Thousands of workers of the Mahalla Textile Company held a strike last week demanding better wages. According to the Center for Trade Union & Workers’ Services (CTUWS), 24,000 workers took part in the protest. The workers from the morning shift had joined their colleagues from the night shift and gathered in front of the company’s headquarters, where they announced their strike.

'The rebellion of the poor has been spreading from town to town, from squatter camp to squatter camp, since 2004. Last week it arrived in Grahamstown. There is no third force, political party or communist academic behind our struggle. It is oppression at the hands of the African National Congress that has driven us into the rebellion of the poor. We are in rebellion because we are being forced to live without dignity, safety or hope.'

'Despite the many challenges, the chaos, the gathering of some 70,000 (WSF estimates) in one location with constant motion, sounds, music and drumming, talk and laughter is such joy.' Follow Priority Africa Network’s experiences in Dakar on .

On February 4, Pambazuka News editor Firoze Manji walked in on Egyptian theorist Samir Amin and Mamdou Habashi, a well-known Egyptian activist talking politics, and joined right in.

Group for Research and Initiative for the Liberation of Africa, talks about the combination of the concepts of ‘Pan-Africanism’ and ‘Auto-Centrage,’ i.e ‘Pan-Afri-Centrage.’ in the context of South-South solidarity. Fall says that many of the movements from Africa have been co-opted by imperialism and we now have a historical responsibility to revive the demands of the Bamako Appeal.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/516/Maurice-Fahe_tmb.jpgIn the following presentation, attempts to answer the question, how do Ivorians understand what is happening in their country today? [mp3] The media and other international actors have failed to correctly analyse the situation in the country, according to Fahe. He says the country has remained a semi-colony since the government of Houphouet-Boigny, and that the form of democracy that has since prevailed has not and will not lead to the transformation of society. Now is not the time to support or follow Outtara or Gbagbo, but to let Ivorians themselves decide and shape their own destiny.

Zahra Moloo talks to

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/516/Mamdouh-Habashi_tmb.jpg [mp3], vice-president of the World Forum for Alternatives and board member of the Arab and African Research Centre in Cairo. Habashi explains the causes behind the recent popular uprising in Egypt, the crisis of democracy that led to its creation and its potential and weaknesses as a ‘movement without a head’. Egypt, he says, does not have a real democracy, despite the presence of unions, elections and a so-called political opposition. But despite having the biggest and most powerful anti-demonstration police in the world, the government was unable to contain the people’s movement.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/516/panellists_tmb.jpgBelow are excerpts from a World Social Forum workshop on the agrarian question. [mp3]. This year is the 20th anniversary of the country's loan from the IMF and the formal inauguration of globalization. She explains the enormous decline in the agricultural sector and the reasons for the unprecedented number of farmer suicides in the country.

For the Via Campesina, the 11th World Social Forum, in Dakar, Senegal, began on 6 February with something halfway between a march and parade.

Black smoke billowed across morning rush hour traffic as angry backyarders in Nyanga blockaded Lansdowne road with burning tyres on Tuesday, forcing commuters to find alternative routes to work.The Backyarders from Nyanga’s Mau-Mau, Old Location and White City areas were protesting over the lack of housing for them and demanding the provincial government allocate houses to backyarders in housing projects in the area.

The Tanzanian government has embarked on a large-scale voluntary male circumcision programme aimed at reducing the HIV risk of men and boys in areas of the country with low levels of male circumcision. 'We have already completed a pilot project and we are now scaling up male circumcision,' said Bennet Fimbo, HIV/AIDS adviser to the Tanzania Ministry of Health. 'The target group in the campaign will be men and boys aged 10-34.'

Days after the global elite's jamboree at the Swiss resort of Davos, a week-long carnival of the oppressed and the marginalised, and those speaking for them, has begun in the capital of this western African nation, with thousands of left-leaning activists declaiming against globalisation and its discontents. The debates will revolve around resistance and struggles of the peoples of Africa for sustainable development as the continent zooms back into global focus, with some of African economies doing better than the developed world. 'The marginalisation of Africa is an important theme at the forum. Land grabs have put the focus back on issues of social justice,' Sanusha Naidu, a South African of Indian origin, who heads Emerging Powers in Africa programme at Fahamu, a global NGO, told IANS.

Around 09h30 yesterday (4 February), the MEC for Housing Bonginkosi Madikizela, came with police and the Anti-Land Invasions Unit. No one consulted with anyone in the community. They came without warning, without the necessary court documents, and destroyed brick houses and shacks in section 20-21 of Mandela Park. At around 18h00, the Mandela Park community gathered at Andile Nhose community hall to discuss the illegal demolition earlier in the day. Community members decided to take to the streets in a spontaneous demonstration protesting against the actions by Madikizela and the government.

The world is in financial crisis thanks to the reckless behaviour of bankers, say campaigners, yet ordinary people are picking up the tab. Debt activists fear the recession will provide cover for a fresh round of toxic debt to countries in the South. Nick Dearden, director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign, an international coalition of about 200 organisations, says there has never been a more important time for activists to meet to discuss collaboration and strategies to bring about real change to the world's economy than now.

Tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Dakar on Sunday to mark the start of the annual World Social Forum. Activists carried colorful banners denouncing land grabs, restrictive immigration laws, agricultural subsidies in Europe and the US and many other issues. Others sang freedom songs and played drums whilst marching peacefully through the streets along a route that began near the offices of Senegal's public broadcaster, RTS, and ended at the Cheikh Anta Diop University, the main venue for the weeklong gathering.

The Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation is in the process of popularising the highly subsidised malaria drugs now available in the country, reports the Daily Nation. Through the programme, the ministry and the private sector are offering treatments for less than Sh40, effectively bringing down the cost of malaria medicine from a high average of Sh500 per dose. Although these medicines have been around for several months now, many pharmacies have been selling them at prices far above those that have been recommended. This has prompted the current campaign to inform Kenyans that the medicines are available and that they need not buy them at the previous high prices.

We, civil society organizations from across the world, strongly urge all governments, as well as regional and international organizations, to clearly and unequivocally denounce the ongoing violent crackdown against the public protests and demands for democratic reform and government accountability that have been occurring across Egypt since the 25th of January.

The heroic masses of Egypt have risen up against the decades-old corrupt dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. Over the next weeks, a number of activities will be held in solidarity with these struggles throughout South Africa. These activities will kick off with a demonstration outside the Egyptian embassy in Pretoria, with South Africans repeating the calls of our Egyptian comrades: “Bread! Jobs! Education! Dignity! Democracy! Freedom of Expression!

Inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt, Youth of 30 January for Change Alliance in Sudan has mobilised thousands in protest.