Africa

Against Kony, look to solidarity with the workers of Africa!

A viral internet and street art campaign, launched by the charity Invisible Children, gathered an enormous amount of support across the world on 7 March, with its denunciation of Joseph Kony, leader of a militia which has committed many atrocities in Uganda and in Congo. The denunciation is thoroughly justified, but there are problems with the Invisible Children operation and its slant on the issue. In our view, people who want to take action against militias like Kony’s - his, sadly, is by no means the only one in the region - are right to want to do that, but would do better to help build...

Somalia: blighted by Islamists and US

In 2005, the USA scraped together an alliance of warlords which it hoped would rule Somalia from the capital, Mogadishu. Somalis despised the warlords, and the majority helped the Islamists of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) to oust them in 2006. The UIC offered peace to Mogadishu for the first time in 15 years, and established its rule in most of southern Somalia. An Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, sponsored by the USA, began in December 2006. It displaced more than a million people and killed close to 15,000 civilians. Eventually Ethiopia was compelled to withdraw the bulk of its troops...

Capitalism leaves people to starve

The average household of four in the USA’s top one per cent spends $3 million a year on luxuries. In famine-stricken Somalia, more than half the population of nine million live on less than $1 a day. Each one of those rich households in the USA, if it limited itself to necessities, could spare enough to double the income of almost one million Somalis. The richest one per cent in the USA — three million people — consume between them 70 times as much as the entire income (consumer spending, public services, investment, the lot) of 92 million people in Somalia and Ethiopia. The richest one per...

Agribusiness booms, millions starve

In Europe, the capitalist crisis means discomfort, stress, and humiliation for millions. In many parts of the world, it means outright starvation. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, “countries in the [Horn of Africa] are confronted with the failure of the short rains in late 2010 and negative trends that threaten the long rainy season in 2011... “The number of those requiring emergency assistance has grown from 6.3 million in early 2011 to 10 million today — a 40 percent increase — in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda (Karamoja region). The majority of the newly...

The hardest anti-colonial war

Outside the Law is Rachid Bouchareb’s second film to deal with the colonial relationship of France to his native Algeria. It focuses on the Front de Liberation Nationale’s (FLN) guerrilla war against France in Paris from the early 50s up to Algerian independence in 1962, as seen through the story of three brothers. The film sets the context in two scenes which show their family being evicted from their ancestral land on the orders of a French colonialist and the death of their father in the Sétif massacre, in 1945, after French police opened fire on peaceful Algerian nationalist demonstrators...

Ugandan vote on death penalty for gays deferred

The Ugandan parliament adjourned on 13 May, leaving homophobic legislation undebated. However, independent MP David Bahati pledged to re-introduce the bill after the elections. LGBT rights organisation AllOut call the lack of progression on the bill a “victory”, congratulating the signers of its 1.4 million strong petition which has put enough international public pressure on the Ugandan president to ensure the bill’s deferral. But the bill itself and the attacks against LGBT activists in Uganda in the wake of the bill are still terrifying. Although Bahati proposed withdrawing the clause that...

Swaziland: epitome of monarchy

King Mswati III of Swaziland and his entourage (he has 13 wives) are expected to be honoured guests at the Royal Wedding, and will stay in a hotel whose rooms cost over £400 a night. Back in Swaziland, demonstrations against the king’s autocratic rule by trade unionists and opposition activists have been broken up by police. The Kingdom of Swaziland is a landlocked largely-mountainous African state a little smaller than Wales, with a population of about a million people. A former British colony, it remains an absolute monarchy. Political parties have been banned since the suspension of the...

Civil war in Ivory Coast

The UN has intervened in civil war-stricken Ivory Coast as Laurent Gbagbo continues his attempt to cling onto power. In an election which the UN oversaw, Gbagbo was defeated by Alsanne Outtara but has refused to step down. As we went to press, forces loyal to Outtara were claiming to have overrun Gbagbo’s residence in Abidjan. UN and French helicopters had previously conducted airstrikes against Gbagbo’s arsenals. Nearly 500 people have been killed since the disputed election in November, with more than one million fleeing the country. Both Gbagbo and Outtara have historically whipped up...

Protests in Morocco

The ideologues of the Moroccan regime were convinced that Morocco would escape the wave of struggle which is sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. This pretence of Moroccan exceptionalism was based on the one hand on a broad spectrum of trade union, and political and youth organisations, which create an illusion of pluralism; and, on the other hand, on the King’s false announcements of “democratic opening-up” and political and social reforms. The struggle of the youth, organised around the “20 February Platform”, threw all of these calculations. It proved that the masses of Morocco, the...

Morocco: the wind blowing on the coals of revolt

The ideologues of the Moroccan regime were convinced that Morocco would escape the wave of struggle which is sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. This pretence of Moroccan exceptionalism was based on the one hand on a broad spectrum of trade union, and political and youth organisations, which create an illusion of pluralism; and on the other, on the King's false announcements of "democratic opening-up" and political and social reforms. The struggle of the youth, organised around the "20 February Platform" threw all of these calculations. It proved that the masses of Morocco, the workers...

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