To the next 400 Pambazuka News issues!

Huge congratulations, to the entire Pambazuka team, and the larger Pambazuka community. Even while we reflect on the challenges facing Africa, these are both extraordinary achievements, absolutely worthy of celebration.

I am thrilled to have shared a tiny part of Pambazuka's journey. I  look forward to the next 400 issues - and to adding my voice to the ever-growing and ever-deepening conversation.

When I think of Pambazuka, what comes to mind is a favourite poem, OPTIMISM,  by a favourite poet,

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs--all this resinous, unretractable earth.