Libya’s spectacular revolution has been disgraced by racism

by Richard Seymour, The Guardian

“This is a bad time to be a black man in Libya,” reported Alex Thomson on Channel 4 News on Sunday. Elsewhere, Kim Sengupta reported for the Independent on the 30 bodies lying decomposing in Tripoli. The majority of them, allegedly mercenaries for Muammar Gaddafi, were black. They had been killed at a makeshift hospital, some on stretchers, some in an ambulance. “Libyan people don’t like people with dark skins,” a militiaman explained in reference to the arrests of black men.

George Jackson – 40 year commemoration

Pambazuka

August 21st marks the 40th anniversary of the execution of George Lester Jackson. The Chicago- born Jackson would have celebrated his 70th birthday on September 23rd. Jackson was a prisoner who became an author, a member of the Black Panther Party, and co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family prison organization. He achieved global fame as one of the Soledad Brothers before being executed by prison guards in San Quentin Prison.

My Short Skirt

Femminst SA

 

My Short Skirt

From The Vagina Monologues

By Eve Ensler

S’bu Zikode’s Presentation at the Fanon Colloquium, Rhodes University July 9, 2011

by S’bu Zikode, Thinking Africa

The idea that shack dwellers can think and that Abahlali can sustain its autonomy has created a crisis. There is a price to be paid for such thinking, for such autonomy.

The university is slowly opening spaces for grassroots organizations and some of us have fought hard for a relationship of equality between grassroots organizations and the university.

Open Letter to COSATU Eastern Cape on the COSATU Civil Society Conference

19 August 2011

Dear comrades

We all know that there will be no solution to the escalating crisis of our society without an alliance between organised workers and the organizations of the unemployed, shack dwellers and the landless. Without unity between workers and the poor our society will continue its descent into authoritarianism and growing inequality.

South African food sovereignty campaigners move to occupy land

by Ronald Wesso, Pambazuka

Furious emerging farmers in the Kareeberg municipality in South Africa’s Northern Cape Province have decided to stop paying rent for the municipal owned land they are farming on. These farmers have been robbed and excluded from land ownership and access by colonial conquest, segregation and apartheid. Now South Africa’s protection of capitalist property and its neo-liberal state policies are keeping them landless still.

Wikileaks Haiti: The Aristide Files

Kim Ives and Ansel Herz, The Nation

US officials led a far-reaching international campaign aimed at keeping former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide exiled in South Africa, rendering him a virtual prisoner there for the last seven years, according to secret US State Department cables.