Julius Malema will continue to perform his duties as president of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) despite his suspension by the ANC, the league has said. A previous meeting of the NEC resulted in a 'mandate to protect and defend the autonomy of the ANCYL by not agreeing with the removal or release of any of the elected leaders of the ANC Youth League until 2014'. The ANC’s national disciplinary committee suspended Malema for calling President Jacob Zuma a dictator.

China’s economic transformation over three decades has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. But impressive economic growth rates in the world’s largest country have come with heavy environmental costs. The air in many of China’s major cities is the most polluted in the world. The water in many major Chinese rivers is unfit for irrigation. Soils in key agricultural regions are contaminated by heavy metals. Scarce arable land and water resources and important biodiversity are being lost. China’s carbon and nitrous oxide emissions are having serious impacts both in China and at a global scale.

Former President Benjamin Mkapa put up a spirited defence for the decision of his third phase administration to privatise state firms, at a public forum held in Dar es Salaam. He told participants at the fourth Mwalimu Nyerere Professorial chair that the poor performance of the firms was due to bad management, in reaction to accusations directed at him personally from some participants. Mkapa said during his time in office when he decided to adopt the privatisation, some 386 state owned industries were privatised, 180 of which were sold to locals. According to Mr Mkapa, all the 386 companies have since collapsed due to what he termed as bad management.

'Why Are We So Angry? is a six-part documentary series which explores the underlying issues contributing to what seems to be a collective anger amongst South Africans. This repressed anger, in turn, is now manifesting itself in many different ways in our society.

The president of Mali, Amadou Toumani Touré, has formally resigned after soldiers ousted him in a coup in March, with power set to be transferred to Mali’s National Assembly after elections later this month. The soldiers say they seized power because of Touré’s alleged mishandling of a rebellion of ethnic Tuareg rebels, who have succeeded in capturing several key northern cities, declaring their independence and now calling for international recognition. Officials claim the rebels are a mix of Tuareg separatists and Islamists with links to al-Qaeda. We speak with Firoze Manji, editor-in-chief of Pambazuka News, a pan-African social justice website. He was formerly the Africa director for Amnesty International. Manji recently co-edited a book called "African Awakening: The Emerging Revolutions." Manji argues the political unrest in Mali, Senegal, and beyond is "driven by the fact that over the last 30 years our people have lost all the gains of independence," due in large part to what he calls neoliberal policies imposed on many African countries by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. "People feel that their governments are more accountable to the banks and to the international multinational corporations than they are to their citizens," Manji says.

I suppose, there is no time even an excellent work will please all "stake-holders".

For someone with the stature of Malcom X, time and space will continue unfurling a myriad intepretations on his life.

He is, as Marable says a part of the Black Aesthetic in America.

To us in the Motherland, Malcom X represents our hope and idea of freedom and dignity for the diaspora Africans.

What Marable has revealed is an extremely complex, protean and fearless African with a special love for his people.He was a man always learning.

Although some aspects of Malcom's life, as revealed in the book are somewhat disconcerting, one is left with a humbling thought that Marable points out:

His fiery and incisive oratory and telling truth to power was a marvel and extremely important during his time.

I find Marable's coverage of Malcom objectively respectful without subservience or sheer myth-making. Malcom X still comes out as an awe-inspiring Afrikan man. Period

If aid is not in the interests of African peoples’, why would aid conditionality be a tool for African social justice?

We were not there when you enslaved our forefathers
We were not there when you showed us your brutality through colonisation
We were not there when you forcefully stole our resources

We know what you did to Kimathi, Kwame, Lumumba, Modibo, Barka, Samora,
Sankara, Hani and all those who opposed your interests on our continent
But that was in the past

Today we were born, we have grown and we are watching you
We are watching you as you continue plundering the Congo
We are watching you as you steal our minerals through force when corruption
fails
We are watching you as you put up your AFRICOM bases in Djibouti, and your
Lilly-pads all over
We are watching you as you dump nuclear waste on Somali coast, and as you
support their terrorists from behind the scenes
We are watching you as you suppress our economies every time they threaten
your hegemony
We are watching you as you continue to corrupt and to compromise the
leaders that your system imposes on us
We are watching you as you succeed in brainwashing some of us with your
powerful global media

We were painfully watching you, as you negated the rule of law in Ivory
Coast, through the gun
We were painfully watching you, as you murdered our Brother leader, through
the gun
We were painfully watching you, as you took Zimbabwe’s economy to its knees

Today, your killing instincts are leading you into CAR, in the guise of
following some Kony fellow
Today, your killing instincts are taking you into Mali, in the guise of
restoring ‘democracy’
Today maybe, Niger, Nigeria or Algeria will be where you will sent your
religious crap heads and divisive empty heads

But what you may not know is that
Today we were born, we have grown and we are watching you

The Sankaras are in their thousands
The Kimathis are in their thousands
The Kwames are in their thousands
The Samoras are in their thousands
The Hanis are in their thousands
The Gaddafis are in their hundreds of thousands

Maybe you cannot see us
Because the only avenues we have are the demonstrations, the blogs and the
never aired press conferences
Continue thinking that we are asleep, or that we are some ‘lazy
intellectual African scums’
Yes, we are few in numbers, but what we lack in numbers, we compliment with
our energy and zeal

Our forefathers foresaw this age
An age where you would view us as some backward people
An age when some of us would view us as a lesser people
That was why they left for us the magnificent Pyramids all along the Nile
Pyramids that you once claimed were built by you, Pyramids that you today
claim were not built by humans
That is why they left for us the Great Zimbabwe
So developed they were, that you once claimed that the builders came from
elsewhere
That is why the left for us the complicated underground structures all over
Structures that make a child’s play of your subways and skyscrapers
That is why they left for us the arts and cultures
With rhythms that you cannot understand

All these are a reminder, So that when we see them, we may hold our heads
up high, we may be proud of what we achieved, and we may remind ourselves
that we need to regain our lost glory, and bring humanity back into the
world

Just like the phoenix, our continent is burning, and the heat is preparing
us, preparing us to rise
Just like the lion, we will soon roar, and we will care for nothing, but
our freedom and dignity

We have studied your ways
You use your military superiority to rule on us
You take advantage of our goodness to splash your wrath on us

You may not hear our voices, neither do we care
We are organizing
We have learnt from our past
But most importantly
We are learning from your past and present

And when we rise
And when the fire starts to burn
You will realize that the generation has arrived
And we shall not forgive, we shall have no mercy, we shall keep our Utu
aside
We shall use your methods to instill humanity into you
A worse fate will meet your local stooges and puppets
For we have seen that love can’t work for you

And we shall end all this
Once and for all
Because we are tired of watching you

1st April 2012
9:36pm

It appears that whites may hunt down blacks with immunity from arrest so long as they leave behind no clue that they were not acting to defend themselves.

The real question worth arguing about soberly is: Does the ANC (or the SACP for that matter) have the capacity to right itself and become a real instrument of genuine liberation of the South African people in the post-apartheid period?

The novel exposes the bitter betrayals and collusion between a new, deeply flawed political elite and multinationals, and tells the story of a rebirth of grassroots activism.

The Egyptian economy will need of some kind of financial aid within the next few months to avoid a severe downturn.

'I must say I was more than happy when Ankrah was removed from office in April 1968 and General Akwasi Afrifa, a far more polished and liberal officer, became head of state.'

A personal account of human rights abuse in Uganda raises questions about the role of mainstream human rights organisations supported by international donors.

The involvement of several Sudanese sects, groups, and institutions in the campaigns and events for women is our desired success as an organization working to support women's rights.

Zille's comments brought back memories of the Afro-phobic attacks of 2008; but this time, invoking such phobia between people already living in South Africa.

The continued theft of large quantities of diamonds by dealers and cartels is a threat to national security and may undermine the work of the inclusive government in Zimbabwe.

How can these westerners be so cynical to oblige people they formerly colonised to use their democratic paradigm whilst their countries are grappling with the same model that hides xenophobia, unbridled racism, injustice and misery?

A bill of rights that protects Nigerians from insecurity and violence on the roads is also needed alongside the coming bill of rights for air travellers.

Slowly, the South has tried to revive UNCTAD, whose policy framers have become a bit more aggressive in their defence of an alternative to neo-liberalism.