Xenophobia flourishes in Africa too, encouraged by state-building. It is not only in the West that black people are subjected to racism and abusive languages by the host nation’s population as “bloody foreigners”, “parasites”, “aliens”,”refugees”, etc, but also Africans living in other African countries are grimly accustomed to the same abusive language. Matters have sometimes been getting out of hand in recent years. There is an irony that this is happening when many countries in Africa are busy trying to organise a Union of African states to replace the useless, that the OAU has been. A few years ago,...
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Although the peace accord of 2003 ended five years of war in other parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, fighting has continued intermittently in the eastern Kivu region. The latest bout began on October 25, when the rebel forces of Laurent Nkunda resumed their offensive, accompanied by the usual atrocities against civilians, burning villages, and floods of starving refugees. What is this war about? Spillover from Rwanda? At first sight, it looks like spillover from the Hutu-Tutsi conflict in neighbouring Rwanda. General Nkunda, a Congolese Tutsi and Christian fundamentalist, says he is protecting his people from the...
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The end of Apartheid and the election of the ANC to power was supposed to see the grinding poverty of the townships ended, but the ANC have turned out to be powerless to run capitalism in a way that would end exploitation and poverty. Despite 15 years of power the ANC are just another political party dedicated to running capitalism. We say this without the benefit of hindsight: “Like all decent-minded people, Socialists are pleased at the coming demise of the obscene system of institutionalised race discrimination of apartheid. Although the coming of a non-racial regime in South Africa...
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South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics this week announced it had negotiated a 99-year lease on some 3.2 million acres of farmland on Madagascar ,about half the size of Belgium , That’s nearly half of Madagascar’s arable land, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization, and Daewoo plans to put about three quarters of it under corn. The remainder will be used to produce palm oil — a key commodity for the global biofuels market. In Madagascar, where about 70% of the country’s 20 million people live below the poverty line. The island’s residents also rely on WFP emergency food...
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Refugees who haven’t eaten for days cheered when the first humanitarian convoy in a week arrived at their camp November 3rd, but the jubilation turned into anger when U.N. workers dumped soap instead of food. U.N. officials admit hunger at the Kibati camp, where tens of thousands of refugees have sought safety, is dire but say their first priority is resupplying clinics looted by retreating government troops. Medical supplies and tablets to purify water were the priority in this shipment. The soap and plastic jerry cans for water distributed in Kibati on Monday were meant to help with sanitation...
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The World Socialist Party has always explained war as having its root cause within the capitalist system . It is our contention that war has always been fundamentally economic . The blood-bath that has been taking place in the Democratic Republic of Congo is no exception . Our case is supported by this article . “The conflict in eastern Congo is being fueled and funded by a tussle for mineral resources that end up in cell phones, laptops and other electronics… Rebel militias and Congolese army troops are fighting each other for control of mineral-rich land. “In some ways...
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“…Nigeria. Rwanda. Uganda. Ethiopia. Gabon. Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe has plenty of competitors for the title of “least democratic in Africa.” But while he has been singled out for condemnation by the West, leaders of other autocratic states in Africa have largely been able to avoid sanctions and isolation. Many have friends in Western capitals. Or play a strategic role in the war against terrorist groups. Or sit on oil…How many African leaders can point a clean finger at him? How many held a better election than his one-man runoff that followed a campaign of violence against his...
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About 12 people were killed and more than 50 were taken to hospitals with gunshot and stab wounds last night in Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city. Local police used tear gas and rubber bullets in attempt to try to stop the attackers – gangs of armed youths. (BBC) This was not, however, the racial violence we are used to hearing regarding South Africa. The victims of these attacks are immigrants from neighboring African countries such as Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi etc. The BBC report sated that “Since the end of apartheid, millions of African immigrants have poured into South Africa...
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We have posted before here about the harrassment and oppression of the indigenous peoples of southern Africa , the Bushmen . We sadly report that this is continuing . The Bushmen of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve have been forced from their ancestral lands in a wave of evictions by the Botswana government. In 2006 they won an historic legal victory when Botswana’s High Court ruled that their eviction was ‘unlawful and unconstitutional’. Yet , since then the government has arrested more than 50 Bushmen for hunting to feed their families, and banned the Bushmen from using their water...
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Zambians from different walks of life went to vote in another presidential and general election on 28 September. But to go and vote after every five years is a nasty thing to every person who lives in a society where this political freedom is an appendage to unexplained political and social forces beyond their control. And to those who lack political vision, nationalism conceived under state capitalism (self-reliance) seems to be the revolutionary way to arrest economic underdevelopment. Economic development minus a rise in people’s living standards shall keep on haunting many an African country. It is an...
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