Mazrui’s scholarship is vast thematically and theoretically, but above all, challenges positivist conceptions of hegemonic, universal and objective truths. His early work revealed the political, social and cultural function and limitations in established knowledge; later, Mazrui actively challenged and undermined constructed truths.

The constitution is clear on who should be Acting President when the head of state dies. So, Zambians should stay calm during this period of mourning and wait to chose their next president when the time comes.

Ethiopia’s sovereign debt has grown in recent years to unsustainable levels likely to create problems for the economy. The external debt especially has not been matched by a vibrant and diversified export sector.

Zambia’s president Michael Sata who died last week was unremarkable in leadership credentials in the short period of his rule. His attitude towards media freedom and freedom of expression exposed his authoritarian streak.

President Blaise Compaore’s ouster last week by popular revolt was the culmination of the people’s opposition to his regime, starting in 2011. The regime contrasted sharply with the short-lived government of Thomas Sankara. But Compaore’s exit does not necessarily mean restoration of Sankara’s revolution.

Marta Iñiguez de Heredia, from the University of Cambridge, interviews three members of Lutte pour le Changement (Struggle for Change, or LUCHA), which self-identifies as a citizens’ movement. Their members speak about their ideas and the trajectory of this movement since its creation in 2012.

Over 11 million South African citizens are currently in debt, due to the entrenchment of aggressive capitalist policies. Most debt experiences, such as the author’s, are extremely painful. It is time for the country to rise up against big banking and end the cycle of debt.

Under the guise of ‘mediation’ the ANC is seeking to split Cosatu and weaken the workers’ movement. For the ANC and the SACP, the prospect of Numsa and its radical proposals gaining dominance in Cosatu is an intolerable threat to imperial capitalism and the electoral dominance of the alliance itself.

The assertion that people under 40 have lost nothing to apartheid is one of the most extraordinary statements from the mouth of a cabinet minister since 1994. The pretense that apartheid’s consequences came to an end in 1994 is sheer denialism that is so out of touch with reality.

Nearly two decades of foreign interventions have failed to build peace or a viable state. International engagement has served to deepen the humanitarian and political crisis in Somalia.

With the connivance of the ‘international community’ and a phalanx of aid people, successive Ethiopian regimes have succeeded to hide the reality of famine facing millions of its people every year. The regimes have also prevented critical interrogation of the political dimensions of these recurrent food crises.

The UN has over the past decades appeared to pursue a just solution to the crisis in Western Sahara, Africa’s last colony still illegally occupied by Morocco. But it now emerges that Moroccan diplomacy at the world body has employed corruption to push its agenda against Western Sahara.

The UN is a by-product of a murderous war started by European powers vying for supremacy. It has become the epitome of what it was set up, in theory, to eradicate: the predatory behavior of powerful entities. Haitians should now review their membership.

A new BBC documentary has sparked international debate about the facts of the Rwandan genocide. This week legislators in Kigali voted to ban the BBC in Rwanda, outraged by the documentary, which deconstructs the official narrative. But the documentary actually tells the truth the Kagame regime suppresses.

Ali Mazrui in his ability to comprehend present complexities, anticipated some major scientific theories and predicted a number of dynamics and events in international affairs.

What was unique about Ali was that he was always bubbling with new ideas, which he tested on the students, his colleagues and the public in general whether in the lecture halls, academic journals or the columns of newspapers

Ali Mazrui had many followers around the globe but he also had many detractors. His BBC series “The Africans”, watched by millions around the world, won him many admirers in Nigeria, but they also won him enemies who accused him of being nothing more than a propagandist for a religious cause.

A renowned scholar, teacher and public intellectual with expertise in African politics, international political culture, political Islam and North-South relations, Mazrui’s prolific writing over the past half century has shaped ideas about Africa and Islam among scholars and the general public, earning him both international acclaim and controversy.

Mazrui’s humanism was based on the dignity of all human beings regardless of race, religion, region or gender. It was a humanism linked to the quest for reparative justice, peace, self-determination, the rights of women, secularism and prosperity for all.

He was a scholar in the finest traditions of great scholars: devoted completely to his vocation; searching analysis of broad relationships between religions, ideologies, and state systems.