Geography Archives: Zimbabwe

  Paul Nugent.  Africa since Independence: A Comparative History. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.  xix + 620 pp.  $99.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-333-68272-2; $35.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-333-68273-9. This is a masterful work of usable academic history.  By sharply delineating diverse trends in scores of countries, it applies expert analysis to sub-Saharan Africa, “the continent which has been […]

  Humanism and Human Rights Who or what is the ‘human’ of human rights and the ‘humanity’ of humanitarianism?  The question sounds naïve, silly even.  Yet, important philosophical and ontological questions are involved.  If rights are given to beings on account of their humanity, ‘human’ nature with its needs, characteristics and desires is the normative […]

  Africa has historically been less of a priority to U.S. foreign policy planners than other regions, such as the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.  This was certainly the case when George W. Bush took office in 2001.  But during the course of his tenure, “Africa’s position in the U.S. strategic spectrum . […]

Introduction Over the last two months, cholera has broken out in a number of provinces in South Africa.  Thousands of people have been infected and over fifty people have already died.1  Initially, a number of politicians, including parliamentarians from the right-wing Democratic Alliance (DA), tried to blame Zimbabweans — who were fleeing the economic meltdown, […]

  After a decade of political polarization and international standoff, the debate on Zimbabwe has finally been opened up to a wider reading public, thanks to Mahmood Mamdani’s “Lessons of Zimbabwe,” appearing in the London Review of Books (04/12/2008).  Renowned scholars, within and without Africa, have broken their silence and have taken public positions.  The […]

COSATU and PSC launch Week of Action for Palestine supported by YCL and other progressive organisations In a historic development for South Africa, South African dock workers have announced their determination not to offload a ship from Israel that is scheduled to dock in Durban on Sunday, 8 February 2009.  This follows the decision by […]

Amid the economic crisis in Zimbabwe, the agricultural sector continues to struggle.  Although the plunge in agricultural output over the last few years has often been commented on in the Western media, little or no attention is paid to the complex factors contributing to that decline.  Instead, matters are reduced to a simple generalization.  It […]

  “Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we […]

  William Minter, Gail Hovey, and Charles Cobb, Jr., eds.  No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950-2000.   Trenton: Africa World Press, 2008. xvii + 248 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index.  $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-59221-575-1. This is a remarkable and often insightful collection of essays and reflections, many of […]

The past week has been a wild roller-coaster ride in and out of Southern African ruling-party politics, down the troughs of world capitalism, and up the peaks of radical social activism.  Glancing around the region and world from those peaks, we can see quite a way further than usual. Looking first to South Africa, Saturday’s […]

Negotiations between the MDC and ZANU-PF over the political future of Zimbabwe have reached a zenith in the past few weeks.  It now seems almost inevitable that some sort of deal will be attained by the political masters of the MDC and ZANU and that power sharing will become a reality.  The mediator in the […]

Cedric Johnson.  Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics.   University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Cedric Johnson‘s Revolutionaries to Race Leaders traces the ideological cooptation of one of the twentieth century’s most vibrant social movements.  The Black Nationalist resurgence of the 1960s and 1970s demanded nothing short of self-determination, […]

Briefly. . . 15 July 2008 Broad Zimbabwean Civil Society adopted Declaration calling for establishment of transitional authority, drafting of a new peopled-driven constitution and subsequent democratic elections DECLARATION BY  ZIMBABWEAN CIVIL SOCIETY REGARDING A TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY IN ZIMBABWE following the “Whither Zimbabwe: National Civil Society Consultative Conference” We, civil society organizations acting on […]

July 13, 2008 It is hard to believe that I am in my fifth week of working and living in South Africa.  I am doing really well in acclimating to new work, new home, and new challenges. I moved into a small place in a seaside town called Gonubie, just outside of East London.  It […]

A telling remark about US imperialism’s double standards was uttered by Clinton-era deputy treasury secretary Stuart Eizenstat, who a decade ago was the driver of reparations claims against pro-Nazi corporations, assisting plaintiffs to gain $8 billion from European banks and corporations which ripped off Holocaust victims’ funds or which were 1930s beneficiaries of slave labor […]

  In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided-and-conquered.  Turns in the class struggle might have surprised Walter Rodney, the political economist whose 1972 classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa provided detailed critiques of corporate looting. […]

In March 2008, the President of the African National Congress of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, led a high-level delegation of South African parliamentarians to the site of the victory of the forces of liberation at Cuito Cuanavale in Angola.  This visit was linked to the numerous ceremonies in Angola to commemorate the victory of Angola, […]

Introduction In August and September of 1974, people across the length and breadth of South Africa celebrated the coming independence of Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique.  People like Mamphela Rampele led massive rallies honoring the success of the liberation movements in these countries.  There was even spontaneous dancing in the streets, and the air was filled […]

  19 May 2008: Friends, this is simply an account of what I saw and experienced in a twenty four period.  It might be incomplete.  It is not an analytical piece as such, but I hope a small step towards trying to understand what had taken place in this city, in this country that I […]

We, South Africans who faced the might of unjust and brutal apartheid machinery in South Africa and fought against it with all our strength, with the objective to live in a just, democratic society, refuse today to celebrate the existence of an Apartheid state in the Middle East.  While Israel and its apologists around the […]