connecting

Scratching the surface: Pambazuka News and emancipatory politics

otabenga1 — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:44:23 -0600

Reposted from Pambazuka News October 8, 2008.

As he salutes the ground covered in Pambazuka’s first 400 issues, Jacques Depelchin argues the publication should continue its work as a tool for emancipatory politics in the next 400 and beyond. Drawing in particular on the example of Haiti, Depelchin stresses that new emancipatory politics are being generated all the time, but their potential must be actively harnessed if governmental indifference and hostility is not to overcome the promise of healing histories. read more »

The Profits of Famine: Southern Africa's Long Decade of Hunger

otabenga1 — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:28:42 -0600

In the first of two articles, OBA Executive Board member Raj Patel describes how IMF/World Bank policies, backed by the US, have led to a corporate stranglehold on the world food system, bringing malnutrition and famine to the countries of southern Africa. In the second, "Exploration on Human Rights," he covers the response of the international peasant federation, La Via Campesina, and other social movements, to these conditions and their call for food sovereignty. Patel explores these and other topics in greater detail in his recently published book, Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System". read more »

Pogroms: A Crisis of Citizenship

otabenga1 — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:48:21 -0600

Reposted from Abahlali baseMjondolo on June 21, 2008.

The industrial and mining towns on the Eastern outskirts of Johannesburg are unlovely places. They’re set on flat windswept plains amidst the dumps of sterile sand left over from old mines. In winter the wind bites, the sky is a very pale blue and it seems to be all coal braziers, starved dogs, faded strip malls, gun shops and rusting factories and mine headgear. All that seems new are the police cars and, round the corner from the Harry Gwala shack settlement, a double story facebrick strip club. read more »

For Blacks in France, Obama’s Rise Is Reason to Rejoice, and to Hope

otabenga1 — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:59:39 -0600

This came to me a few days after having visited the island of Réunion, a French département d'Outre-Mer in the Indian Ocean. Réunion is like Martinique and Guadeloupe, but also a bit different in terms of its history. Most of the information can be found by googling La Maison des Civilisations et de l'unité Réunionaise (MCUR). In the brochure I was given, the following words (by Paul Vergès, President of Réunion Island Regional Council, in 2007) capture in broad strokes what it is about In 2010 Réunion island will step into the 21st century by opening a unique place, the MCUR. read more »

Letter to the government of Brazil

otabenga1 — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:31:55 -0600

Letter to the government of Brazil concerning the safe return of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, by Mr. Eusi Kwayana, a distinguished elder from Guyana, known by many throughout the Caribbean region. He was central in bringing together Afro and Indo people in Guyana's independence struggle.

20 May 2008

HIS EXCELLENCY MR. ANTONIO DE AGUIAR PATRIOTA,
Brazilian Ambassador to the United States
3006 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 90008

HER EXCELLENCY, MS. THERESA MARIA M. QUINTELLA,
Consul General of Brazil
8484 Wilshire Blvd.
Beverly Hills, CA 90211

YOUR EXCELLENCY, read more »

Christmas in Hell

otabenga1 — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 11:11:42 -0600

In this lucid and eloquent article, John Maxwell traces the connections between European genocide in the West Indies and the devastation produced in Africa by the slave trade with modern day poverty, oppression, and degradation in both places. It is a powerful condemnation of the hypocrisy of western trumpeting of human rights. Maxwell writes a column called "Common Sense" for the Jamaican Observer where this was originally published. Reposted from Haiti-Cuba-Venezuela>Analysis .

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Christmas in Jamaica is bad enough. One good thing about Christmas Day is that it means the end of weeks of aural assaults by mindless rhymesters perverting songs of worship to paeans of praise for hucksters of all kinds, from shopkeepers to banks, from auto-parts dealers to purveyors of cheap, non-returnable, eminently breakable, non-biodegradable trash tricked out in plastic, tinsel and lead paint to lure innocent children and entrap their parents.

And, as a bonus, there are the sound-system parties, which allow you to dance in your own home to music played two miles away. read more »

NZ campaigner says no to SA award

otabenga1 — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:45:17 -0600

Reposted from IOL January 28, 2008.

Wellington - A veteran New Zealand anti-apartheid campaigner has rejected a nomination for a prestigious South African award for foreigners, saying he is dismayed over conditions in the country, local media reported on Monday.

John Minto, nominated for a Companion Of OR Tambo Award by a South African government official, asked for the nomination to be withdrawn, the Christchurch Press newspaper said. read more »

Open letter to the President of South Africa

otabenga1 — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:38:00 -0600

Dear John Minto--Thank you for your open letter regarding (and refusing) the nomination for the OR Tambo Award. Your voice against the continuing impoverishment and discrimination against those who suffered the most under apartheid is a salutary reminder that one should not rest till everyone does benefit from the promised transformation of South African society.--In solidarity, Jacques Depelchin

Reposted from Abahlali baseMjondolo January 28, 2008.

Tena koe Thabo Mbeki,

I understand a nomination has been put forward for me to receive a South African honour later this year, the Companions of O R Tambo Award, on behalf of HART and the anti-apartheid movement of New Zealand for our work campaigning to end apartheid in South Africa. read more »

Haitian inspiration: On the bicentenary of Haiti’s independence

otabenga1 — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:03:18 -0700

Originally posted in Radical Philosophy Issue 123, January/February 2004.

Two hundred years ago this month (January 2004), the French colony of Saint-Domingue on the island of Hispaniola became the independent nation of Haiti. Few transformations in world history have been more momentous, few required more sacri?ce or promised more hope. And few have been more thoroughly forgotten by those who would have us believe that this history has since come to a desirable end with the eclipse of struggles for socialism, national liberation and meaningful independence in the developing world. read more »

Background to Delft evictions

otabenga1 — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 13:11:26 -0700

Thank you, Martin, for this analysis which helps to put things in perspective. Is this really happening in South Africa? How come this kind of thing does not make the front page in international news? It could be a scene from Kenya, it could be a scene from one of the favellas in Latin America, it could be a scene straight out of pre-1994 South Africa. One does not even hear the usual voice of Desmond Tutu (but then one understands he is mending another trench with his own fundamentalist christian hierarchs). read more »