Pambazuka News presents a selection of memorable quotations by the late Mwalimu Nyerere, on the topics of Palestine, imperialism and racialism, good governance and life lessons. This material previously appeared in CHEMCHEMI, Bulletin of the Mwalimu Nyerere Professorial Chair in Pan African Studies of the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Following proclamations by the Gauteng premier on national television in support of legalising prostitution, Thelma Tafadzwa Madondo talks to Pambazuka News about the negative impacts such a move might have on child prostitutes.

Former president Moi should be arrested and prosecuted for ‘annexing and dividing the Mau Forest to his own tribe’ when he knew that it was one of Kenya’s most important water catchment areas, writes Isaac Newton Kinity, in an open letter to the country’s president and prime minister. Around 450,000 Kikuyus who lived and worked on forestry stations in the area were evicted in 1985, to make way for Kalenjin settlers under the Moi government. The Mau Forest was the source of several rivers, but after Kalenjin settlers cut down thousands of acres of trees, many of the rivers dried up and drought began ‘to hit Kenya’, says Kinity. Recognising the ecological importance of the Mau Forest, Kenya’s environment minister has now called for the eviction of Kalenjin settlers. Kinity argues that if the government intends to compensate Kalenjin settlers, it must first compensate the Kikuyu who previously inhabited the forest.

It isn’t an amnesty the people of the Niger Delta need to bring peace and security to the region, it’s equity and good governance, Sabella Ogbobode Abidde tells Pambazuka News. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and other groups like it are justice-seeking groups fighting their people’s cause, argues Abidde, and it is only when the government genuinely resolves to tackle underlying problems from environmental pollution to underdevelopment that the ‘ongoing, low intensity conflict’ in the Delta will abate.

Following his ordeal both at the hands of the Ugandan police and in a local mental health hospital, human rights activist Vincent Nuwagaba shares with Pambazuka News why Uganda’s dysfunctional institutions must be reformed. Institutions that are ‘meant to protect and preserve life’ have been turned into ‘a killing machinery’ says Nuwagaba. Charging President Museveni with deliberately destroying the country’s institutions to serve his own interests and increase his power, Nuwagaba says regime change is needed before reforms can be made. ‘It is high time we realised that we are citizens and not subjects,’ says Nuwagaba, ‘and hence demand to be governed in a humane, convivial and dignified manner.’

The global financial crisis is taking its toll on Africa, writes Moreblessings Chidaushe, despite initial attempts to downplay the continent’s interdependence with the world economy. As commodity prices tumble and cuts in resources delay and stall major development projects, Chidaushe calls for African leaders to engage their citizens in building internal solutions to the challenges they face, rather than looking to a diminishing pool of external sources of aid.

In the wake of studies that suggest that by age 14, a quarter of black American children born in 1990 had a father in jail, Dan Moshenberg calls for the US to take action to prevent the incarceration of primary caregivers. New research suggests that having a parent in prison ‘doubles the chance that a child will be at least temporarily homeless and measurably increases the likelihood of physically aggressive behaviour, social isolation, depression and problems in school’, underscoring the need, argues Moshenberg, for ‘a distinctly human – and African – solution to a distinctly American risk for the children descended from Africa.'

Lucy Simiyu worries about where Kenya is headed as a nation, as she discovers that it is ‘not just the local mama by the roadside’ that is caught up in the ‘falsehoods and stereotypes’ that feed the enmity between the country’s ethnic groups, ‘but also highly educated professionals’ who should be ‘the voice of reason’. Critical of politicians who increase this polarisation between people for their own ends, Simiyu calls for Kenyans to take a stand against intolerance and recognise that ‘no one ethnic group can take this nation to its great heights without the support of the others’.

Vincent Nuwagaba tells Pambazuka readers of his inhumane treatment at the hands of staff at Uganda's Butabika Hospital and criticises the extent to which state institutions have been reduced to the whims of President Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Movement (NRM).

Reflecting on the US president's Accra speech in this week's Pambazuka News, Ama Biney finds Obama's dismissal of neocolonial explanations for Africa's difficulties worrying. Though apologetic towards his Arab audience for past US meddling while in Cairo earlier this year, Obama showed no inclination to acknowledge his country's support of African dictators such as the former Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko and Kenya's Daniel arap Moi. If Obama is not simply to be the new George W. Bush, albeit under a more humanitarian guise, he will need to advance a foreign policy genuinely grounded in economic and political equality, Biney writes. Echoing the words of the late Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, Biney stresses however that Africans should in reality prioritise pan-African solutions to their continent's challenges, rather than merely competing to be the US's 'brown-eyed ally'.

Following Barack Obama's recent visit to Ghana, Ihechukwu Njoku tells Pambazuka News of his hope that the choice of destination will be seen as a celebration of a laudable government rather than a political snub.

cc International media reports on growing instability in the Niger Delta largely in terms of its effect on global oil supply and prices, writes Kia Mistilis, but for region’s 12 million inhabitants, the struggle is about their survival. Despite the vast wealth oil revenue has generated for Nigeria, communities in the Delta continue to live in ‘abject poverty’. As peak oil and a looming world energy crisis raise the stakes even higher, these local communities and ecosystems are bearing the brunt of conflict between activists, militant groups and the Nigerian forces protecting the economic interests of the government and multi-national companies.

cc After years of seeing President Yoweri Museveni rewrite the constitution to run for yet another term, some Ugandans simply want Barack Obama to ‘denounce dictatorship’, writes Beth Tuckey. But given that Uganda is one of the US’s most important allies despite Museveni’s poor credentials as a ‘responsible democratic leader’, Tuckey asks how easy it would be for Obama to change the nature of the relationship between the two countries.

cc A new, democratic, people-driven and people-centred constitution is key to addressing Zimbabwe’s problems, writes Mutsa Murenje. Examining amendments to the country’s constitution that created the role of executive president, Murenje argues that these have given Mugabe excessive power and undermined the country’s democratic development.

cc Legislation that allows the Zimbabwean president to pass new laws without parliamentary approval in times of crisis is open to abuse, warns Mutsa Murenje. Highlighting the dangers that the Presidential Powers Act poses to democracy, Murenje calls on all Zimbabweans to increase their awareness of the country’s legislation so that they can challenge and ‘say no to evil laws’.

Following Barack Obama's visit to Ghana last week, Gerald Caplan questions the US president's grasp of African affairs. Obama's comments around good governance as a pre-condition for foreign investment are simply false Caplan points out, as any glance at apartheid-era South Africa or contemporary Nigeria and Angola would confirm. If Obama is serious about supporting Africa, he should seek to break with the entrenched twin burdens of self-interested leaders and exploitative Western policies holding back the continent, Caplan concludes, and not merely perpetuate them.

cc As Africa surpasses the Middle East as an oil supplier to the US, Emira Woods argues that satisfying the US's addiction to fossil fuels remains the primary influence on the country's foreign policy. With global energy multinationals like Chevron and British Petroleum (BP) battling for a piece of sites like the Kosmos Energy-owned 'Jubilee Fields' off the Ghanaian coast, the US AFRICOM (AFRIcan COMmand) remains a symbol of US efforts to consolidate its access to oil resources. Will Obama's commitment to a greener economy translate into concrete policies, Woods asks, or will we continue to see increased military backing for an oil-based agenda?

cc While American officials stress that US foreign policy towards Africa isn't being militarised, Gerald LeMelle thinks differently. Militarisation is essentially about asserting your might to impose your own agenda, LeMelle stresses, something which the doubling of funds to be allocated to AFRICOM (AFRIcan COMmand) in the 2010 financial year would certainly suggest. While Obama's trip to Ghana was officially about celebrating a democratic success, there are fears that America's concern was more for oil and a strategic AFRICOM base. If such concerns are to be refuted, LeMelle concludes, the Obama administration will need to explain how increased military funding relates to its stated aim of promoting and strengthening democracy in Africa.

cc Ugandan human rights activist Vincent Nuwagaba responds to Presidential Standards Task Force, apparently signed by President Museveni. Nuwagaba received the letter after submitting comments on issues from corruption to unemployment to the Ugandan government's web-based service for engaging with citizens.

cc The Presidential Standards Task Force, the Ugandan government's web-based service for engaging with citizens, sent the following letter to human rights activist Vincent Nuwagaba. The letter, apparently signed by President Museveni, responds to comments Nuwagaba submitted to the website, covering issues from corruption to unemployment.