Egypt: mass protests against the government's response to Israeli airstrikes in Gaza but police moved to quell street protests over the issue.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-01-03-voa3.cfm

Gambia: Gambian President Yahya Jammeh has called on "civilized members of the human race" to rise up against "this holocaust that has been unleashed on the helpless Palestinians, whose lands, human dignity and right to peaceful and dignified existence in their own country are being blatantly violated with impunity."
http://www.afriquejet.com/news/africa-news/jammeh-decries-%22palestine-holocaust%22-2009010218671.html

Mali: Several hundred people took to the streets of Bamako, the Malian capital, to protest against the Israeli bombings in the Gaza strip and show support for the Palestinian people. The protesters condemned the "savage" bombings of the Gaza strip and deplored the "indifference" of the international community in the face of the tragedy. http://www.afriquejet.com/news/africa-news/bamako-residents-protest-against-gaza-bombings-2009010218682.html

http://www.afriquejet.com/news/africa-news/mauritanian-journalists-protest-israeli-attacks-on-gaza-2009010819038.html

Namibia: The Namibian Government has joined the ranks of countries condemning the Israeli incursion on Gaza, describing the operation as a "disproportionate use of force" and calling on Israel to withdraw its troops from the Gaza Strip.

Nigeria: The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) has called on the United Nations to take decisive actions against Israel as was done against Yugoslavia in the case of Kosovo.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053793.html

South Africa: Thousands of demonstrators marched to Parliament in Cape Town on Thursday to call for an end to Israel's offensive in Palestine's Gaza Strip.

Tunisia: Reporters Without Borders (RSF) claimed that independent journalists were assaulted by Tunisian police on December 30th. The reporters were covering a demonstration in Tunis by the legal opposition Progressive Democratic Party against Israel's Gaza offensive. Victims of the alleged police violence were Al Jazeera correspondent Lotfi Hajji and Al-Maoukif reporters Ismail Debara and Mohammed Al Hamlouny. http://www.workers.org/2009/world/global_anger_0115/

cc. Mukoma Wa Ngugi reflects on the absence of action by African governments against the Israeli invasion of Gaza and lambasts the divide between African Muslim and non-Muslim populations, calling for a solidarity of action.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/414/Tanzanian_Gaza_protest2_l…

His head wrapped in bandages
His face scared
With blood
Oozing out of the wounds
His eyes shut
Unconscious maybe dead
His arms high
High enough to surrender
No. He will never surrender
He is a terrorist
He is a murderer
He is an extremist
He must die
10-month-old baby?
A baby who cries for his mother's milk
A baby whose hands wave in the air
Who clutches at your thumb
Is he your terrorist?
Is he who you are targeting?
Because he is who you got.
He will never surrender,
How can he surrender
For a crime he has not committed

UNFAMILIAR POTATOES

We used to scrub and shine
those soiled potatoes
until they looked alien
to the earth
you once called me a potato
one before the scrubbing
a slob
rounded and out of
proportion
I locked myself up for days
uncomfortably looked down
at my reflection
in the glass door to the house
which distorted my
figure even more so
and now years later I laugh
and think of you as the potato
mouldy green and brown
with wrinkles, misery,
sharp stench and frown
all alien to me
and now I smile
I am long past the stage
of rotten potato

cc. We, black people in the United States, condemn the criminal Israeli attacks on the people of Gaza. We understand that these war crimes are being conducted with the overt material and unapologetic political backing of the government of the United States of America . Most importantly, we have learned the lessons of four centuries of racist oppression in the Western hemisphere; that the liberation struggles of the oppressed must not be divided by language, geography, gender, religion or race; that if they come for Gaza in the morning, they will most certainly come for Harlem at night.

In 1967, Dr Martin Luther King Jr spoke out against the US war in Vietnam. He called out the US as ‘the greatest purveyor of violence in the world’. For speaking this truth, Dr King was condemned by the rulers of the US and their loyal servants in the mass media, who arrogantly and condescendingly told him that the Vietnamese war had nothing to do with the black struggle for equality. Dr. King refused to be intimidated.

The stand taken by former US congresswoman and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney in escorting the humanitarian supplies being taken by ship to break the Gaza siege is another example of black people's support. Her response after the ‘Dignity’ was rammed by an Israeli military boat was not to cower but to ‘organize’.

In the spirit of all those who have fought in our centuries-long river of struggle, we will fight by all means necessary to ensure that this genocidal attack on and blockade of the Palestinian people is ended. We demand that:
- Our elected officials, in particular, the Congressional Black Caucus, stand in opposition to the Israeli assault
- Sanctions be brought against Israel as they were brought against the racist apartheid regime of South Africa
- Disinvestment in US corporations which support Israel.

* The Blacks Against Genocide Coalition is composed of groups and individuals who have come together in response to the criminal Israeli assault on the Palestinian people. Please read and circulate the statement below. Please let us know if you or your organisation will sign on to it.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

http://www.pambazuka.org/

In this interview conducted by Jarmo Pikkujamsa for African Writing Magazine, Mamadou N'Dongo, a Senegalese writer and filmmaker and author of Bridge Road and L’Errance de Sidiki Bâ, talks about the roots of Bridge Road in Black American struggles, the art of film in relation the craft of writing, and much more.

EXTRACT ONE
CÉLIA DANIELS

Lord, will you never have enough of the crying and the screaming of your people? His Calvary became ours. His chains, our chains. The night gave birth to Jesus. The son of God was black. The hair of Christ is frizzy, the night gave birth to Jesus. The son of God was black, did you know that? Black as charcoal.

Honourable citizens, Bunge la Mwananchi remembers with nostalgia that the very ideals that we fight for today such as human rights, equality, democracy, freedom, democratic constitution, political accountability and transparency, sustainable development and people sensitive leadership, were ideals that you once believed in, spoke eloquently about and worked hard to achieve before you entered the August house.

Ghana swore in opposition leader John Atta Mills as president on Wednesday in a democratic transfer of power that has won plaudits from Africa and the world. President John Kufuor stepped down after serving the maximum two four-year terms in office in the West African state. His party's chosen successor lost a cliffhanger presidential election run-off to Mills last week by less than 0.5 percent.

As we watch the horrors taking place in Gaza, it’s difficult to say the words “Happy New Year” though of course this is what we all wish for each other – a new beginning and some hope for a positive change. However, as in January’s past we are faced with yet more violence, death and injustice. African blogs especially those in Egypt have been very vocal in their commentary and reports on the “War in Gaza”.

Sokari Ekine reviews the following blogs:

“War On Gaza”
Arabawy
From the Rock
Rantings of a Sand Monkey
The Moor Next Door
SubZero Blue
Egyptian Chronicles
A Socialist in Egypt
Black Looks

The United Nations says it has "credible information" that Zimbabwe may have received Chinese weapons by way of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The U.N. Security Council says Boeing aircraft delivered 53 tons of Chinese ammunition, meant for the Zimbabwean army, from the DRC to Zimbabwe last August.

Good analysis,
, but please note that the Ghanaian opposition presidential candidate is John Atta Mills not Arthur Mills

This article, , is either pure revisionism or taking history over the top. Your recolaction of events seems to be both under-researched and seriously flawed, if not juts enthused by a desire to sound better and occupy a better moral high-ground.

Declare your interests!

Ah, Prof. Nabudere, the devil is in the details! However, the details here provide a red herring. The world economic crisis derives from the simple logic of capitalism itself, based upon concentration of capital. In this period, the capitalists have concentrated huge amts of wealth in their hands, for what purposes we can only speculate. Yet it is the hoarding of liquidity in their coffers which has dried up cash and cause the shortages across the globe. For a more comprehensive breakdown, read, .

Mary Ndlovu’s analysis of the situation in Zimbabwe is the clearest I have seen yet and reflects what many in civic society have been saying since well before the March elections.

WOZA, the NCA and the 3,000 civil society representatives who gathered at a People's Convention in Harare in February this year have all called for a transitional authority to address the humanitarian crisis in the country and create an acceptable climate for elections.

The opposition called for a transitional authority and NOT a government of national unity in the stale-mate following the March elections. Alas, the International community with it's lazy media and ill informed advisors did not seem to be able to tell the difference between a government of national unity and a transitional authority. But Zimbabweans know the difference only too well; just as they know about the 20,000 massacred in order to coerce into existence the last government of national unity with Joshua Nkomo's ZAPU.

To avoid the crash that Ms Ndlovu sketches in her article, those with responsibility for Zimbabwe's future; SADC leaders, international diplomats and our own national politicians need to take a long hard look at our country's recent history and accept that power sharing in Zimbabwe died with the victims of Gukuruhundi. It is now time for all Zimbabweans at home and abroad to unite with one single voice and call for an internationally approved transitional authority with a limited and clearly defined remit to establish the conditions needed for terror free elections in Zimbabwe.

Mahmood Mamdani in skirts the Gukurahundi, never named, and completely dismisses the extent of it at some level:

"The Shona-Ndebele divide so conspicuous in the two guerrilla movements produced great tension after independence between the mainly Shona government and the mainly Ndebele labour movement, with Mugabe's ferocious repression in Ndebele areas in 1986 remaining the bloodiest phase in post-independence Zimbabwean history."

But Gukurahundi began in 1981 and it was at its worst, if I recall, between 1983 and 1985 -- though 1986 was no picnic for the Ndebeles. It continued in "relaxed" forms from 1986 to 1990 and into the next decade. Mamdani paints it as something that happened in 1986. He doesnt call it genocide, which it was/is.

Later Mamdani (recent citation on Zimbabwe) says:
"The first casualty was the rule of law, already tenuous by 1986."

Why 1986? This is like the recent book by gerard Prunier on Congo that cites the beginning of the war as 1998. There's something at work here, and its called "interests."

Perhaps the best analyses from which to situate Mugabe is that by UCSD professor Francis Njubi Nesbitt, whose definitions of collaborators with white power would cast Mugabe in the "comprador class".

An excellent article, especially for white people. Of course, Njubi doesn't get into the "silences" produced by Mahmood Mamdani, especially as pertains to the great lakes. (Mamdani was --is? -- very close to Museveni and Kagame and Jacques Depelchin).

In response to : I am a teacher at a high school on the Cape Flats and have been teaching for the past 20+ years.

I find it particularly disgusting how many teachers of SADTU, who actively helped organise and vote in the ANC government, now PRIVATELY voice concern about the state of affairs in education.

The very least you should do is to withdraw your support and membership from the ANC/SADTU and their flawed educational policy!

Or shut your mouth and look the other way at school as many other SADTU-members are in fact doing!

I think the network of concern is a valuable outlet for those in education that's GATVOL of the political direction in SA.

Horace Campbell in makes too many generalised statements not supported by facts e.g. "Zimbabwean workers are being assaulted every day." This is a clear exaggeration coz I'm also a worker and have not witnessed the daily occurrence of this.
-on homophobia & virginity tests, how many people have actually been killed because they were gay? What's the extent, in numbers PLEASE, of the problem of virginity tests?

"It is scientifically NOT correct to say cholera is caused by "unsanitary conditions." The disease is, in fact, caused by a bacterium called Vibrio cholerae. Unsanitary conditions catalyse the spread of cholera but do NOT cause it. That's why you can have dirty slums but without cholera ravaging there.

"If Mugabe is only popular "OUTSIDE of his own country" then in the March 29 elections why didn't the MDC win by a landslide margin like 95% to 5%?

Why is Campbell sanitizing the role of whites in the DRC mess? While he is happy to link Mugabe's military to the Rwanda genocide (itself questionable) why does he opt to be silent on the part played by Belgium, France, UK & the US?

While "African dictators" are associated with grand theft which requires the UN to lead repatriation of stolen wealth, how about the the daylight robbery of African resources by white former colonialists? How about reparations for the slave trade?

If Campbell thinks the sanctions imposed by the US, UK & EU are "targetted" at Mugabe & his cronies, he is either not being sincere or he is not serious! It's the common man who is suffering, not Mugabe. The German withdrawal of printing paper from the RBZ affects the poor man in the street who has to queue for days on end at the bank to get his meagre earnings. In short those sanctions are neither "smart" nor "targetted"

Regarding , be glad that you have some financial freedom of choice, because people in other places, like Somalia, don't have access to such things. Somalia has been home to over ten years of near continuous civil war, and it isn't likely to let up anytime soon. Industry and development have been slow in the war-torn country, and there isn't a great deal of social mobility, unless of course you happen to be one of the local warlords.

Some citizens have found a way to make themselves a good living in these times of trouble by turning to one of the worlds' oldest professions, but it isn't one you're likely to see an ad for in the paper, and there isn't a benefits package, retirement, or even much job security, but many people have turned to it at times – that is, piracy.

Yes, Virginia, pirates. Now when most people these days think pirates, they conjure up images of Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom, but that isn't what pirates in the modern world are like. Modern pirates use high speed boats, AK-47s, RPG launchers, and GPS equipment. In recent months, a Ukrainian vessel carrying military equipment and a Saudi ship carrying about 2 million barrels of oil have been captured and their cargo and crews held for ransom. This is one of the primary ways for ordinary citizens to achieve some financial independence in that area, and foreign militaries are starting to send in their navies to fight off the pirates.