Pan-Africanism is at the heart of the continent’s total liberation. Tajudeen, and all other Pan-Africanists, understood that without this, the restoration of the freedom, values and dignity of Africa’s people is impossible.

Fatoumata Toure argues from the spirit of endurance that has guided the Haitian people over two centuries of struggle.

Thank you Ndugu Issa. Where in the Blair Commission report do they mention compensation to the Kenyan women raped and brutalised by their "Johnies" and Gurhkahs in the name of Cold War freedom, defense and security. Freedom? All these perorations as these ignored women strive for justice in the shadow of high tech military bases and six star tourist hotels? Africa and the Third World do not need their poisoned chalice of crocodile tears. We have two sayings: those who weep harder than the bereaved and the mouse that bites you then,oh so gently as the old Anglican hymn goes,' soothes your sorrows, heals your wounds and drives away your fears! Yeah man,drives you right into the gulag of dependency by compassion!

Tony Blair talked about the scar on the world's conscience. Wrong again! The wounds of exploitation are still fresh and festering. Instead of 'breaking the chains from our hearts and setting us free' as the 1970s song goes, they're polishing the chains and piling up tons of neo liberal market friendly reports even as school children sit under trees and die of malnutrition thanks to their SAPs. Mothers are dying thanks to their user fee rules. It gets even better, cynical as that may sound. In a recent BBC programme it emerged that one British town had more Malawian doctors than the whole of Malawi. The issue is not compassion, aid, assistance, developement. There have been too many experiments with African lives, too many sheltered dictators,too many donor driven budgets, too many small arms, too many fire brigades translating into too many mice biting. Africans are not victims We are survivors and we are not about to give up. The issue is not compassion: it is LIBERATION and as Mwalimu Nyerere himself said: It can be done.

I speak from the depths of the Temple of Isis, Nzinga,Yaa Asantewa, Me Katilili and Mbuya Nehanda who didnt write books but wrote history. I speak through the spirit in the vocal chords of Miriam Makeba and in the feet of Soundiata Keita, the son of Sogolon who defeated the usurper Soumaoro Kante. Their spirits hover aloft to inspire us not in compassion but in DIGNITY. Hear ye all ye bleeding heart do gooders: It MUST be done. We are our own liberators.

A luta continua!

Hooray! With a masterstroke of the pen Antoinnette Ntuli has given true meaning to the Kiswawhili word "kupambazuka": morning has broken (Pambazuka 139: How Africa develops Europe). Not only did Europe under develop Africa but Africa is still developing the world and haemorrhaging for it. The stuff terrorism is made of!

I would have liked the editorial (Pambazuka News 131: Liberation and the Unfinished Business of Democratic Consolidation in Southern Africa) to go into the gendered dynamics of frustration beyond the new class now handing over their briefcases to ubiquitous body guards. The other day some young ladies came to the Pan African Movement and I said I was a radical feminist in the sense that I want to get to the root of the problem: Why are women marginalized and why are promises not kept? Why have the goal posts shifted on socio economic transformation? Why are Africans and poor women peasants for example getting impoverished by the day in the much-vaunted globalised order?

Compare and contrast the arms sales figures to Africa: small arms alone account for $22b, money poured into the coffers of the rich as we subsist on less than a dollar a day. It was understood in the heady liberation days that the main objective was to craft a better world. When in Mwalimu Nyerere's words Africans would control the "commanding heights of the economy". Indeed the anti globalisation refuseniks cry: Another world is possible. But how is it possible for me when that is the cry of young unemployed workers in the North joined by several NGOs funded by Northern NGOs, many supported by the same callous G8 governments known for their double standards, surviving on Northern per diems and filing financial reports to the North, breeding dependency.

Where is the African state, who is it accountable to now that it is run by "independent Africans"? Or are they? Is it the leadership style, modes of control or what is known as raison d'etat in French. Has the State subsumed the populace to which it owes its rise? As a Pan Africanist I still wonder why all the objectives of African unity are still but a remote possibility, the economic and geo political rationale notwithstanding. An article on Tito Mboweni in yesterday's Monitor in Uganda opens thus: "TM...is probably not alone in his scepticism about a single African currency ..." Yes, unfinished business, a creeping Orwellian nightmare. But not forever. A luta continua.

I am intrigued by the number of suggestions made to Thabo Mbeki to do something about Zimbabwe which is "dragging down the whole continent". Every African has a right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" but with most Africans still considered drawers of water and hewers of wood, happiness went out of the window a long time ago! Secondly, I wonder why Thabo should really have that mandate when South Africa is strategically closer to the keepers of the gateways to the empire! Try getting a visa into South Africa, with or without your anti-apartheid credentials now deemed irrelevant!