Comment & analysis

On Friday, 4 July 2014, the African Union (AU) amended the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights to provide for blanket immunity from prosecution for African leaders and their ‘senior government officials’.

Gerardo Cerdas is coordinator of the Latin American- and Caribbean-wide social movement Grito de los Excluidos, Cry of the Excluded. He is also a sociologist and researcher. A native of Costa Rica, Cerdas lives in Brazil.

In 2011, I published ‘Zambia: Struggles of My People’. In this book I rather presciently predict the future of Zambia from what has gone before. I detail our struggles from pre-colonial days to colonial days to post-colonial days.

Equatorial Guinea was the scene of the latest African Union (AU) Summit convened on June 26-27. This oil-rich nation has become more prominent in recent years for its rhetorical defiance of the West as it relates to both the domestic and foreign policy of the 54-member regional body.

On the 4 July, Rwanda's sole ruling party, the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), celebrated Liberation Day. On the first of July, Rwanda should have celebrated its independence from Belgian colonial rule slightly over five decades ago.

South Sudan’s president Salva Kiir and his erstwhile vice president, Dr Riek Machar – the current rebel leader – recently agreed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to form an interim government within 60 days. That is all that is known about the agreement. The details remain a mystery.

In February 2014, Lead Counsel Chief Charles A. Taku and I (with our defence team) won the acquittal of our client, Major F.X. Nzuwonemeye, former Commander of the Reconnaissance Battalion, Rwandan Army in April 1994, in the Ndindiliyimanaet al.

Recently, Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta ‘approved’ the appointment of 11 judges out of the 25 nominated by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC).

A settlement will soon be finalized, in New York City, that will award five no longer young Black men $40 million for spending between 7 and 13 years in prison for a crime they did not commit.

In 2014 Pan Africanists will commemorate two seminal events in the history of the African liberation movement: 1) the 50th anniversary of the successful revolution in Zanzibar and 2) the 90th birthday of Mohamed Babu.