'Bin Laden's death is perhaps the ultimate act of retribution, and no one can fault anyone for seeking that out. But there's a difference between justice and retribution,' writes H. Nanjala Nyabola.

Following the death of Karen Harrison, an activist from Glasgow, Scotland, and a mature student at the University of Oxford, H. Nanjala Nyabola pays tribute to ‘one of those special people who dedicated their whole lives to fighting battles that the rest of us are relatively comfortable looking away from’.

A monument should be built for liberation songs and it should have its own precinct. This is according to Wally Mongane Serote, the poet, author and former MK soldier testifying in the hate speech trial in the Johannesburg High Court against ANC Youth League President Julius Malema. Defending Malema - who was charged by Afriforum, an Afrikaner minority group, for singing certain lines of the song Dubulu ’ibhunu (Kill the Boer) - Serote said the songs were 'as important as the Voortrekker monument', kept 'as a memory even after apartheid'.

'I hated putting my hopes too high, so I opted to say what I wished for most. And that was friends to help me in my queer revolution (as I would in theirs).' Blessol Gathoni, a young Kenyan activist, shares her experiences as a Fahamu Fellow over the past six months. Fahamu’s Pan-African Fellowship is a programme that aims to nurture a new generation of African social justice leaders. This story is an extract from the Fahamu's newly launched

With the the third Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Intellectual Festival taking place recently at the University of Dar es Salaam and the participation of many eager people, young and old, from the region and beyond, the question many people were asking at this festival was: How is it that Nyerere, so long after his death, still exercises such influence on young people? Jenerali Ulimwengu, in this article on the East African website, says it speaks to the absence of an heir, a leader who would have emerged from the current crop of leaders to take over the mantle of Nyerere or Nkrumah.

H. Nanjala Nyabola takes a hectic drive through Nairobi's rush hour traffic and concludes that if Kenyans learnt to treat each other with respect on the roads, then there might be more respect in other areas of life.

The French approach to Libya and Côte d'Ivoire shows little understand of the mood of the African people and is more about a futile search for global influence, writes H. Nanjala Nyabola.

With the ‘Hague Six’ attempting to drum up domestic support to deflect the ICC (International Criminal Court) indictments over their role in Kenya’s 2007–08 post-election crisis, H. Nanjala Nyabola laments the willingness of the country’s ‘silent majority’ to simply ‘brush the nasty business of the post-election violence under the rug’.

As evidenced by Ivorians’ experiences in the wake of their country’s disputed election results and the looming threat of civil war, African leaders’ insistence on ignoring pre-established rules severely jeopardises their constituents, writes Cameron Duodu.

'When we listen to our leaders' vigorous condemnations of the human rights abuses and lack of democracy of Qaddafi's and other authoritarian regimes in the Mediterranean we would do well to bear in mind how new-founded and limited is their concern for human rights, and how likely it is that they will try to co-opt any new governments in the region to their war against sub-Saharan migrants,' argues a leading human rights lawyer on the website of the Institute of Race Relations. 'For in the past decade, as well as cheerfully returning dozens of suspected Islamists to torture under cover of the flimsiest of diplomatic assurances, Britain and Europe have used Qaddafi and other repressive north African regimes as front men for policies causing thousands of deaths in the Mediterranean and beyond.'

The final program of the Third Julius Nyerere Intellectual Festival Week for 2011 is available via the link provided.

The ‘people of Libya deserve all our sympathy – for having been obliged to endure the calamitous rule of a man, apparently destined to inflict so much suffering on them,’ writes Cameron Duodu.

Are there clear similarities between leaders’ behaviour in the aftermath of Kenya’s 2007–08 election and the current impasse in Côte d’Ivoire, asks H. Nanjala Nyabola. Is Laurent Gbagbo ‘pulling a Kibaki’?

Julius Nyerere was among ‘the most articulate, intense and militant’ of the first generation of African nationalists. Issa Shivji traces the development of a Pan-Africanist philosopher-king and his struggle to live a more principled politics.

Used as an excuse to prop up dicators across Africa, the doctrine of stability has produced instability rather than reducing it. It’s time for the international community to drop the idea, says H. Nanjala Nyabola.

The ‘Pan-Africanism for the New Generation’ conference at the University of Oxford marks a turning-point in the history of Pan-Africanism, writes Moshe Molefe.

'We call upon the nuclear industry, and the South African government, to take this disaster seriously, and abandon all nuclear plans for our country,' says Earthlife Africa Cape Town in response to the impact of the Japanese earthquake on that country's nuclear power stations. 'Given that proposed sites are all along the coast, we believe that this gamble is unacceptable. Not only are sustainable and safe alternatives cheaper than nuclear power, but they are also better solutions to the creation of decent work and energy security, as well as the best solutions to limit climate change.'

Is Gaddafi crazy, as the Western media would have us believe, asks H. Nanjala Nyabola, or merely good at manipulating a deeply flawed system for his own benefit?

As part of its mission of collaborative peacebuilding, the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding
(WANEP) organised a regional workshop at the PACIFIC hotel in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on
22 and 23 February 2011. After two days of discussions and exchange of experiences, the 50 participants from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Togo developed mechanisms and solutions for sustainable and more effective actions, and identified the different actors and organisations for the implementation of the actions.

Supporters beat drums in the slums while workers spruced up his private villa as Haitians prepared on Tuesday for the possible return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide with feverish anticipation. 'Some people are cleaning the streets, others are getting the residence ready, and we are making preparations for a beautiful party,' Rene Civil, a die-hard follower of Haiti's first democratically elected leader, told Agence France-Presse.