Reviled by the right wing British press, Crow and Benn championed the interests of the working people of Britain and struggled for social justice issues of workers around the world.

Malcolm X, otherwise known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was a fierce African American human rights crusader with an international agenda. Progressive people commemorating his assassination this week reflect on his legacy to the Black struggle and to all people around the world who are oppressed by imperialism and capitalism

In this special issue on Amilcar Cabral we seek to return to the life, writings, legacy, political, social, economic and cultural insights of this revolutionary figure whilst examining what he means to Africans and their struggles of today

The people of Haiti continue to suffer the economic tremors of a post-earthquake reconstruction programme that has failed to transform the lives of the majority of the people, despite the fact that it is the people of Haiti who must not only construct the future of Haiti but also decide that future

There is no doubt about the monumental contribution of Nelson Mandela to the freedom struggle in South Africa. But still his personal life and political choices as the first black president raise troubling questions

The articles,videos and audios in this special issue highlight the ideological perspicacity of Kwame Ture, aspects of his Pan-Africanist convictions and personal insights by those who had the pleasure of meeting and working with one of the most notable African revolutionaries

Twenty-six years after the death of Sankara, it remains true that the essence of struggle is to mobilise people to believe in transforming their lives; that they have the capacity to dare to invent the future through collective struggle, rather than belief in an awaited messiah to lead them.

‘Dark Girls’ is a much needed candid film to expose the psychological scars of slavery and colonisation on the psyche of African people, scars that exist on account of the global white supremacist paradigm that promotes European forms of beauty

Imitating and catching up with the West lies behind the ‘Africa is rising’ narratives. Such narratives are uncritical of neo-liberal development models and therefore maintain Africa’s subordination to the international capitalist order

Is Africa really rising?

For whom does it rise?

It rises for neoliberal and neo-colonial African governments selling off large tracts of land to outsiders for food or bio-fuel jatropha while their people go hungry and landless

Ask the widows of the Marikana miners ‘is Africa rising’ or those in the Unemployed Peoples Movement, Abahlali, or those living in the black townships of South Africa and across the rest of Africa

Is Africa really rising for the women and young girls who have been raped in the Congo?

It rises for a small African middle class whilst the 99 percent remain in the rural areas as farmers, unable to get subsidies like their European counterparts whose governments intervene on their behalf

Africa rises for those with forked tongue who ‘talk left and walk right’

Africa is rising for the charismatic Christian preachers engaging in what they call ‘prosperity preaching’ to congregations obliged to pay one tenth of their miserly wages as tithes so the preacher can wear designer suits from Italy

Africa is rising for the continued exploitation of its enormous wealth by MNCs, tax evaders and those who engage in illicit wealth appropriation in a continued (not new) scramble for Africa

Africa is rising for a tiny black elite who believe in NEPAD and market fundamentalism alongside their governments committed to such policies

Africa is rising for those African women who equate economic freedom with the means to purchase Brazilian and Korean weave, false eyelashes and nails in their aspirations to resemble an African Barbie doll

Africa is rising for those few countries who have recently discovered oil: Uganda, Ghana, Ivory Coast – but will their people say the same in 20 years and not meet the same wretched fate as the peoples of the Niger Delta of Nigeria?

Let us not be deceived.

Africans can only rise if the vast majority rise in Pan-African consciousness, towards a socially just economic system that destroys neoliberal capitalism and ALL forms of oppression

Africans can only rise when we cease self-loathing and return to Ubuntu and self-love

African people can only rise in realising this vision.

All over the globe young people face similar and dissimilar problems: issues of oppression, economic, political and social injustice in various manifestations. They must globally mobilise with other progressive forces to transform not only their own lives but their own societies and the world

This special issue celebrates not only 50 years of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and its successor, the African Union (AU), but also the life of the late Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, a staunch Pan-Africanist. Some of the themes of this issue are set out, as well as future challenges facing the AU and Pan-Africanists

Africa today needs five Hugo Chávez’ - one for every region of Africa: North, South, Central, East and West to implement a similar level of socio-economic transformation that Hugo Chávez of Venezuela implemented in his country through peaceful constitutional means as well as in the region of Latin America during his 14 years in power.

In honour of International Women’ Day (8 March), a global examination of the problems and issues facing women in the last few years is presented. In order for these issues to be eradicated, progressive women need to work alongside progressive men for a better world

The heartbeat of Africa cloned to the Caribbean;

A nation of defiant and valiant freedom fighters who dared to rise up

Against the French, Spanish and British colonial overlords against the chains of slavery;

Who desired freedom and were prepared to wage a 13-year-long guerrilla war against

European overlords who did not believe in ‘liberté, fraternité, equalité’ for blacks;

A nation of half a million Africans who cherished their African-ness in the Vodun religion

Against the caricatures and demonization of this religion by Hollywood;

A people who believed their freedom was worth paying the French 150 million francs –

Yet were to be squeezed and punished in other ways by American occupation

And deathly neo-liberalism that fails to trickle down growth;

A people who know the meaning of struggle, pain, suffering, tragedy –

But remain in spite of hurricanes and tornadoes that cannot quench their spirits and hopes for a dignified life

A people who profoundly know the meaning of dictatorship lived during the Duvalier era

That ‘disappeared’ thousands, killed many who spoke out against kleptocracy, corruption, and inequality;

A people who know the meaning of neo-colonialism; that house negroes remain in the land;

A people who know that uncle toms and aunt jemimas are a powerful minority in collusion

With Uncle Sam wearing a black face and their neo-colonial brothers and sisters across in the neo-colonial Dominican Republic;

A people who know that colorism remains in the land and the ruling elite are not safe

Under a genuine democracy but with their US supplied automatic rifles

The presence of the Tonton Macoutes that they support and the various military attachés Uncle Sam funds to allow the rich to sleep easily at night;

It is a people who have recovered their agency and voted for a radical priest in two genuine elections

Only for the US and their detractors to deny this electoral victory on account that they did not like what the radical priest represented;

It is the masses who see the rich minority seated at a ‘vast table covered with white damask and overflowing with good food’ whilst the people are ‘hunched over in the dirt and starving’ [1] – waiting once more to knock down that table and construct a new one in which all will equitably eat.

ENDNOTE
1. Words of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide.

On the 52nd anniversary of the vicious assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Ama Biney reflects on both the current state of the DRC and Africa, arguing that the Congo is not only a ‘world problem’ but remains critical to the future unity of Africa due to its resources and geo-strategic location

Following the 7.0 earthquake that annihilated Port-au-Prince and killed thousands of Haitians in January 2010, Ama Biney reviews socio-economic and political developments in the country and argues that the radical Fanmi Lavalas party still resonates with the Haitian majority

This new film exposes the truth behind President Robert Mugabe’s troubles with the West. But it lacks the nuances, complexities and critical questions (other than ‘the land question’) that are key to understanding Mugabe’s legacy

The February death of Trayvon Martin in the US shows the need to address the underlying structures of racism that are embedded in the ideology of a capitalist and imperialist society.

What would Fanon make of ‘the myriad socio-economic and political problems facing Africans and people of African descent today,’ asks Ama Biney, on the 50th anniversary of his death.