Although Exxaro has denied that mining the wetland constituted an illegal environmental activity, investigations show that the remained in violation of the requirements of the law and committed a criminal offence

Since opencast coal mining started on this farm ten years ago, the lives of the people have gradually deteriorated. The mine replaced the previous agricultural business that employed them. A villager said that only one person in the village has a full time job

It is up to the progressive forces favourable to radical changes within our societies to reconnect with the tradition of organizing and struggle by combining forces and by clearly stating through a clear vision where they would like to take Africa in the decades to come

The deaf signer at Mandela’s memorial who confessed to schizophrenia revealed a deep-seated schizoid behaviour among African people. Voices in the heads of African people continue to program Africans to elevate all that is Western; African governments, intellectuals, businessmen, students, teachers and parents continue to suffer from an imitation of all that is non-African and anti-African

What makes African politics particularly fragile is that African politicians inherited weak superstructures from their former colonial masters and failed to dismantle such structures as their political egos sought to step in to the former master’s shoes

It is necessary to place the current political crisis in South Sudan within a historical context and accept that if the South Sudanese were able to fight for independence over six decades and unanimously vote for independence in 2011, there is no reason that they cannot vote for peace and stability in 2014

His eminently outstanding scholarly contribution, ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’, is set to be translated into Chinese. The decision is a vindication of Rodney’s scholarship and global vision

There was noticeable evidence last year that the Somali people are ready and willing to rebuild their country after many years of turmoil. External support also improved. But the government of Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud squandered a lot of opportunities

Western leaders who sow violence around the world to entrench capitalism were full of praise of Mandela as a man of peace. Yet from thousands of miles away, President Obama, who led the charade, decides who dies by the unmanned drone, whether they are at a wedding or funeral, women collecting firewood, infants or the elderly

The crisis in South Sudan is the outcome of a deadly cocktail of personal ambition, state failure, high level corruption and neglect of service delivery to the people, political manipulation of negative ethnicity and failure to transform a revered liberation movement into an accountable ruling party. To start with, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement should be dissolved

The horrendous violence that has torn the lives of South Sudanese in the past three weeks has caught many people by utter surprise. Former Vice President Riek Machar, believed to be leading a rebellion against President Salva Kiir, appears determined to get a favourable political settlement at whatever cost

Father of the successful African struggle for the restoration of independence in South Africa after centuries of the European conquest and occupation. This resistance is surely one of the momentous liberation upheavals of recent human history. At its apogee, we mustn’t forget, quite a few seemingly influential global public figures and intellectuals had variously dismissed eventual African victory as “impossible”, “couldn’t achieve such a feat”, “[European rule] here to stay”… What a year, this 2013 – Africa and the world have bidden farewell to the dual-colossi of 20th/21st centuries’ African renaissance: Nelson Mandela and Chinua Achebe, Father of African Literature.

* Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is visiting professor in graduate programme of constitutional law, Universidade de Fortaleza, Brazil

There is growing dissatisfaction and even mistrust of human rights as an instrument for radical social change. What is needed is a revolutionary approach to human rights informed by an analysis of the oppressive, anti-human social/historical context of national and global social relationships

The former president’s tirade against the man he foisted on Nigerians is totally uncalled for, considering that Obasanjo’s failed two-time administration laid the foundation for much of the mess Jonathan is busy consolidating

After a historic handshake between President Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro, relations between the United States and the island nation have been put in the spotlight. Castro was one of five world leaders invited to speak at Nelson Mandela’s memorial, highlighting Cuba’s importance to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.

In this interview with Democracy Now! historian Piero Gleijeses of Johns Hopkins University puts the Obama-Castro handshake in context and discusses his new book, “Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for South Africa, 1976-1991.” Gleijeses believes that Cuba had "destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor ... [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa."

Watch the interview

African-American writer and political activist Alice Walker believes President Barack Obama is a huge disappointment especially to black people in the US, many of whom had hoped that a black president would improve their fortunes

Nelson Mandela dedicated the best of his years to the struggle for freedom of his people, whose aspirations are contained in the Freedom Charter of 1955. That struggle is not yet over and the people should not relent

One the important lessons from the life of Nelson Mandela, a former prisoner, is that ex-prisoners should be given all the support they need in order to make positive contributions to society

Nelson Mandela belongs to history now. We should be able to look at his whole life, his whole record in perspective. That perspective ought to include who is praising Nelson Mandela nowadays and why

Nigerians must demand that their leaders make meaningful the economic, social and political rights of ordinary people as expressed in the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights and Universal Declaration on Human Rights