system, says an activist who grew up in Swaziland’s rural areas.

The cauldron of corruption and lies has been boiling non-stop 24 hours a day. The time has come to overturn it, for Haitians to begin to see the light of peace. Haiti is for all Haitians. – Fanmi Lavalas statement, 8 July 2018. Fanmi Lavalas is the party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, and represents Haiti’s poor majority.

This work is creative non-fiction derived from what is known about the experiences of Leah Sharibu, a 15-year-old girl kidnapped alongside other schoolgirls by a faction of Boko Haram in Dapchi, in northern Nigeria.

The first edition of the Université Populaire de l’Engagement Citoyen was launched in Dakar, in July 2018, with the aim of bringing together social movements from the continent to reflect on Africa’s pressing challenges. Discussions focused on the legacy of Pan-Africanism, the political and economic challenges that Africa is currently facing and the need of greater solidarity between citizens and social movements. 

The People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), the largest democratic movement in Swaziland, recently elected a new leadership at its General Congress. Mlungisi Makhanya was elected new President.

The author argues that the 2018 general elections in Zimbabwe were largely non beneficial to the poor and the working class in general. They were rather a titanic battle of capitalists’ interests in form of neo-imperialism.

This piece is a dialogue with Nigerian Leftists—and all those who feel they share essential attributes with Leftists (socialists and pro-people radical democrats) but, for one reason or another, reject the “label” Leftists. The dialogue is driven by current political happenings and is here presented in form of notes, observations and propositions.

Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul was an outstanding manifestation of the African American struggle for dignity and freedom.

The author reviews the book The Lost Boys of Bird Island, which reveals how black children in South Africa were kidnapped, violated, raped and molested by senior apartheid government ministers and businessmen in the 1980s.

The Saharawis of Africa’s last colony Western Sahara don’t have many friends in high places around the world. But if Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour wins the next United Kingdom election it might prove to be a breakthrough in the protracted conflict and prevent a war. 

This article is framed around three important questions: Is the case of Bobi Wine, a youthful talented musician turned politician, taking on President Museveni something to be worried about? Is this the case of David vs. Goliath, or even “new wine in Uganda’s political wineskin? And should President Museveni be worried for his political future?

In this paper, the author argues that Professor Mahmood Mamdani’s essay, “The African University”, though timely, has significant flaws along several fronts including being a simplistic version of history, having major errors of fact and omissions, making unwarranted generalisation, and using unreal and extreme dichotomies among other flaws. 

The author argues that the People Power movement in Uganda has reached a point of no return in their efforts to bring about change in the country, but that they would require more coordination and a united front to achieve their objective.  

The Trump administration withdraws from the United Nations Human Rights Council, while racism, social deprivation and war intensify. The administration, however, denies the escalating oppression and impoverishment of the masses. 

On the 18 July 2018 the world celebrated the international centennial anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth. It was a significant moment in history for us to pause and reflect on the intrinsic values exhibited by one of Africa’s greatest sons, our very own global leader and icon – Madiba.

He is the President of Rwanda and the current President of the African Union, feted by the Brookings Institute, one of the most venerable ideological pillars of US capital interests. So why is Paul Kagame manifesting more and more signs of paranoia? Let us consider just a few possibilities: 

This is an edited version of a keynote address by Professor Horace Campbell at the emancipation wreath laying at the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park on 25 July 2018 under the theme “Our heritage our strength, Celebrating the African Resilience”.

Delegates at the recently concluded BRICS Summit in South Africa made a public declaration against unilateralism coming from Washington. 

The heads of state from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) are meeting in Johannesburg’s corruption-ridden financial district of Sandton for a two-day annual summit. Pretending to challenge Western imperial hegemony over poor nations of the South, this bloc has itself proved to be no different. 

Ten years after the 2008 global financial crisis, the global economy is still stagnant and there are few prospects for a recovery. As a result, we have seen a deepening of the social crisis with rising unemployment and inequality, which is what underpins the war against women, increased crime and violence, and the unravelling of the social fabric, especially here in South Africa.

The author recounts his first meeting with Samir Amin more than three decades ago and shares his working experience with this distinguished African scholar who was a mentor and father figure to many young researchers. 

Samir Amin is proposing a way out of the current situation of capitalism in crisis. Nations should socialise the ownership of monopolies, de-financialise the management of the economy and de-globalise international relations.

In his book,  Le bicentenaire de Marx, Samir Amin reflect on the work of the man who has immensely influenced his own work and life. 

Honouring Samir Amin as he celebrated his 80th birthday in September 2011, Horace Campbell paid tribute to Amin’s tireless work “to strengthen effective forms of popular power” and underlined his enormous contribution to our understanding of global capitalism’s increasing destructiveness.

To understand the present capitalist economic crisis, Ama Biney contends that there is an urgent need to revisit the works of Egyptian political economist Samir Amin. His bold proposals on ending global inequalities and injustices are timely.

I was requested by the Pambazuka News editors to give a brief tribute to Samir Amin.  I will do precisely that—a brief tribute to one of Africa’s leading intellectual luminaries, whose intellectual legacy offers great potential for African Renaissance in the 21st century.  

Natasha Issa Shivji, a young Tanzanian academic and activist, gives a moving tribute to Professor Samir Amin. 

Samir Amin was an economist and intellectual, that has left his marks on academia, as well as on activists.

Former Chief Justice of Kenya, Willy Mutunga, gives a special tribute to Samir Amin. 

Samir Amin (1931-2018) was one of the thinkers of the global South who contributed decisively to starting the epistemological break with the Eurocentric discourse that permeates the social sciences and humanities. His passing on 12 August is a huge loss for his family, friends, collaborators and many sympathisers around the world. 

With the demise of Samir Amin—an indispensable component of the new genre of the Radical Political Economy School of Marxism—the global South has lost an important intellectual prime mover of its history. 

Samir Amin, already a major figure in the political economy of development, was the author of the first article in the first ever issue of ROAPE, in 1974. As the editorial noted, the article was “a summary of his basic model of the workings of the international system as a whole, presented at length in his two recent books” (the two- volume Accumulation on a World Scale, Monthly Review Press, 1974).

I met Samir Amin only once. I was lucky though as our meeting was spread over three days at a conference and I later interviewed him by telephone for The Review of African Political Economy. I described him to friends and colleagues, who heard that I had been fortunate enough to spend time with him, as indefatigable – he would stride out ahead of the group to locate the baladi (local) place to eat and places to visit. 

I was a friend of the late Samir Amin – we met a number of times in our long and peripatetic lives and never without personal warmth and delight at the shared opportunity to compare and contrast our opinions and to further discuss them. 

Judging by media and popular accounts, with all the inherent limitations therein and biases attached thereto, President Putin’s recent visit to South Africa for the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Summit was an overwhelming success. Based on the tone of commentary and analysis prepared thereon, President Putin is widely admired in South Africa and across the African continent for his strong leadership qualities, although not everybody agrees with his country’s policies. 

Major developments related to internal and external relations are taking place in Horn of Africa states. However, those new breakthroughs are threatened by western economic and military imperatives. 

National harmonised parliamentary and presidential elections in the Southern African state of Zimbabwe were held on 30 July, but opposition forces rejected their outcome seeking to continue Western sanctions and attempted isolation.

Over the past two decades, the world could have been hoodwinked by Western governments’ imposition of targeted sanctions on then Zimbabwean president Robert Gabriel Mugabe’s tyrannical regime, on the pretext of human rights abuses and electoral fraud. However, was that the real reasons for these targeted sanctions on Mugabe and members of his ruthless regime?

By “the people,” Leftists include, principally, “those people who do not exploit other people, but are themselves exploited; those who stand at the lowest point of the social ladder, those who are essentially excluded from the governance of their country; those who, strictly speaking, have little or nothing to defend in the present social order; and those who cannot liberate themselves without liberating society as a whole”. 

For Nigerian Leftists currently studying or re-studying Nigerian politics, the month of July 2018 has offered fresh and interesting materials. But for me and some close comrades, what has so far happened this month further clarifies—not by any means solved—several existing problems that may here be grouped into four tasks.

Next month, the Sudanese people will commemorate the 120th anniversary of the Omdurman Battle, which is widely known in Sudan as the Kararey Battle after the name of its location, in the northern part of Omdurman. 

To say that I was shocked to read in the media that Zimbabwe president Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa – during his recent visit to the Johane Masowe Apostolic sect – accepted their declaration that women should not lead, would be a grave understatement, but, rather I was dumbfounded – such comments are not to be expected of a leader of a modern society in the 21st century.