Africa
Western Saharan minister: `Only one solution -- our return to our sovereign homeland'
27 February refugee camp, south-west Algeria
November 29, 2008 -- In October, a three-member delegation of Australian trade unionists visited the Saharawi (Western Saharan) refugee camps in the Hamada desert, south-west Algeria. Western Sahara has been illegally occupied by Morocco since 1975.Green Left Weekly/Links’ Margarita Windisch spoke with Sid’Ahmed Tayeb, the minister of public health for the exiled Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, when she visited the 27 February refugee camp.
The Saharawi refugee camps have now existed for close to 33 years in extremely inhumane surroundings. What has led to the Saharawis becoming refugees and what are the challenges facing the Saharawi people?
First, I would like to thank you very much for your visit. It shows us that we are not alone. This is important support that international community can give us.
A brief history of the Western Saharan people’s struggle for freedom
Team Obama: Channelling Clinton, extending Bush
By Patrick Bond
December 4, 2008 -- Barack Obama was elected on a platform of change. Yet, his actions are pointing to more and more of the same. The question of whether Obama can possibly replace Bush as a danger to world peace is worth considering.
The president-elect’s turn to the Zionist, militarist wing of the US ruling class in recent weeks negates the interest and support he showed for the Palestinian cause while a Chicago community organiser during the 1990s and to the anti-war movement when Bush attacked Iraq five and a half years ago.
To counteract ongoing their economic and cultural decline, it appears that US imperialist managers have adopted two strategies: political revitalisation via Obama’s carefully crafted image as a non-imperialist politician with roots in African-American, Kenyan and even Indonesian traditions; and the activism anticipated through his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, a firm supporter of the US war against Iraq.
In reaction to election campaign allegations that he is a peacenik, Obama himself uttered that the ``surge'' of US troops in Iraq ``succeeded beyond our wildest dreams''.
Zimbabwe: First signs of united front mass action against elite settlement
By the National Co-Ordinating Committee, International Socialist Organisation Zimbabwe
December 2, 2008 -- The situation in Zimbabwe has reached unprecedented levels of crisis. As we have been saying for the last few years, such a crisis was climaxing and with a number of possibilities arising. First and most likely was the likelihood of the bourgeois elite politicians in [President Robert Mugabe's] Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) uniting together in an elitist government of national unity in which ZANU-PF would be the senior partner around a Western- and capitalist-supported neoliberal economic agenda. The MDC's popularity would be used to pacify the urban working people from rising up.
Making the world's poor pay: The economic crisis and the Global South
[This article is available in Spanish: ‘Que pagu
Trade unionists call for solidarity with Western Sahara
UGTSARIO congress delegates
By Margarita Windisch
South Africa’s ANC: things fall apart
BY Dale T. McKinley, Johannesburg
November 15, 2008 -- At some point in the not-too-distant future, we might just look back at 2008 as the year in which things really started to fall apart for the African National Congress (ANC).
Africa’s oldest liberation movement, which has enjoyed overwhelming political hegemony and electoral success since South Africa’s democratic breakthrough in 1994, is in deep trouble.
Crucially, this is not mainly as a result of the more recent domestic manifestations of the ever-widening crisis of capitalism nor of any kind of immediate threat to its 18-year hold on political power.
It is rather more simple — the “big happy family” whose members range from crypto-communists to die-hard capitalists, from ethno-nationalist chauvinists to cosmopolitan liberals — is beginning to break apart because there remains little to hold the heterogeneous clan together anymore.
Close the US military base on Diego Garcia! Complete the decolonisation of Mauritius!
US-occupied Diego Garcia
By Lindsey Collen, Lalit (Mauritius)
October 26, 2008 -- Five separate judgments were handed down in the House of Lords’ October 22 judgment on the appeal of the British government against the Chagossians’ right of abode on Diego Garcia. Lords Hoffman, Rodger of Earlsferry and Carswell found against the Chagossians’ right of abode, while Lords Bingham of Cornhill and Mance found in favour. In this article, we’ll summarise the arguments the judges relied upon and also briefly comment on the numerous mentions of Lalit in the judgment, before moving on to the question of Diego Garcia in more political terms; the illegal military occupation of Diego Garcia and the Chagos islands by the British and US, which is the reason for the horrendous banishment of the Chagossians from their home islands is an eminently political problem.
By Ricardo Levins Morales
Miriam Makeba passed away on November 10 at a concert in Italy. The link below is to a poster I made in tribute to Makeba as soon as I heard the news.
When I was a child, my father would occasionally travel to the United States. When he returned to Puerto Rico he would sometimes bring back a music record. Sometimes it would be Makeba. I only understood the words to a few of the songs she was singing (Makeba sang in many languages), but I understood the sprit and the rhythms. The sounds of drumming has always made sense to me. I also new that she was in some way connected to the struggle for a better world.
Miriam Makeba was banned from her homeland by the apartheid regime after addressing the United Nations committee on apartheid and spent the next thirty years in exile. As with all of those who pass out of this world she will continue to be with us as long as we carry her. This poster tribute is one more vessel in which to bring her along with us. The road toward justice is a long one. I know that as long as I walk it Miriam Makeba's songs will be with me.
Can Africa survive Obama's advisers?
Hamba kahle Mama Africa (Miriam Makeba)