By Priyamvada Gopal, Z Net, June, 29 2008
[This is a longer version of a piece carried by the Guardian June 27th.]

Over forty years ago, as Africa commenced the long and arduous process of decolonization, one of its foremost liberationist thinkers issued a prophetic warning. Frantz Fanon, himself a freedom fighter, wrote that the national leader in the postcolonial era should not ‘fall back into the past and become drunk on the remembrance of the epoch leading up to independence.' His powerful descriptions of a once effective leader who gradually secedes from reality and betrays the people who entrust him with their future has resonances for the tragic situation in which Zimbabwe finds itself today. Having reduced a once significant anti-colonialism to a self-serving dogma, Robert Mugabe is the kind of fallen leader Fanon cautioned Africa against. Hesitant African leaders who are being called upon to intervene might want to reread his classic essay, ‘The Pitfalls of National Consciousness' from that classic liberationist text, The Wretched of the Earth.

by Shawn Hattingh. MR Zine

Introduction

In August and September of 1974, people across the length and breadth of South Africa celebrated the coming independence of Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique. People like Mamphela Rampele led massive rallies honoring the success of the liberation movements in these countries. There was even spontaneous dancing in the streets, and the air was filled with a sense that South Africa would soon be joining these countries in ending racist and capitalist oppression through revolution. This was due to the fact that the defeat of the Portuguese Empire in Africa gave South Africans a renewed sense of hope, which was one of the catalysts that ignited the 1976 uprisings against apartheid. In those heady days African Unity was not an empty phrase; it was rather the ideological backbone of the fight against capitalism, imperialism, and apartheid. By the end of the decade South Africans were fighting and dying side by side with Angolans and Zimbabweans in the struggle against the racist forces of Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa. People from all over Africa were making massive sacrifices to help free their bothers and sisters in South Africa by providing refuge and moral and material support on a massive scale. Hope sprung eternal for a united Africa: an Africa that could collectively defeat imperialism and gain its freedom.

As everybody in our country knows, the Congress of South African Trade Unions has been at the forefront of the campaign to create jobs and eradicate poverty. For years we have fought to ensure that this struggle is taken seriously and remains at the centre of the national agenda.

COSATU has done everything in its power to give a voice to the voiceless and speak out against the intolerable levels of unemployment and poverty in South Africa, and to explain the historical reasons for them and the policies we need to deal with the problem.

It is therefore shocking and disturbing to see that some workers and residents of poor communities believe that these problems are caused by foreign nationals and that they are attacking, robbing and killing those foreigners they believe to be responsible, who are themselves victims of the same unemployment, poverty and crime.

They are totally wrong. The problems they face are rooted in years of apartheid which kept the majority of South Africans in desperate poverty and denied them any democratic means to improve their plight.

Since its founding in 2001, the World Social Forum (WSF) has gained international prominence as a space for various activists and NGOs to converge, meet, discuss, and strategize against globalization and imperialism. Organized to counter the annual World Economic Forum, the WSF has grown both in size and influence. Since 2001, hundreds of regional social forums have emerged all over the world. Several such forums are held in Canada.

Carmelle Wolfson is a media activist involved with Grassy Narrows solidarity work in Canada. She spent seven weeks in Kenya reporting for Carrefour International de la Presse Universitaire Francophone (CIPUF). Lesley Wood is an activist and teaches global sociology and social movement theory at York University.

ZNet | Africa

by Doug Ireland; DIRELAND; August 23, 2007

August has proven to be a perilous months for gays in Nigeria and Cameroon, where large-scale arrests have taken place, and in Uganda, where gay activists have gone into hiding after government ministers this week called for their arrest.

First, in Nigeria:

An anti-gay riot occurred this August 21, after 18 young men appeared in an Islamic court in the sharia state of Bauchi to face charges of cross-dressing in women's clothes.

by M.C. Saavedra

With awards season now upon us, Leonardo DiCaprio seems poised for a walk down the red carpet at next month's Academy Awards. Having already garnered two Golden Globes nominations for best actor (one for his performance in The Departed and the other in Blood Diamond), an Oscar nod is likely to follow. Many filmgoers who've been watching Mr. DiCaprio's slow assent to maturity from his days as a teen idol in the blockbuster Titanic have been impressed with his recent offerings, which elevate the young Hollywood heartthrob to the ranks of a serious actor. His powerful performance in Martin Scorcese's highly-acclaimed film, The Departed, is compelling while also at times disarming in its vulnerability. But while Mr. DiCaprio is often captivating in the more recent Blood Diamond, neither the film nor his performance manages to reach the high bar set by his portrayal of undercover cop Billy Costigan in the Scorcese film.

by Nick Dearden
from War on Want

A decades-old, impoverished refugee population, tens of thousands of settlers, a 1000-mile wall, a stalled peace process and now an intifada in an occupied territory. This is not a description of Palestine, but a territory known as Western Sahara, a few hundred miles from the Canary Islands, which was occupied by Morocco in 1975. In 2006, Saharawi refugees will commemorate 30 years – a lifetime to many of them – in the Algerian desert waiting for the international community to live up to its promises to give them a referendum on self-determination over their homeland.

A bit on the liberal side regarding suggestions for change but very useful information and analysis. Notice the involvement of Canada-based Barrick Gold in the exploitation of resources and people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

by Keith Harmon Snow and David Barouski; March 01, 2006

The British medical journal Lancet recently took greater notice of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) than all western media outlets combined. A group of physicians reported that about 4 million people have died since the “official” outbreak of the Congolese war in 1998 (1). The BBC reported the war in Congo has claimed more lives than any armed conflict since World War II (2). However, experts working in the Congo, and Congolese survivors, count over 10 million dead since war began in 1996—not 1998—with the U.S.-backed invasion to overthrow Zaire’s President Joseph Mobutu. While the western press quantifies African deaths all the time, no statistic can quantify the suffering of the Congolese.

IV Online magazine : IV 376 - March 2006
Jean Nanga

The year that has just ended has been rich in promises concerning the future of Africa. The big institutions of the capitalist metropolises have proclaimed their generous intentions: from Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa to Bush’s Millennium Challenge Corporation; from the World Bank under the leadership of Paul Wolfowitz to the G8 meeting at Gleneagles; from the UN Millennium Development Goals to the Japanese commitment at the Asia-Africa Summit (April 2005, Djakarta). The most publicised manifestation of this generosity was the announcement of the writing off of 40 billion dollars of multilateral debt for 18 of the world’s poorest countries, nearly all of them African.

1. Communique from Sahara Presse Service of the Polisario Front

2. Article from Al-Jazeera

***

1. Commemoration of the Saharawi Republic’s 30th anniversary in liberated territories of Western Sahara

Tifariti (liberated territories),
27/02/2006

The festivities that mark the 30th anniversiy of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic started Monday in Tifariti under the presidency of the President of the Saharawi Republic, Mohamed Abdelaziz, with the presence of many official delegations who came to affirm their support to the decolonisation of the Western Sahara, which is militarily occupied since 1975 by the Kingdom of Morocco.