Uganda is ready for change

by Sokari Ekine, Pambazuka

Uprisings continue across the continent, with Uganda being the latest country where citizens have taken to the streets in protest against rising food and energy prices. The Ugandan protests have been organised by Action for Change in a ‘Walk to Work’ campaign, which the majority of media are reporting is led by long-time opposition leader, Kizza Besigye who has since fled the country. However a number of bloggers claim the protests are not led by Besigye.

SA, we cannot say we are free

Ayanda Kota, Mail & Guardian

On April 27 1994 the people of this country stood in long queues for many hours, waiting to cast their vote for the first time. In some parts of the country the weather was hostile, freezing cold, while in other parts it was scorching hot.

Achille Mbembe – Democracy and the Ethics of Mutuality: Notes from the South African Experiment

Stellenbosch Literary Project

Report by Lucy Graham, Additional reporting by Leon de Kock

In his first public seminar in Stellenbosch as a professor in Stellenbosch University’s Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Achille Mbembe, possibly the most eminent political philosopher working South Africa right now, offered some speculations on South African democracy, and specifically on the path of South Africa “from the fort to the court”.

‘Walk to work’ and lessons of Soweto and Tahrir Square

Mahmood Mamdani, Pambazuka

In this presentation at the Rotary International District Conference in Munyonyo, Mahmood Mamdani links events in Tahrir Square to the 1976 Soweto uprisings in South Africa. Unity in struggle is one of the common factors. This is a the full text of the speech.

Orientalising the Egyptian Revolution

Rabab El-Mahadi, Jadaliyya

Since the beginning of the Egyptian uprising in January 25^th a new grand-narrative about this so-called “revolution” and more broadly the Arab world is being constructed by the media (international and local), academics, politicians, and the local elite.[1]

Why May Day Matters: History with Anarchist Roots

by Sian Byrne, Warren McGregor and Lucien van der Walt, Zabalaza

May Day or international workers day started as a global general strike to commemorate five anarchist labour organisers executed in the United States in 1887. Mounting the scaffold, August Spies declared: ‘if you think that by hanging us, you can stamp out the labor movement – the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil and live in want and misery –the wage slaves – expect salvation – if this is your opinion, then hang us!

Who will reshape the Arab world: its people, or the US?

Tariq Ali, The Guardian

The patchwork political landscape of the Arab world – the client monarchies, degenerated nationalist dictatorships and the imperial petrol stations known as the Gulf states – was the outcome of an intensive experience of Anglo-French colonialism. This was followed after the second world war by a complex process of imperial transition to the United States. The result was a radical anticolonial Arab nationalism and Zionist expansionism within the wider framework of the cold war.

SA’s poor must shun the polls

by Andile Mngxitama, Mail & Guardian

Voting is nothing more than an empty ritual used to disguise the deep crisis our democracy is in. Elite commentators and analysts such as Dr Mamphela Ramphele, sensing the oncoming danger, have now elevated voting to a sacred duty.