Africa

There was uproar over SACP general secretary and government mi

By Mazibuko K. Jara

October 30, 2009 -- Our country is in crisis. There is deepening inequality, many people live in permanent poverty and millions are unemployed for most of their adult lives. Women continue to suffer from social oppression, violence and poverty. The very ecological and biophysical conditions for our human existence are under threat.

Retrogressive ideologies in our society are gaining ground: we are going back to ethnic identity, we have retrogressive notions of womanhood, we have seen the rise in the power of undemocratic rule of unelected chiefs. The state is dysfunctional, corrupt and fraudulent. The state seems unwilling to confront the economic system that produces all these crises. Together, none of these socioeconomic problems can be addressed by a South Africa that reproduces capitalism. These problems require solutions that go beyond capitalist accumulation.

Is it correct to regard the Jacob Zuma-led African National Congress (ANC) as left? Whilst the Zuma-led ANC is much friendlier to the left than Thabo Mbeki's, neoliberal capitalism survives in South Africa.

The African Communist, 1991.

By Blade Nzimande

October 26, 2009 -- A browse through the very first edition of the African Communist in 1959 not only gives an insight into the time and context during which it was launched but also the courageous and defiant character of those who breathed life into our historic journal.

This magazine, the African Communist, has been started by a group of Marxist-Leninists in Africa, to defend and spread the inspiring and liberating ideas of Communism in our great Continent, and to apply the brilliant scientific method of Marxism to the solution of its problems.

It is being produced in conditions of great difficulty and danger. Nevertheless we mean to go on publishing it, because we know that Africa needs Communist thought, as dry and thirsty soil needs rain.

October 21, 2009 – With the help of Socialist Alliance members in the growing Sudanese community in Australia,

By the Polisario Front

October 2009

1. Western Sahara (the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic) is located in northwest Africa and covers an area of 266,000 square kilometres. It is bordered by Morocco to the north, Algeria to the northeast and Mauritania to the East and southeast and has a 1,200-kilometre-long Atlantic Ocean coastline. The Saharawi Republic was proclaimed on 27 February 1976; its capital is El Aaiún.

2. In the pre-colonial times, the Saharawis lived as one independent community and developed their own cultural forms of expression and socio-political organisations; it was these idiosyncratic elements that constituted the distinctiveness of the Saharawi society over the centuries. The Saharawi are known for being a tolerant, open and peaceful society that has never been involved in any form of political or religious extremism.

By Nigel Gibson and Raj Patel

October 8, 2009 -- Pambazuka News -- You don’t need presidential palaces, or generals riding in tanks, or even the CIA to make a coup happen. Democracy can be overthrown with far less pomp, fewer props and smaller bursts of state violence. But these quieter coups are no less deadly for democracy.

At the end of September 2009, just such a coup took place in South Africa. It wasn’t the kind involving parliament or the inept and corrupt head of the African National Congress (ANC) Jacob Zuma. Quite the opposite. It involved a genuinely democratic and respected social movement, the freely elected governing committee of the shack settlement at Kennedy Road in Durban. And this peaceful democracy was overthrown by the South African government.

By the Bolivarian News Agency

September 21, 2009 -- The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez Frias, expressed his solidarity to the people of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic to reach their independence from Morocco.

The statement was issued by President Chavez during his talk with Mohamed Saui, who studies in Cuba and is now visiting Venezuela together with a delegation of young African students who are to take part on the Third Cultural Festival of the People of Africa, from September 20 to 25, on the way to the Summit of Presidents Africa-South America.

“As Fidel [Castro] told you, I tell you on behalf of Venezuela: We support and we will always support the cause of your people, the cause of the freedom of the Sahrawi people”, Chavez expressed.

Moreover, he reaffirmed his commitment of eventually visiting the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and he categorically affirmed that “it is necessary that we have more awareness and solidarity with the Sahrawi people”.

The Venezuelan president expressed as well that the Bolivarian government has travelled up to the country located in the western Sahara. “Minister Ramirez was there; there are some students from here; and we have been modestly cooperating.”

Confronting the climate crisis: Preparing for Copenhagen and beyond

Nairobi, Kenya,