Africa
South Africa: The state, xenophobia and nationalism
By Dale T. McKinley
Patrice Lumumba `will live forever’ -- exclusive book excerpt
Leo Zeilig, author of Lumumba, a new political biography of Congo independence leader Patrice Lumumba, has kindly given permission for Links Int
In defence of Naomi Klein's analysis of South Africa
By Patrick Bond
In response to Beware Electocrats: Naomi Klein on South Africa by Ronald Suresh Roberts in Radical Philosophy commentaries, July-August 2008, http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/default.asp?channel_id=2187&editorial_id=26668
Klein’s chapter on South Africa follows this exchange.
Secret CIA prison on Diego Garcia confirmed
By Andy Worthington
August 2008 -- The existence of a secret, CIA-run prison on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean has long been a leaky secret in the “War on Terror” and recent revelations in TIME — based on disclosures by a “senior American official” (now retired), who was “a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings” after the 9/11 attacks, and who reported that “a CIA counter-terrorism official twice said that a high-value prisoner or prisoners were being interrogated on the island” — will come as no surprise to those who have been studying the story closely.
The struggle for democracy in Swaziland
Two speeches by leaders of the Peoples United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO -- Swaziland's liberation movement) on the developing struggle for democracy and social justice in the small southern African country of Swaziland. Mario Masuku is president of PUDEMO; Bongani Masuku is a former secretary general of the Swaziland Solidarity Network and is the Congress of South African Trade Unions' international secretary.
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
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.
| Photographs by Oliver Meth, from the exhibition 'Breathing Spaces |  |
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Breathing Spaces exhibition can be viewed at UKZN Centre for Civil Society from 1 August - 3 September 2008.
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Southern African People's Solidarity Network's SADC Peoples' Summit 2008, Joburg, August 14-17, 2008
Announcing….
The SADC Peoples' Summit 2008
As the SADC Heads of State will be meeting in Johannesburg, South
Africa in 2008, the ordinary peoples of Southern Africa will also
converge in Johannesburg, South Africa from the 14th – 17th of August
2008 under the auspices of the Southern Africa Peoples' Solidarity
Network (SAPSN) to reclaim SADC for peoples' development and
solidarity.
The Peoples' Summit serves as a social movement planting and
strengthening forum in the SADC region. Alternative Information
Development Centre (AIDC), Economic Justice Network (EJN) and the
SAPSN Secretariat will co-host the Summit. The 2008 Summit will be
held under the theme ''Reclaiming SADC for People's Development in the
Southern Africa Through People to People Solidarity".
The following issues will be the main focus areas for the 2008 Summit:
SUDAN: US rolls out red carpet for Darfur's executioner
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-Bashir
Statement 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.