Food Rebellions: Mozambicans Know Which Way the Wind Blows

by Raj Patel, The Observer

It has been a summer of record temperatures – Japan had its hottest summer on record.[1] Same with South Florida and New York.[2] Meanwhile, Pakistan and Niger are flooded, and the Eastern US is mopping up after Hurricane Earl. None of these individual events can definitively be attributed to global warming, as any climatologist will tell you. But to see how climate change will play out in the twenty-first century, you needn’t look to the Met Office. Look instead to the deaths and burning tyres in Mozambique’s ‘food riots’ to see what happens when extreme natural phenomena interact with our unjust social and economic systems.

A literary hibiscus

Kamau Mutunga, Saturday Nation

She is widely regarded as one of Africa’s brightest literary stars of the past decade. But before her filament shone, the works of Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie almost never saw the light of day.

What a good turn of events that, today, the literary daughter of Chinua Achebe is an award-winning novelist, an accomplished author whom Achebe lauds as ‘a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers… she came almost fully made’!

Commercialisation is killing Makerere University

Mahmood Mamdani interviewed by Moses Mulondo in Pambazuka

MOSES MULONDO: Why have you chosen to return to Uganda?

MAHMOOD MAMDANI: In 2001 I had a meeting with President Yoweri Museveni. East African Affairs Minister Eriya Kategaya and the late James Wapakhabulo were also present. We were discussing regional issues, but at the end of the meeting I expressed concern about declining standards at Makerere University.

Swaziland: Small country, big struggle

Mike Marqusee, Anarkismo

Swaziland is a small country with a big problem. The 1.3 million inhabitants of the land-locked southern African kingdom live under the thumb of one of the world’s last absolute monarchies, a venal and repressive regime whose plunder of the country is systematic and comprehensive.