Pambazuka News Team is pleased to announce to its readers and supporters the launch of a new video blog called #PunchBack.

#PunchBack provides comment and analysis of current affairs from a pan-Africanist perspective.

We invite our readers to watch #PunchBack, share the vlog, engage with the issues raised and share your views with us.

A new post of #PunchBack will appear every two weeks in the Comments & Analysis section of your newsletter.

Welcome!

Click on this link to the first post of .

Pambazuka News Team

Civil society organisations from around the world have insisted that climate change is the biggest and most urgent threat to the Planet. A radical transformation of food systems is needed, away from an industrial model and its false solutions, and toward food sovereignty, local food systems, and integral agrarian reform in order to achieve the full realization of the human right to adequate food and nutrition.

As a spokesperson for the South African Police Serivce, Colonel Naicker is expected to disseminate factually accurate information. But he he has conspicuously failed to do in his comments about the Glebelands violence. How on earth does SAPS expect anyone to take anything he says seriously given the disinformation he has disseminated about an extremely serious and tragic situation?

Pambazuka News Team is pleased to announce to its readers and supporters the launch of a new video blog called #PunchBack.

#PunchBack provides comment and analysis of current affairs from a pan-Africanist perspective.

We invite our readers to watch #PunchBack, share the vlog, engage with the issues raised and share your views with us.

A new post of #PunchBack will appear every two weeks in the Comments & Analysis section of your newsletter.

Welcome!

Click on this link to the first post of

Ethiopia's sweeping anti-terrorism law has been used to prosecute journalists and bloggers, opposition politicians, and peaceful protesters. Many have been accused without compelling evidence of association with banned opposition groups.

The incumbent will be primarily responsible for the leadership, management, research programmes, fund-raising and networking responsibilities of the Centre for Civil Society.

Dear Editor,

Below is my comment on the article written by Sankara Kamara.

The problem with SLPP is that after losing the 2007 election to the APC the party reverted to live in the days of Siaka Stevens. Learning from our history that after Siaka Stevens took the reins of power in the late 60s, the APC fought to dismantle the opposition through an unprecedented violence. In less than a decade of Siaka Stevens and the APC rule, the opposition was completely dismantled and for the following two decades, the political system became a One Party affair. Has Sierra Leone fully recovered from this experiment? In his political slogan for the 2007 election, candidate Koroma preached that the next round of APC rule will be different but only for the country to be fooled. Every policy of the 2000s APC is not only a replica of the 70s, 80s and 90 APC but the new brand of APC leadership has decided to increase exponentially the repressive and corrupt practices of the old.

And so, as the APC has decided to repeat history, the SLPP has followed; fearing the imprisonment and loss of life from false treason trials, the SLPP have become invincible, hoping and praying for another savior to take the APC out. To the average opposition SLPP member in the country, no political pressure will take the APC out of power while on the otherhand, the APC is doing everything in her power to ensure that the savior is not born this time.

I will therefore agree with you in part that SLPP share the blame for the disfunctioning of the democratic system but I don’t believe that the APC will accept the role of a vibrant opposition to make democracy work for the good of the country. The APC leadership will not live with a check their misrule of the country. In our most recent history, Kabba called on the APC in opposition and challenged them to be a functional opposition by putting their house in order when the party was gradually disintegrating from internal squabbles. Will the APC challenged the SLPP to do likewise? Did the country experience any attack on APC offices during the SLPP rule? What justification can anyone give for the attacks on SLPP facilities which have become the order of the day since the APC rule took back power?

Yes, the SLPP has a fault but there is no doubt that the APC has control over the making of a dormant and toothless opposition. A vigorous opposition will only meet with more repressive APC who will careless for the loss of Sierra Leonean life in their determination to hold on to power. Truly, history is been repeated.

John Yanguba, MSCE, PE.

Sexual violence continues to increase in Somalia following the recent impeachment against the president, which caused political instability and a crackdown on IDPs around the capital city.

Kairos Palestine statement on continued confiscations of Palestinian land in the Cremisan Valley of the Bethlehem region.

African civil society groups have expressed disappointed at the sudden, unexpected and unexplained cancellation of the Summit that was scheduled for Nairobi this week. They say Africa had high hopes and expectations that this Summit would have reinvigorated the APRM’s purpose, institutions and processes, and addressed the critical challenges facing APRM.

Three years after the arbitrary executions of nine prisoners in The Gambia, there is still no response for the families. No one knows where the bodies are, whether they were buried or the motive for the extra-judicial killings that shocked the world.

The South African Research Chair initiative (SARChI) in Applied Poverty Reduction Assessment is pleased to announce two new 2015 TrustAfrica / UKZN Post Doctoral Fellowships.

Contributors should indicate their interest and focus of the selected piece by 15 September 2015. All full articles should be submitted by 15 October 2015.

I would like to comment on the articles by and

African women applaud the new “2030 Agenda” for having the promise of being truly transformative for women and girls around the world. But they are concerned about the lack of commitment by African governments to implement progressive laws, agreements and protocols.

Dear Readers and Contributors

Pambazuka News Team takes its annual break from 17-31 August 2015.

We would like to thank you most sincerely for your continued support that enables us to carry insightful, sharp and thoughtful analyses, making Pambazuka News one of the largest and most influential web-based forums for social justice in the Pan-African world.

EDITORS

By some estimates, Nigeria’s national oil corporation alone has reportedly lost more than $30 billion in oil revenue to corruption in the last five yeas, equivalent to the gross domestic product of more than 30 African countries. In this wide-ranging interview, Prof Wole Soyinka speaks about the lost potential in Africa’s most populous nation and the hope of creating a new society built on people-based values.

The State of the Union (SOTU) and the Southern Africa Trust (SAT) seek to hire a researcher(s) or research team/firm to conduct a research identifying key mechanisms of best practice for monitoring and coordinating full compliance to and implementation of African Union (AU) and Regional Economic Communities (RECs)[1] legal instruments and policy frameworks by African countries at the national level.

The civil society group is concerned that the recent approval is typical of GM decision-making in South Africa, which simply reiterates and summarises information provided by Monsanto, who has a clear vested interest in the approval. The government is under a legal obligation to apply a risk averse and cautious approach, which takes into account uncertainties and the limits of current knowledge about commercial production of GMOs.

The families of the 37 mineworkers killed at Marikana on 13 and 16 August 2012 have filed civil claims against the Minister of Police in the High Court in Pretoria. The 37 families are represented by The Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI), and the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) and Wits Law Clinic.