Denouncing the implications of the Mugabe-Tsvangirai alliance, Kola Ibrahim assesses the consequences of a pro-capitalist union for the Zimbabwean working masses. Emphasising the MDC’s and ZANU-PF’s moral bankruptcy, the author concludes that unless the country’s labour movement is resurrected to take a lead in forthcoming struggles, its future will be doomed.

... Pambazuka has over the past few years established an unrivaled and authoritative voice on contemporary African issues. The pace and quality of its production, and its ability to keep abreast of events is remarkable and deserves abundant congratulations. It is our firm hope that it continues to march forward and produce these vital insights on African affairs ...

In a comprehensive review of the latest global capitalist crisis and its consequences for African populations, Patricia Daley explores how greed has continued to hinder African educational opportunities and the realisation of a Walter Rodney-esque development rooted in personal freedom, well-being and security. With the hegemonic narratives of the West failing to improve the lot of the majority, Africans must return to creating their own narratives of development, central to which will prove the more effective use of technological change and the access to information offered by media outlets such as Pambazuka News.

As he salutes the ground covered in Pambazuka’s first 400 issues, Jacques Depelchin argues the publication should continue its work as a tool for emancipatory politics in the next 400 and beyond. Drawing in particular on the example of Haiti, Depelchin stresses that new emancipatory politics are being generated all the time, but their potential must be actively harnessed if governmental indifference and hostility is not to overcome the promise of healing histories.

Reviewing the historic role of African and African-American publications in the struggle for representation and access to information, Walter Turner situates Pambazuka News in an established line of liberatory writing. While illustrating the ability of publications like Pambazuka to catalyse social change, Turner stresses respect for the history of activist media and the importance of continual support to sustain their future vitality.

As Henning Melber underlines in his discussion of Pambazuka’s commitment to social justice, solidarity is a multi-faceted notion of shifting meaning and use for its appropriators. Reviewing the experiences and intellectual traditions of figures such as Frantz Fanon and John Sanbonmatsu, Melber argues that while solidarity will never be a fixed state of mind, the goal of mediums like Pambazuka will always centre on the struggle for equality, justice and human dignity.

With the US-backed AFRICOM programme launched this week, Beth Tuckey exposes the limitations of plan conceived more for the protection of American military interests than African social development. With both Barack Obama and John McCain content to fully endorse President Bush’s existing plan, the author demonstrates how both the Democrat and Republican campaigns are sacrificing important dialogue on AFRICOM for the sake of remaining neutral, bipartisan, and uncontroversial.

Amandla Publishers agrees with Archbishop Emeritus and the Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu that ‘[i]f South Africa was a democracy, there had to be certainty that those who led it were as uncorrupt as possible. It is a court of law that will ultimately decide whether [leaders are or not].’ Through publishing its bi-monthly Amandla! magazine, Amandla Publishers contributes to building left and working class organisations and debates.

A year on from Ethiopia’s new millennium, Mammo Muchie highlights the country’s historic role as the cradle of African nationalism. Arguing that reparations remain due from the period of fascist Italy’s occupation in the 1930s, Muchie stresses that it is only through rediscovering her essential civic-nationalism that Ethiopia will locate her glory and re-energise African nationalism.

In a potent critique of the post-apartheid state and its role in the wave of xenophobic discrimination to have gripped the South African nation, Dale T. McKinley explores the roots of the country’s ‘macro-nationalist paradigm’ and its consequences in the shape of the contemporary pogroms of African foreigners. Highlighting the ‘changing of the nationalist guard’ aspect to the ANC’s 1994 election victory, the author argues that the state’s dominant discourse of ‘nation-building’ has its natural corollary in the idea and practice of xenophobia directed at non-South African nationals.

As Muslims globally come to the end of the holy month of Ramadan, Salma Maoulidi explores the continuing spiritual and secular inequalities experienced by Muslim Tanzanian women. Focussing on the gulf between spiritual goals and worldly reality, the absence of an effective redistributive alms system, and the differing realities faced by female and male followers, the author questions the extent to which a symbolic ritual of deprivation and sacrifice has been turned into a calculated wealth generating opportunity.

Through examining the experience of the Ugandan Coalition for Health Promotion and Social Development (HEPS-Uganda), Rosette Mutambi highlights the extent to which ordinary Ugandans remain without effective official health care. While stressing the role of government in empowering local communities, she argues that genuine improvement in primary health care rests on involving an informed population in the planning and implementation of the system overall, a consideration of even greater importance in a resource-poor nation like Uganda.

The main factors behind Africa’s health tragedy are the lack of foresight and political will required to ensure sustainable health development, financing and universal primary health care, argues Rotimi Sankore. Through exploring comparative statistics for African and Western health systems and by underlining the effects of institutional under-funding and the brain drain, the author contends that future generations of Africans may yet look back and conclude such policy to be the equivalent of institutional ‘manslaughter’.

Through exploring the importance of sustainable and long-term health financing, Rotimi Sankore argues that effective primary health care will only be achieved when key obstacles in the shape of a lack of clear policies and Africa’s critical health workforce shortage are addressed. He stresses the debate around ‘health systems versus disease specific interventions’ to be a phantom one akin to asking whether food is more important than water to human life, arguing that the real challenge for the future will lie in creating and implementing effective policies that tackle persistent institutional and resource-based issues.

Thirty years on from the Alma-Ata Declaration, Chan Chee Khoon explores the history and continuing influence of biomedical science on public health care in the 21st century. With many African countries still facing burdensome infectious disease, the population health perspectives pioneered and promoted by McKeown and the Lalonde report continue to be relevant in addressing contemporary epidemics.

It is with much interest that the women’s network of IANSA followed the different interventions presented since the beginning of this meeting. This is an opportunity to advance the application of the Program of Action for the control of small arms and light weapons, in all its aspects, including gender violence.

The illicit use of small arms includes the offences of domestic violence as well as sexual violence against women.

It is recognized that women are less able to resist or to escape, and even less able to receive help from others, and thus to survive, a crime committed with a firearm.

Incidents of domestic violence involving firearms cause as many problems as violence perpetrated in the streets, and their number increases during and after armed conflicts, due to the illegal circulation of these arms in the community.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/396/cartoon160908_54131a_l.jpg… Congress of South African Trade Unions has noted the agreement signed by the leaders of the political parties in Zimbabwe on 15 September 2008. We stand by our view that it is only the people of Zimbabwe who must judge whether or not this deal is in their interests. We are therefore awaiting the comments of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and will be guided by them.

Meanwhile, while awaiting the ZCTU’s response, only insofar as the people accept it, we give the agreement our cautious support, but note that many of the demands raised by civil society and supported by COSATU have not been met, including:

- Civil society has been shut out of the negotiations and it has thus been an agreement between the political leaders;

- The agreement does not recognise the result of the 29 March elections. As a result the loser has become the winner and the winner the loser;

- MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai is effectively in charge of a cluster of ministries, while President Mugabe still has extensive powers;

- The agreement is not for an interim government until new elections have been held but for a normal full-term government;

- All Mugabe’s draconian laws remain in place, which give him, for example, the power to arrest political opponents.

The agreement marks a dangerous spread of the Kenyan virus that sends a signal to dictators that they can defy the will of the people by force and then retain power through negotiations, brokered by other African leaders.

It marks a retreat from the principles that the African Union and SADC are supposed to uphold and a return to the bad traditions of the Organisation of African Unity that sacrificed the interests of the people to protect dictators. Meanwhile COSATU waits to hear from the ZCTU, after which it will consider their advice as to whether to continue with the proposed programme of boycotts. If they ask us to proceed we shall do so.

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Freedom of information is a fundamental human right and the touchstone of all freedoms to which the United Nations is consecrated [1]. The right falls under freedom of expression (defined as the right to seek, receive and impart information). There can be no enjoyment of the right to freedom of expression if people do not have access to information.

This right imposes a duty on the government to facilitate public access to information. Freedom of information involves access to information held by public officials and by private bodies that carry out activities that affect the public in general.

The right to freedom of information is encapsulated in International Instruments. It is enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and protected in international human rights treaties including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

“Yes We Can!” What a brilliant slogan this is. The US presidential hopeful, Senator Barack Obama, certainly has a winner on this one. It denotes so many possibilities. It says we can change the world, we can change our way of life, we can strive towards a better tomorrow for all, and dare I say, we can consolidate democracy in Africa. Yes we can!

It is an irony that these inspirational words come from the United States, a country that for the last eight years of the Bush-Cheney administration has made it possible for African leaders to boldly say “No We Won’t!” or “No We Don’t Give A Damn!” when it comes to doing all they can to promote the culture of openness and transparency in structures of governance and public administration. It was the Bush-Cheney administration that first argued for, and entrenched, the notion that openness and transparency were the enemies of national security.

When the Bush-Cheney administration waged war on terror its enemies were not just Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein; this list also included the civil liberties of American citizens, most especially Freedom of Information rights. The Bush-Cheney administration’s religious zeal in passing draconian anti-terrorism laws was only equaled by the administration’s resolve to weaken the Freedom of Information Act and other government-in-the-sunshine laws. African leaders took note.

Small wonder therefore that the government of Mr. Festus Mogae, the former President of Botswana, caused controversy in 2003 when it publicly stated that FOI was not a priority for Botswana. Two years later Mr. Benjamin Mkapa, the former president of Tanzania, is reported to have told a press conference that Tanzania would never have an FOI law as long as he ran the show. Mkapa’s Namibian counterpart took the cue and expressed the same sentiment. Further north in 2007 the former military ruler of Nigeria and born-again democrat, Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo, scuppered the impressive efforts by Nigerian civil society to have an FOI law passed when, for the most inane of reasons, he refused to sign in to law the FOI bill that had been approved and adopted by both houses of parliament. The least said about Robert Mugabe’s Access to Information And Protection of Privacy Act the better. “No We Won’t”, the African leaders have declared.

On average in South Africa over the last five years there are ten shack fires a day with someone dying in a shack fire every other day. Shack fires are not acts of God. They are the result of political choices, often at municipal level.

Shack settlements are a poor people’s solution to a lack of affordable housing, especially in cities. In eThekwini municipality, a third of the population, and around half of the African population live in shacks. This is around 920,000 people. 16.4 per cent or about one in six of all South African households live in shacks. The number of South African households living in shacks is increasing at more than double the rate of population growth and is now nearly two million.

People live in shacks for many reasons. People move to the cities from rural areas in search of work, tertiary education, and health care. People also leave formal housing to live in shacks when they can no longer afford that housing after a breadwinner dies or loses a job. They may also come to live in the shacks because they wish to escape family violence or to have their own home independently of their parents. Some people came to avoid political violence in the 1980s. However, it is hard to find work in the cities, and when people find it, they often don’t get paid enough to afford rent in formal housing. 60.7% of people in eThekwini live on less than R427 a month. Rent might be R500 a month plus bills.

Shack communities are often referred to as ‘informal’, as ‘temporary’ and as ‘camps’, but a survey in 2001 found that “over half of the household heads with informal dwellings have lived in their homes for between five and ten years and a quarter have lived in them for over eleven years”. Shack communities are not temporary. But because they are not in places that city officials call ‘suitable’, they are refused basic services and prevented from taking their proper place in the city. The lack of services is seen as a deliberate attempt to force people to leave their homes and accept relocation.