The magnificent Ramada Plaza Hotel in Tunisia’s capital city, Tunis played host to lawyers across Africa on 27-29 September 2018 for the ninth annual conference and general assembly of the Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU) whose theme was “One Continent, One People, One Economy: Developing Africa through Continental Free Trade and Movement”. 

The recent demonstrations and fighting that broke out across Tunisia for about ten days in January 2018 are all the more significant in that Western representatives and apologists for the current state of the world have held up Tunisia’s political situation as the most successful outcome of the 2011 “Arab Spring", that is, from the point of view of maintaining the status quo.

Ten years after acquiring the Chergui gas concession in Kerkennah through a corrupt deal, and five years after Tunisia’s uprising for bread, freedom and social justice, the British oil and gas company Petrofac faces growing discontent on the island. In the first two weeks of April, Kerkennah was the scene of violent police repression of protests against the oil company.

In the name of national security and the war on terrorism, post-uprising Tunisia is witnessing increased securitization of public life; even a return to the Ben Ali days in some respects. The West is only too happy to help in reintegration of the North African nation into the global neoliberal system.

On 9 July, 2015, the Local Organizing Committee of the 8th Pan African Congress presented its final report to President John Mahama of Ghana. Zaya Yeebo presents his personal reflections of the 8th Congress held in Accra in March, 2015, observing that the Congress sought to revive the Movement, to reaffirm its anti-imperialist, anti-neo-colonialist nature and helped to define a path for the continued growth and regeneration of African economies and politics.