cc As South Africa nears its fourth election since 1994, Andile Mngxitama laments the country's overall lack of progress toward genuine black liberation in the post-1994 era. Highlighting Steve Biko's emphasis on 'conscientisation' to counter the normalisation of black people's material and mental subjugation to the entrenched white power structure, Mngxitama decries the continued suffering of the poor black majority in post-1994 South Africa, arguing that the race-based understanding of impoverishment once used to describe marginalisation has now been effectively eradicated under the anti-racialist hegemony dominant in national discourse. With the state still essentially rooted in its apartheid-era model of white capitalist accumulation and exploitation – albeit with a new black leadership at the helm – Mngxitama contends that the country has simply moved into a neo-apartheid phase of little discernible distinction from its past, stating that to vote within such a system would merely be to grant it legitimacy.

cc Despite studies which suggest that as many as one in two women in some parts of South Africa are affected by domestic violence, political parties in South Africa lack concrete, practical strategies to address violence against women, a debate organised by Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre, Women’sNet and the department of political studies at Wits University has revealed. Party manifestos failed to adopt a multi-dimensional response to violence against women that go beyond the parameters of the criminal justice system, responses to the societal, economic and material dimensions are almost entirely absent, and no party recognises the unique circumstances and needs of marginalised groups of women who experience violence, write Lisa Vetten and Sally Shackleton.

cc Despite a sense of euphoria among significant sections of South Africa’s poor and working class that a Jacob Zuma presidency will usher in the long awaited better life for all, write John Appolis and Dale McKinley, socialists know that Zuma will not dismantle the alignment of class forces consolidated by the ANC since the early 1990s, but rather further entrench them. Since social movements are not in a position to present an alternative parliamentary option to the masses, the

cc With African and European ministers set to meet in Brussels on 28 April to assess the progress of the Joint Africa EU Strategy (JAES) adopted in Lisbon in December 2007, Carmen Silvestre emphasises the importance of the meeting for both African and European civil society. Setting out the background to the JAES and Human Rights Dialogue and civil society's participation, Silvestre argues that the meeting represents a key opportunity for groups from both continents to discover areas of common ground and find ways of influencing official strategies and policy.

cc In light of a recent general strike in Guadeloupe, an overseas department of France, Kont Pwofitasyon (LKP) addresses the people of Guadeloupe and seeks to encourage their continued political involvement in the struggle to end economic oppression and exploitation. The group indicates that the recklessness of employers, elected officials, representatives of the French government, and colonial institutions within this archipelago in the French Antilles has threatened the livelihoods of Guadeloupians. Through Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon (LKP), a social movement of trade unions and social organisations, activists are exposing the injustices endured by the masses and mobilising the country by demanding an increase in the minimum wage, the people's access to commodities, and the promotion of new social relations.

cc The Kenyan government must issue orders for the military and police to ‘cease and desist from acts of intimidation and harassment of human rights defenders and to make public the text of such instructions’, Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, has said in a statement issued on 7 April. Alston said that dozens of prominent and respected human rights defenders who provided information to the UN have been targeted in ‘a blatant campaign designed to silence individual monitors and instil fear in civil society organisations at large’, with all indications seeming to point to the fact that the campaign ‘has been carefully coordinated within the government’.

cc Attending a conference on Kenya’s national dialogue and reconciliation in Geneva, Yash Tandon, notes that the issues of power sharing, ethnicity, and governance overshadow matters related to economics and welfare. He also ponders why, other than the 50-60 Kenyans present, he and Tanzania’s former president Benjamin Mkapa are the only attendees from East African countries. Given the ‘many daily cross-border interactions between the people of the region’, this lack of interest in Kenya, he says, demonstrates ‘a serious slip-up of the principle of solidarity among East African neighbours’. Help from European friends to Kenya has, Tandon suggests, allowed Uganda and Tanzania and the East African community ‘an exemption from their moral responsibility’.

cc Pan-Africanism gave rise to the civil rights movement in the US and to independence and anti-imperialist movements in Africa, writes Salma Maoulidi, but what is Pan-Africanism to the average African today? To a large extent, Maoulidi argues, it remains a global phenomenon that has focused on global political agendas and less so on struggles on the ground. What is missing, suggests Maoulidi, is ‘a popular expression of Pan-Africanism and a matching consciousness such that the concept does not appear surreal, abstract and out of touch with reality and the populace, particularly the youth who are the inheritors of its future.’

 The debate on how to unite African states has not changed significantly since Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere locked horns on the matter in the early 1960s, writes Chambi Chachage. Exploring Nyerere’s ‘step by step’ approach to building African unity in relation to Nkrumah’s desire to ‘fast track’ the creation of a Unites States of Africa, Chachage concludes that while Nkrumah’s Pan-African vision remains powerful, his approach is unrealistic even today.’ ‘To that end, I will feel with Nkrumah, yet I shall think with Nyerere’, he writes, ‘Africa must unite, albeit pragmatically’.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/427/55474_Paul_Muite_tmb.jpgHa… been credibly informed that his life could well be in danger, Paul Muite considers the implications of his willingness to speak out against the Kenyan government's involvement in the assassinations of Oscar Kamau King'ara and Paul Oulu. With the Kenyan authorities themselves at the forefront of extrajudicial killings and threats, Muite highlights the Kenyan citizenry's complete lack of confidence in the government or police to protect people's rights.

cc Following the resignation of Kenyan Justice Minister Martha Karua,

Commenting on the G20 (The Group of Twenty), Jacques Depelchin asks why, when Africans have suffered so much under the ’most predatory system ever invented by humans’, African leaders are helping to prop up that system, rather than encouraging new ways of doing things.

The main objective of the G20 meeting was to save global capitalism. The emphasis on more regulations, the attacks on tax havens, the reference to the “moralization of capitalism” all converge toward the same objective: restore trust in global capitalism and some of the legitimacy it has lost in the eyes of the general public.

One of the most remarkable decisions of the G20 is to triple the IMF sources in order to increase its lending capacity to “poor” and middle-income countries. If this decision may save the institution from financial bankruptcy, it cannot, however, save it from moral and intellectual bankruptcy. In fact, the world financial crisis is a further illustration of the abject failure of the policies advocated by this institution along with the World Bank and the WTO. .

So tripling the IMF sources is not good news for Africa because it will only give the institution more power to continue imposing the same failed and ruinous policies. It is a new debt cycle that will start with the loans the IMF will be making with these resources. For Africa, the IMF is part of the problem, not of the solution. Therefore, any move aimed at strengthening it is not in the interest of Africa.

As expected, the G20 has failed to rise to the challenge of proposing structural changes in the world monetary, financial and trading system. In some respects, the Stiglitz Commission has made bolder and more interesting proposals to respond to the crisis. However, those proposals remain somehow within the confines of global capitalism.

But the genuine solutions to the current multiple world crises lie in the shift in paradigm. This is one of the messages sent by the tens of thousands of protesters who jammed the streets in London for two straight days. They not only denounced the horrors and crimes of global capitalism but also stressed the need to move toward alternative policies which would put people at their center, not profit and greed.

cc Zanu PF 'must demonstrate, by concrete positive actions, that it has turned over a new leaf and is now worthy of the nation’s trust' writes human rights lawyer Dewa Mavhinga, as he ponders the importance of trust in human relationships in general and for the future of Zimbabwe in particular, both in terms of the parties to the inclusive government and that government's contract with the country's citizens and the international community.

cc While most of the world is familiar with Rwandan genocide, fifteen years later the influence of a small band of deniers is growing thanks to the embrace of the deniers' arguments by a small but influential number of left-wing, anti-American journals and websites, cautions Gerald Caplan.

cc The absence of both President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga from UN-convened talks in Geneva to assess Kenya's power-sharing deal is a sign that the country's mediation process has run into problems, writes coalition Kenyans for Peace, Truth and Justice (KPTJ). The mediation process, KPTJ says, is vunerable and in crisis 'because Kenya’s political leadership has continuously and consistently undermined it'.

cc The Group of 20 (G20) is making a big show of getting together to come to grips with the global economic crisis, writes Walden Bello. But here's the problem with the upcoming summit in London on April 2: It's all show. What the show masks, says Bello, is a very deep worry and fear among the global elite that it really doesn't know the direction in which the world economy is heading and the measures needed to stabilise it.

cc We need a new financial system that is transparent and accountable to all, writes Dani Nabudere, as G20 leaders meet in London to tackle the current global economic ‘meltdown’. The G20's task, he says, is to expose all that has gone wrong, including the role the African leaders have played in the crisis, through the externalisation of billions of pounds intended for the development of their countries. These activities, Nabudere notes, have helped position Africa as a net creditor to the world, with the external assets of 40 African countries outstripping their external liabilities over the period from 1970–2004. In other words, says Nabudere, despite the widely held view that Africa was 'decoupled' from the global economy, African leaders have contributed to the activities of ‘shadow banks’ being used to create ‘toxic debt’, their wealth contributing to the global economic turmoil.

cc In light of the recent inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the US and subsequent reflection on contributors to the black movement in African American history, Lincoln Van Sluytman questions the exclusion of militant voices, which he says played a profound and historical role in making Obama’s victory possible. Van Sluytman argues for the recognition of influential black leaders who attacked slavery, racial segregation, and the development of pan-African congresses through militant tendencies. The struggle for liberation, independence, and social justice throughout the African American historical trajectory, he says, has been marked by controversial yet mobilising ideologies and philosophies, which have had an impact on the black population in the US and upon many others worldwide.

cc Barack Obama's claim that people of colour are ‘90 per cent of the way to equality’ with whites in the US is false, says activist Juan Santos in an interview with Il Manifesto’s Andrea Luchetta. Citing figures on unemployment, poverty and imprisonment, Santos suggests that the US operates under a caste system in which race plays a key part in determining social class. Obama's silence on the question of race in the run-up to the elections was tactical, says Santos – to dare to talk openly about race and oppression would alienate the millions of white centre-right voters whose support he needed to win the election. Racism, says Santos, rewards the powerful: 'They have no reason to stop racism unless its continuance results in a level of resistance that endangers the system of profit itself'.