Glebelands is an African National Congress stronghold. But the cost of the ruling party’s dogged determination to entrench one man’s position in the face of years of community struggle for his redeployment has been incalculable and utterly iniquitous.

Some say the tree of corruption in Kenya was planted by Jomo Kenyatta, watered by Moi, looked after by Kibaki and its fruits are now being harvested by the government of Uhuru Kenyatta.

Western countries have relied heavily on military force in their purported war against terrorism, but the root causes of the proliferation of terrorist activity will not be addressed solely by military means. Social, political and economic factors need attention.

The danger of focusing solely on Zuma, and seeing all of the scandals as simply being linked to his clearly flawed personality, is that it runs the risk of missing the point that the events surrounding him are symptoms of much deeper problems.

Without the leaders prioritising human life over political power struggles and police performing their duties without fear or favour, nothing else will end the misery for women of Glebelands in Durban - home to about 22 000 rural migrants where police and gangster violence are rife.

Lt. General Roméo Dallaire (Rtd) was the Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) during the genocide 21 years ago. He warned the U.N. of the forthcoming massacres, but he was ignored. The genocide and the failed international response haunt him to this day.

Goodluck Jonathan has earned the dubious distinction of being the first president in Nigerian history to lose an election. In many ways, Jonathan was the architect of his own downfall. He made critical mistakes that turned the public and allies against him, and led them to gravitate towards the opposition. Here’s where it all went wrong:

Cecil Rhodes is back in the news, following Black student protests to have his statue removed from the University of Cape Town. Rhodes’s unparalled evil legacy is still palpable across Africa. By splashing Rhodes’s statue with human excrement, the brave Black students have hit a raw nerve in the ‘sensitive’, ‘innocent’ and ‘pure’ white body.

The key lesson of Walker’s rare gesture is that every people creates its artefacts for its use and that people should not, through violence and other oppressive means, be deprived of the basic human right to cultural development and self-determination of the location of their own artefacts.

The public defence of British arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes by the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Town is astounding in its brazen attempt to re-write history. There is utterly nothing Africans can celebrate in Rhodes’s loathsome legacy.

Africa has been rising a long time. This is the continent that liberated itself from the shackles of European colonialism. It is the land of glorious ancient civilizations. But the new ‘rising’ parroted around nowadays is merely about the monetary fortunes of foreign looters and their local lackeys.

Since the events of 11 September 2001, US policies that were supposed to prevent further atrocities have in fact encouraged them. The US, aided by its ally nations, has committed untold numbers of human rights violations under the guise of ‘the war on terror’. These policies need to be re-examined.

Changing the situation of Africa’s youth will require high levels of commitment both within the nations of Africa and the rich countries of the world. Fortunately, across Africa, there is growing recognition of the centrality of youth issues in the development agenda

The South African police force still carries with it the brutally violent culture and practices which characterised apartheid policing. These trends are unlikely to be reigned in by a government that is progressively paranoid of people power, leaving the boys in blue to become further removed from the law that they are supposed to uphold.

Nigerians are already looking beyond the March 28 presidential election, which the opposition All Peoples’ Congress and its presidential candidate General Muhammadu Buhari are expected to win.

Russia is looking to extend its footprint in Africa by supporting the construction of a huge nuclear power plant in Egypt. Nuclear energy is seen as a viable option for African economies.

The development of South Africa’s renewable energy sector provides a case study for understanding the inter-relationship that exists between social and economic development.

In spite of communities such as Jane-Finch being in the low-to-medium range for violence-related requests for law enforcement’s intervention, they are targeted and over-policed by the cops, especially the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy police division, an occupation army-like formation.

The EU along with NATO and led by the US are responsible for the current chaos in Libya. This pattern of sanctions, massive bombings, ground interventions through direct occupation or proxy forces have failed throughout the entire region of North Africa and the Middle East.

Human rights groups in Kenya are conducting their own investigation into the mysterious disappearance and death of a man linked to the crimes against humanity trial of Deputy President William Ruto at the International Criminal Court. In their preliminary findings, the groups say Meshack Yebei was murdered in a carefully planned scheme to obstruct justice in the Ruto case.