Africa
`Our passion to destroy capitalism ... remains unwavering': Declaration of the African Conference on Participatory Democracy
Johannesburg Declaration of the African Conference on Participatory Democracy
August 16, 2008
SACP leader Blade Nzimande addresses the conference.
As comrades and compatriots, gathered in Johannesburg, South Africa, August 14-16, 2008, from all parts of the world, at the African Conference on Participatory Democracy, hosted by the South African Communist Party and the Swedish Left Party under the auspices of the International Left Forum declare the following:.
Zimbabwe: A `power-sharing' deal for whom?
By Shawn Hattingh
Negotiations between the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) over the political future of Zimbabwe have reached a zenith in the past few weeks. It now seems almost inevitable that some sort of deal will be attained by the political masters of the MDC and ZANU-PF and that power sharing will become a reality. The mediator in the negotiation process, the South African government, has claimed that the outcome of the negotiations between these parties will lead to a new dawn in Zimbabwe. As part of this, we are assured that the corner has been turned and that democracy and freedom will be a reality in the beleaguered country in the near future.
South Africa's activist social justice research centre under attack
By Dennis Brutus and Patrick Bond
August 6, 2008 -- Durban's University of KwaZulu-Natal vice-chancellor Malegapuru Makgoba is expected to deliver an edict that the Centre for Civil Society will close on December 31. The reason given by dean Donal McCracken to a sceptical School of Development Studies (where the centre is housed) is that staff do not have "permanent" funding. But neither do most of the university's research units, and there is money in centre reserves for at least a couple of years, plus ongoing donor support for many of our projects.
Hence this "execution" will be doggedly resisted because UKZN still has many staff and students who remember the struggle for non-racial democracy and don't mind speaking out to challenge misguided decisions.
As the two most senior academics in the centre, holding an honorary professorship and tenured research chair, respectively, we will resist, despite what a UKZN internal report recorded -- an environment of "intimidation and bullying", in which management "deploys power rather than intellect", as Rhodes professor Jimi Adesina put it.
Photo exhibition: Durban, South Africa, UKZN Centre for Civil Society from August 1-September 3, 2008
| Photographs by Oliver Meth, from the exhibition 'Breathing Spaces |
Breathing Spaces exhibition can be viewed at UKZN Centre for Civil Society from 1 August - 3 September 2008.
Southern African People's Solidarity Network's SADC Peoples' Summit 2008, Joburg, August 14-17, 2008Announcing…. The SADC Peoples' Summit 2008As the SADC Heads of State will be meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2008, the ordinary peoples of Southern Africa will also The Peoples' Summit serves as a social movement planting and The following issues will be the main focus areas for the 2008 Summit: SUDAN: US rolls out red carpet for Darfur's executioner
11 May 2005
Norm Dixon Revelations of a covert rendezvous in Washington between top CIA officials and the head of Sudan’s secret police have starkly exposed just how hollow and hypocritical are the US administration’s expressions of concern for the plight of millions of Darfuri peasants, who have been systematically targeted by Sudan’s rulers in a vicious 26-month-long campaign of ethnic cleansing and mass murder. Ken Silverstein, writing in the April 29 Los Angeles Times, reported that US government officials revealed to him that, in the previous week, “the CIA sent an executive jet ... to ferry the chief of Sudan’s intelligence agency [General Salah Abdallah Gosh] to Washington for secret meetings sealing Khartoum’s sensitive and previously veiled partnership with the administration”. Sudanese Communist Party on ICC's request to indict Sudan President Omar Hassan al-BashirStatement of the Sudanese Communist Party Khartoum, July 20, 2008 -- The inclusion of the name of the President of the Republic of the Sudan among those wanted for justice by the International Criminal Court increases the complications engulfing the crisis prevailing in the Sudan. Despite the fact that such procedures were already in place and expected since the establishment of the Court, and this last step of naming the President of the Sudan was preceded by a similar step indicting two prominent figures in the government in February 2007, the Government of the Sudan was ill-prepared both legally and politically to react to either attempts. Class war and the Anglican schism
By
Barry Healy
July 29, 2008 -- Dramatic events within the worldwide Anglican Communion (the international association of national Anglican churches) have revealed a “cold split” with the potential for a complete collapse of the Episcopal formation. Superficially, the debates have centred on the right of women and homosexuals to be priests and bishops, and on gay marriage. However, while theological arguments dating back centuries are being mouthed, behind them are class-war elements of more recent vintage, including some connected with the era of US President Ronald Reagan’s backing of Central American death squads in the 1980s. African
bishops have led the charge against modernity, but they are funded and
organised by right-wing US think tanks and the Sydney Anglicans’ arch-reactionary
Archbishop Peter Jensen. Another player is the Stuffed and Starved: `Snapping' the power of agribusinessReview by Leo
Zeilig Stuffed
and Starved,
by Raj Patel, Black Inc., 2007 At the end of the 19th century huge areas of the globe
where violently incorporated into the world market. Whole regions that had for
generations been farmed for local consumption were transformed for the
production of cash crops. In captured and occupied lands new food crops were
introduced that had little or no local nutritional use: ground nuts (peanuts)
in what is now Senegal and Nigeria, cocoa in Cote d’Ivoire, cotton and rubber production
across thousands of square kilometres of Central Africa. The xenophobia outbreak in South Africa: Strategic questions facing the new social movements
By Oupa Lehulere
June 2008 -- The township of Alexandra outside Johannesburg, South Africa, has a long history of resistance to oppression and exploitation. In the late 1950s Alex (as it is popularly referred to) was the centre of bus boycotts against increases in fares and of struggles against apartheid, in the 1980s Alex was the centre of building street committees that represented what were then called ``organs of people’s power’’ – forms of alternative government to the apartheid state, and in 2002 the event that announced the presence of the new social movements on the South African post-apartheid political landscape – the 20,000-strong march led by the Social Movements United – took place in Alex. The fact that it was Alex that would go down in history as the township that expressed most publicly the reactionary attitudes held by working-class people against fellow working-class people from other parts of Africa throws into sharp relief the process of political and organisational decline that has been underway within the South Africa’s working class since 1994. Zimbabwe socialists: `Mobilise against the Mugabe regime!'By the International Socialist Organisation of Zimbabwe On June 29, 2008, Robert Mugabe was announced the winner of the presidential runoff ``election” with a vote of 2.1 million as opposed to 233,000 for Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai and 131,481 spoilt ballots. The regime claimed a sweeping victory, “winning” in all constituencies even in areas where it did not win a single seat in the March parliamentary elections. As the ISOZ had warned, these elections were not going to bring real democratic change. Rather the regime of Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) would ensure its victory by hook or crook and then seek a government of national unity with the MDC as a junior partner to deal with the imploding economic crisis. Mauritius: Britain cites Lalit's support for Chagossians to oppose their returnJuly 16, 2008 -- According to attorney-at-law Robin Mardemootoo, who represented the Chagos Refugee Group at the House of Lords Judicial Committee, which acts as the ultimate court of appeal in London, last week, the Mauritian revolutionary organisation Lalit was referred to during one hour of pleadings by the UK government legal representative Jonathan Crow, QC. There are not official transcripts of this kind of hearing.
African Participatory Democracy Conference, Soweto, South Africa, August 14-16, 2008AFRICAN PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY CONFERENCE Pope's immoral stance a death sentence; protest the unholy fatherBy Tony Iltis July 12, 2008 -- The visit to Sydney for World Youth Day (WYD), July 15-20, by Pope Benedict XVI and 300,000 Catholic pilgrims is set to become the scene for protests. Ironically, the protests are being fuelled by the clumsy efforts of the NSW state Labor Party government to suppress them — passing laws making it illegal to “annoy” pilgrims and defining “annoy” broadly enough to include having signs, or even wearing t-shirts, with messages that the doctrinally rigid pope or his followers disapprove of. * * * No to Pope Rallies, July 19, 2008 How international big business colluded with South Africa's apartheid regime; Audio added July 13, 2008Dennis Brutus, veteran anti-apartheid campaigner, describes how US, British and other major multinational corporations colluded with the racist regime of apartheid South Africa. Brutus is attempting to win reparations for superprofits made through the exploitation and repression of black South African workers. For further background to this, go to ``Can reparations for apartheid profits be won in US courts?''.
* * * Friday, July 11th, 2008 SOUTH AFRICAN POET DENNIS BRUTUS ON STEAL THIS RADIO! Can reparations for apartheid profits be won in US courts?By Patrick Bond
Dennis Brutus Durban, July 6, 2008 -- A telling remark about US imperialism's double standards was uttered by Clinton-era deputy treasury secretary Stuart Eizenstat, who a decade ago was the driver of reparations claims against pro-Nazi corporations, assisting plaintiffs to gain $8 billion from European banks and corporations which ripped off Holocaust victims' funds or which were 1930s beneficiaries of slave labour (both Jewish and non-Jewish). But how about reparations for corporate profits made under South Africa's racist apartheid system? As a November 2002 keynote speaker for the “USA Engage” lobby of 650 multinational corporations organised to fight the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), Eizenstat warned that South African reparations activists “can galvanise public opinion and generate political support,” and “may achieve some success despite legal infirmities''. NEW! Links Dossier #2: Class Struggle and Resistance in ZimbabweIn the second Links Dossier, in an easy to print a PDF format, Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal makes available essential historical background material on the struggle for socialism in Zimbabwe, the degeneration of the regime and party of Robert Mugabe and the views of the Zimbabwean socialist movement on the way forward for the struggle for democracy and radical change. Contents: Revolutionaries, resistance and crisis in Zimbabwe His Excellency Comrade Robert: How Mugabe’s ZANU clique rose to power Zimbabwean socialists: `No to a government of national unity! Only united mass action will defeat Mugabe!' Click HERE to download. Please forward the following link: http://static.links.org.au/dossiers/2008-06-26-Zimbabwe-Dossier.pdf For other Links Dossiers, please click here. Zimbabwe socialists: `No to a government of national unity! Only united mass action will defeat Mugabe!By the International Socialist Organisation of Zimbabwe * * * June 23, 2008 -- After the publication of the original article (see below), Movement for Democratic Change presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai held a press conference at which he issued a statement to the effect that the MDC is pulling out of the presidential run-off election because conditions for a free and fair election do not exist, [due to the] the massive violence against his party and civic society. The press conference followed the disruption of his final rally in Harare by ZANU-PF vigilantes on June 22. Tsvangirai stated that the MDC was to carry out further consultations and would announce the details of the way forward. We welcome
the position taken by the MDC, and initial reports indicate that this position
has been accepted by MDC and civic society activists and supporters. Cuito Cuanavale: How Cuba fought for Africa’s freedomBy Barry Healy June 14, 2008 -- This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, a heroic struggle in which, between October 1987 and June 1988, in some of the fiercest fighting in Africa since the Second World War, the South African Defence Force (SADF) were humiliatingly defeated by liberation forces in Angola. Cuban assistance to Angolan resistance to the SADF invasion was vital. Defeat at Cuito Cuanavale spelled the doom of apartheid and the victory of the South African liberation movement. Former Cuban president Fidel Castro famously observed that “the history of Africa will be written as before and after Cuito Cuanavale”. In South Africa’s Freedom Park, outside Pretoria, 2070 names of Cubans who fell in Angola are inscribed alongside those of South Africans who died during the anti-apartheid struggle. His Excellency Comrade Robert: How Mugabe's ZANU clique rose to powerBy Stephen O’Brien Towards the end of 1975 a movement of young radicals
organised in the Zimbabwe People’s Army (ZIPA) took charge of How Europe underdevelops Africa (but how some fight back)By Patrick Bond and Richard Kamidza ADDIS ABABA, June 11, 2008 -- In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided and conquered. Turns in the class struggle might have surprised Walter Rodney, the political economist whose 1972 classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa provided detailed critiques of corporate looting. In early June, the British-Dutch firm Shell Oil –- one of Rodney's targets -- was instructed to depart the Ogoniland region within the Niger Delta in southern Nigeria, where in 1995 Shell officials were responsible for the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa by Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. After decades of abuse, women protesters, local NGOs and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) gave Shell the shove. France's Total appears to be the next in line to go, in part because of additional pressure from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). South Africa: Water struggles from Johannesburg and beyond
By Dale T. McKinley
It’s been five years since residents of the poor community of Phiri (Soweto) were first confronted with the practical consequences of the City of Johannesburg’s corporatisation and commodification (read: privatisation) of water delivery. That was when Phiri was chosen as the first community in the Johannesburg Metro to ``benefit'' from the implementation of its Operation Gcin’amanzi. What subsequently happened has now been well documented many times over: the surreptitious and forcible installation of pre-paid water meters under the pretext of fixing ageing infrastructure; the victimisation and cutting-off of supply to those who refused; and, sustained resistance pitting community residents – organised through the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) and the newly formed Coalition Against Water Privatisation (CAWP) -- against an ``unholy alliance'' of Johannesburg Water, the City of Johannesburg, state prosecutors, the South African Police Services and private security firms. Nigerian socialist: A tribute to Fidel CastroKola Ibrahim of the Democratic Socialist Movement of Nigeria looks at the legacy of Fidel Castro, the internationalisation of struggle and calls for ``working-class activists from Kenya to Venezuela to Georgia to Pakistan and the rest of the world'' to build a genuine working people's political platform. Musical interlude: Abdullah Ibrahim's Mannenberg (Is Where It's Happening)MannenbergAbdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand) is seen here visiting Mandela's cell on Robben Island, and wandering in and around Cape Town -- including the famed District Six and Mannenberg -- to the soundtrack of his now classic South African jazz tune Mannenberg (Is Where It's Happening). Photo essay: Migrant workers in South Africa; Photography and social justice strugglesBorn in Durban and the author of a forthcoming book on Wentworth in Durban, Peter Mckenzie was a co-founder of the photo collective Afrapix agency under the auspices of the South African Council of Churches and the chief photographer for Drum magazine until the late 1980s before going freelance. He was also the co-ordinator and facilitator of the photojournalism department at the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism from 1996 to 1999. Mckenzie has published and exhibited both in South Africa and internationally, and is recognised as one of South Africa's greatest photographers. Below are photos from Peter Mckenzie's brilliant photo exhibition of migrant workers in South Africa -- sponsored by the Southern African Migration Project. For South African readers the exhibition is at the [Durban] Centre for Civil Society hallway through June, in the Memorial Tower Building's first floor F section (in the back of the courtyard). Below the photos, McKenzie provides a commentary on aesthetics and representation strategies for popular movements committed to social justice.
|



Recent comments
5 hours 53 min ago
12 hours 38 min ago
19 hours 16 min ago
19 hours 20 min ago
1 day 4 hours ago
1 day 18 hours ago
1 day 18 hours ago
1 day 19 hours ago
2 days 8 hours ago
2 days 8 hours ago