Highlighting the persistent divisions in educational opportunity at the heart of the South African schooling system, Neville Alexander outlines a new direction based on the equitable distribution of opportunities for children, a more widespread culture of learning, and adequate institutional support for teaching staff.

In the wake of Barack Obama’s presidential election victory, Doreen Lwanga considers the state of relations between African-Americans and Africans living in America. The author explores some of the derogatory influences, driven most notably by sections of the Western media, informing negative stereotypes on the part of both black Americans and new Africans, stereotypes that perpetuate misinformed and divisive views within the wider pan-African community. In this historic period of the first election of an individual of African ancestry to the highest seat of US power, Lwanga argues that any residual suspicion and negativity between these two broad groups should give way to lasting solidarity and unity.

Obama represented the best hope for the kind of change that could be achieved through electoral means. This was not merely because he was ‘black,’ but because he was intelligent, calm, organised, and a reassuring campaigner. His victory shows the Left what galvanises popular politics of change. His inauguration, even apart from the historicity of his ‘blackness,’ is being welcomed by the overwhelming majority of the US population as proof of the ‘mystery and majesty’ of electoral democracy. From this the Left needs to learn.

In the last decade, barrels of ink have been spilled on the failure of the South African state to address the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic among its people, writes Rebecca Hodes. In recent months, South Africa has undergone a number of seismic political changes. The controversial, populist Jacob Zuma, was elected the head of the ruling African National Congress to the dismay of many following his acquittal for a rape charge. In September 2008, President Mbeki was deposed by the ANC’s Zuma-dominated leadership, and the subsequent reshuffle saw the appointment of Barbara Hogan. The implications of these changes on health policy, as well as those associated with the potential outcome of next year's elections, are explored.

In South Africa, as throughout the world, gender inequality continues to undermine democracy, impede development and compromise people's lives in dramatic ways. Just twelve years into its hard won democracy South Africa is faced with twin epidemics of HIV/AIDS and violence against women—each propelled in significant ways by prevailing gender norms that encourage men to equate manhood with dominance over women, sexual conquest, alcohol consumption and risk taking.

Through vivid examples of refused school enrolment, visa denials, and countless negative assumptions in his interactions with other people, Winstone Zulu shares his reflections and experiences of physical disability, discrimination, and the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS. Though disability rights may have to compete with a wide range of other issues for adequate recognition, the author speaks of his optimism around the prospects for genuine equality for people with disabilities.

Reviewing the experiences of blind people living with HIV/AIDS, Elly Macha discusses the development of the African Union of the Blind (AFUB), an umbrella organisation operating in some 50 African countries that addresses issues facing blind and partially sighted persons in relation to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Aiming to tackle the range of problematic experiences faced by blind individuals, AFUB has undertaken peer education training workshops in ten countries with the aim of empowering visually impaired participants and exploring ways in which HIV programmes and services can be made more accessible for those with impaired vision.

In this paper, Rebecca Hodes and Lesley Odendal address the double scourge HIV/Aids and tuberculosis facing South Africa’s young democracy. They point to a number of factors that have led to the current situation in the country. A combination of political, economic and social factors has led to a rapid spread of HIV, coupled with a growing prevalence of TB. The Treatment Action Campaign has engaged in a battle to tackle the problem by providing health services as well as advocating for policy changes to enable greater access to treatment, thus providing a model for civil society involvement in fighting the health crisis.

In this paper, Azad Essa explores the extent to which Africa’s military has been affected by HIV/AIDS. He outlines the varied responses from Africa’s armed forces, with a specific focus on recruitment, care and precarious human rights issues pertaining to HIV-positive personnel. While the scarcity of statistical data forces analysts to continue speculating the challenges, effects and extent of the crisis, it is crucial that African militaries finally assume more responsibility in addressing the pandemic, if not for their own self preservation, then at the very least, towards eliminating the spread of the disease in communities itself.

Bafana Khumalo spoke at the recently concluded World Aids Conference held in Mexico, outlining the work that Sonke Gender Justice Network has been doing to educate men on issues of gender awareness and sexual health. The organization takes cognizance of the pivotal role played by men in protecting the rights of women. This article reveals the challenges faced by women in South Africa, where the legacy of Apartheid, and negative cultural attitudes all have an impact on the incidence of gender-based violence. The One Man Can campaign seeks to address the problem of gender-based violence by educating and sensitizing men to the rights of women.

Moses Ochonu analyses the dominant discourse on corruption in Africa. By challenging conventional explanations and assignations of corruption to the cultural realm, he makes it clear that whereas the phenomenon is by no means endemic to the continent, the effects clearly more devastating in Africa. He advocates for a shift away from deterministic explanations of corruption in Africa, and a move towards a better understanding of the fundamental structural poverty of Africa and the economic disadvantages into which history, geography, and subaltern experiences if corruption is to be addressed in a meaningful way.

Adam Parsons tackles the issue of global inequalities characterized by a crisis of abundance in one part of the world while the other part continues to languish in poverty and want. He questions the irony of half the world starving and suffering from rising food costs while the other half is recording bumper harvests. The recent economic crisis saw western governments summon huge sums of money to bail out financial institutions, and yet there never seems to be the same magnanimity when it comes to addressing the plight of the poor in other parts of the world. He argues that the problem is more to do with equity than with scarcity

While looking at positivity of Barack Obama and the xenophobic, class and crass negativity of his opponents such as Hilary Clinton and John McCain, Ross Herberts draws out some must learn lessons for African leaders.

In this vivid and personal analysis, Nico Bakker takes us to the 5th Via Campensina International Conference where we meet farmers from all over the world in solidarity as they discuss climate change, GMO's, globalization, food production and prices in their struggle for food sovereignty.

Annar Cassam takes us through Reagonomics, the World Bank and IMF policies, and the equally bankrupt 'good governance' solutions to Africa's economic woes and the current global financial crisis. She cautions that the neoliberal invisible hand is synonymous with voodoo economics.

In this call to action, Kambale Musavuli and Maurice Carney argue that 100 years ago, King Leopold's brutality in the Congo had critics such as Mark Twain up in arms. Today, the brutality which is now corporate sponsored and African led is met with silence. They then invite us to become part of a global movement to break the silence in order to end the violence.

“It is over” - a succinct way of informing the death of a dogma, the greed-driven neoliberal capitalism. On September 15, 2008, that is how one of stockbrokers in Wall Street described the fall of the Lehman Brothers. The fall of the Lehman was a visible signifier of the Tsunami that hit the base of a turbulent sea called the Wall street - the world of high pitched financial trade and investment. It was the story of a disaster foretold. The dogma is dead now under the debris of the famed investment banks. There is no more consensus in Washington. Karl Marx must be laughing in his grave, says John Samuel.

The rebellions in the ANC against Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma have broken the hermetic seal that had been tightly wound around electoral politics by the dominance of the ANC since 1994. Despite the ongoing debasement of political discourse by Zuma and some of his supporters, a new space is opening in which there can be some discussion of alternatives, argues Richard Pithouse. Although this space remains constrained by all kinds of shared dogmas it is, clearly, important for previously suppressed voices to seize this moment, to use it as effectively as possible and to hold it open for as long as is possible. The debates on the prospects for new and better policies are to be welcomed and we should take them up with vigour. But we also need to be clear sighted about the limits to a conception of politics that focuses on policy without taking sufficient account of the other factors that shape the reality of how things really go down in practice.

Highlighting the slow progress around the implementation of greater Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR) by the Canadian government and Canadian mining companies, Ian Thomson describes the efforts of diverse groups of civil society organisations to hold mining companies to account for their actions in African countries. In the face of these broad struggles, the author argues that lasting progress will derive principally from the ability of African and Canadian civil society organisations to work in solidarity against the negative environmental and human rights concerns associated with the mining sector.

With vivid examples of the unapologetically exploitative approach of multinational mining corporations in Tanzania, Evans Rubara highlights some of the glaring malpractice of rapacious foreign companies operating on Tanzanian soil. In a sector supported by lax tax collection by the country’s government and whose only concern is for profit, companies such as Barrick Gold Corporation have much to answer for in the face of widespread environmental degradation, the displacement and forcible removal of local people, and criminalisation of local mining activities. Drawing on the information collected within damning reports such as A Golden Opportunity?, Rubara documents the extent to which mining companies operate with impunity in Tanzania, an impunity giving rise to sustained abuse of local people’s rights and wholesale stealing of national resources.