Bill Sutherland, unofficial ambassador between the peoples of Africa and the Americas for over fifty years, died peacefully on the evening of 2 January 2010. He was 91.

Nigerians in the diaspora have written a letter to Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud on the continued absence of President Yar’Adua from the country, demanding true information on the state of his health.

In light of South Africa's entrenched poverty, William Gumede argues that the country's National Planning Commission must operate 'like the command centre of a country at war'. Tackling poverty and achieving economic progress require harnessing every resource and talent at the country's disposal, Gumede writes, and instilling a culture 'where failure is not an option'.

Issa G. Shivji writes of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere's conceptions of nationalism in Africa, ideas which encompassed both the political through liberatory principles and the universal through transcending narrow identities. Debates around the economic success of his policies notwithstanding, Nyerere's greatest legacy, Shivji writes, was his sweeping vision of African unity.

The International Peace Research Association Foundation invites applications for the Dorothy Marchus Senesh Fellowship in Peace and Development Studies for Third World Women. Dorothy Senesh was a long-time activist for international peace and justice. Her husband Lawrence established this fellowship following her death in 1989. The first award was made at the IPRA 25th Anniversary meeting, July 1990, in Groningen, Netherlands and has been made biennially since. The eleventh award will be made at the 23nd biennial IPRA meeting in Syndey, Australia.

Young African intellectuals should revisit the philosophies of visionary leaders like Nyerere and Nkrumah for inspiration and a sense of self-belief, rather than looking to ideas from outside the continent, Marie M. Shaba argues in this week’s Pambazuka News.

With a mere 30 days remaining until Kenya's Harmonised Draft Constitution makes its way to Parliament, L. Muthoni Wanyeki stresses that throwing out the idea of proportional representation altogether would ignore the efforts of the report's Committee of Experts to address potential concerns with the system.

With Graça Machel set to re-visit Kenya this weekend as a member of the Panel of Eminent Persons overseeing the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), L. Muthoni Wanyeki stresses the need for all Kenyans to ensure that those in charge are not permitted to paint a rosy picture of 'achievements' for Machel's team.

Looking to Mwalimu Julius Nyerere's understanding for guidance, Issa G. Shivji stresses the contemporary importance of non-alignment for Tanzania and African countries at large. In the face of a multi-polar world where power is progressively drifting eastwards, Africa must revitalise its erstwhile spirit of national liberation and autonomy, Shivji argues.

Cheikh Tidiane Dièye

Why are so many Kenyans unhappy with the work of the Committee of Experts charged with determining options for resolving contentious issues around reforming the country’s constitution, L. Muthoni Wanyeki asks in this week’s Pambazuka News. And will their disgruntlement end up defeating and derailing the latest effort to finally conclude Kenya’s constitutional reform process?

Ten years ago, on 14 October 1999, a giant died and left a cavern in our consciousness, if not in our conscience. Julius Kambarage Nyerere was a man of extraordinary achievements on a a national, continental and international scale, writes Firoze Manji, in this introduction to a special issue of Pambazuka News.

Last week the BBC published a story entitled , making public the fact that ethnic groups in the Rift Valley were rearming in preparation for future election violence. Apart from this being a very worrying story, the backlash this has had on Ken Walfula – who gave subsequent interviews to Kenyan newspapers on the matter – has been disconcerting, argues L. Muthoni Wanyeki in this week’s Pambazuka News. Ken Walfula is now facing charges of incitement and the circulation of false and alarming information from the Kenyan government. Furthermore, as Wanyeki points out, there has been both public and private discussion of rearming, such as that undertaken by the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation Monitoring Project. This is an issue the Kenyan government needs to take seriously, the author stresses.

"Tanzania must support the struggle for freedom … regardless of the political philosophy of those who are conducting the struggle. If they are capitalists, we must support them; if they are liberals, we must support them; if they are communists, we must support them; if they are socialists, we must support them. We support them as nationalists. The right of a man to stand upright as a human being in his own country comes before questions of the kind of society he will create once he has that right. Freedom is the only thing that matters until it is won."

President Nyerere, University of Toronto, October 1969

The totality of his commitment to the freedom of others regardless of their political affiliations and the universality of his belief in the unity of Africa and other oppressed people gave Nyerere considerable strength and confidence. From the very beginning of his career, first as a nationalist for Tanganyika's independence and then as an internationalist leader of a Third World country, he led the newly formed international organisations of the day, the OAU (Organization of African Unity) and the Commonwealth in particular, to find their identity and purpose in action. This is evident in the first-hand testimony provided by two eminent international civil servants, Chief Emeka Anyaoku and Mohamed Sahnoun, who were sent to serve at the OAU and the Commonwealth and who collaborated in the strategy for liberation. This week's Pambazuka News features an interview with Chief Emeka Anyaoku entitled and a memoir from Mohamed Sahnoun entitled [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.

Annar Cassam discusses two historic interviews conducted with Mwalimu Nyerere, the .

In an interview originally published by El País on 16 November 1991, Ana Camacho questions Mwalimu Nyerere on the implications for the global South of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the role of democracy in Africa's development.

In an interview with Nawal El Saadawy of Egypt's El Mussawar first published on 19 October 1984, Mwalimu Nyerere discusses Palestine, Tanzania's relations with Libya, and Africa's economic woes.

Mwalimu Nyerere, writes Issa G. Shivji, “saw Tanzania essentially as a nation of village communities [that] was likely to be so for the foreseeable future.” He thus saw it as site of statist development and bureaucratic social service provision. Although there were “seeds of the conception of the village as a site of governance” in his thought, “there is no evidence that he advocated any consistent, political programme to evolve village governance.” Shivji thus calls on us take Mwalimu’s limited thought on the village one step further by placing the “restructuring of village governance on the centre stage” whereby it should be based on the rule of law and separation of power, not top-down administrative fiat. This will enable people’s development through a process of ‘accumulation from below’ in villages.

Helen Kijo-Bisimba and Chris Maina Peter review the highly complex position that Mwalimu Nyerere had on human rights. On the one hand, they write, there “is Mwalimu the individual – a God fearing and religious family person who respects and champions rights of all people”. Yet on the other there is “Mwalimu – the President of the United Republic – signing a few death warrants, detaining people in custody without trial” and “deporting citizens of Tanzania from one part of the country to another”. This apparent complexity, they assert, had to do with his belief that “the community was far more important than the individual” and thus an “individual could be sacrificed but not the community.” Kijo-Bisimba and Peter thus conclude: “Whatever Mwalimu did that could be interpreted as violating human rights can always be explained in wider benefits to the community.”

Looking back on Mwalimu Nyerere's tremendous intellectual influence, Chambi Chachage considers the enduring importance of the leader. Noting Nyerere's prescience in arguing against nations surrendering their "power of decision making" to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Chachage stresses that the leader's legacy is rooted in stimulating impassioned public debate around positive socio-economic change.