The setting

Anyone walking and driving on the streets of Addis Ababa can’t help but be marvelled by the rapid changes in the city’s landscape. No matter where in that big city you are staying, electrified streets, parks and fountains, and (re)construction everywhere has become the norm.

In November 2023

If Nigeria survives long enough from the current battering of the country’s ruling class, variants of what was attempted on 5 August may be attempted again and again until a spark leads to a national conflagration or a successful popular revolution resulting from a better conceived, planned and e

As the dust settles on the Republic of South Africa’s 6th election, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) faces its deepest crisis since coming to power in 1994.

Incumbent President Cyril Ramaphosa, a former trade union leader and co-founder of the National Union of Mineworkers, was sworn into office again on 25 May with thousands of cheering ANC members in attendance along with representatives of allied parties from across the continent and the world.

Now almost exactly a month after national elections were held, members of parliament have been safely sworn in and national celebrations over the holding of, yet another, peaceful democratic election have abated.

About the middle of 1985, the tendency to which I belonged in Nigeria’s Marxist Left met somewhere on the campus of the former University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife.

Introduction