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Braving the high seas to Europe and North America – the many killers of...

Yusuf Serunkuma writes that a migrant worker dies many times, and has many killers. They die in their home countries - where they are structurally, violently uprooted -  they then die on the journeys to either Europe or the Middle East and then, they finally die in dehumanising working conditions if they ever arrive. Serunkuma exposes the hypocrisy, racism and murder at the heart of the global north.  

Where are you really from?

Benjamin Maiangwa asks: Has white supremacy permeated every place on earth and created a world view that favours whiteness so that the question – where are you really from? - is asked to determine your state of being? Being African, Maiangwa argues, you are always idenitifed as the exotic, noble, disease-infected, and chronically misgoverned “other” -  traits or images that outsiders confer on the continent.

“The international forces against Sankara were too much” – Victoria Brittain in conversation with...

Radical journalist Victoria Brittain discusses the life of Thomas Sankara with Brian J. Peterson. Peterson has written a biography which recounts in detail the life, politics and assasination of the Burkinabé revolutionary. The book sheds new light on the responsibility for Sankara’s murder. Brittain and Peterson talk about his work, and the project of transforming Burkina Faso in the 1980s.

‘Everybody to the Rice Harvest!’ – a speech by Samora Machel in June 1978

On 13 June 1978, President Samora Machel spoke at a large popular rally in a communal village in the Limpopo valley. Mozambique had been independent for less than three years, after a brutal ten-year war against the Portuguese colonial power, led by Frelimo. The party was now in the middle of a fierce struggle over agricultural policy. Colin Darch and David Hedges introduce the speech which is included in their forthcoming collection.

Whites and democracy in South Africa

Before 1994 there was enormous speculation that white intransigence in South Africa would lead to a racial war. In his new book, Roger Southall finds that by the mid-1980s most whites saw the writing on the wall. Even so, he argues, the economic system which had maintained white dominance was left more or less intact.

Imperialism and GMOs in Kenya: A perspective from social movements

Noosim Naimasiah interviews Irene Asuwa and Cidi Otieno about food sovereignty, ecologically appropriate production, distribution and consumption, social-economic justice, and local food systems in Kenya. They also discuss the role of social movements in raising popular consciousness and defending the rights of Kenya’s popular classes.

Black Lives Matter in the middle of the Atlantic

The Black Lives Matter movement will be recorded in history as one of the most explosive recent political events. Hundreds of thousands of people across the world have been on the streets, angry, radicalised and protesting to achieve change. Elizabeth Adofo writes how the movement has resonated in every part of the world and its reverberations were felt in Bermuda – a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic.

Let a hundred socialist flowers bloom: a conversation with Issa Shivji

In this extensive interview, socialist activist and writer Issa Shivji discusses the peasantry, capitalist development and socialism. In a discussion with Freedom Mazwi he argues that those who predicted the end of history, have been proven woefully wrong. Capitalism and the planet are in deep crisis. For the first time in decades people in both the South and the North are openly using the ideas and slogans of socialism – even if they have divergent ideas. Shivji argues, we must let a hundred socialist flowers bloom.

African Socialism in Tanzania: Karim Hirji’s The Travails of a Tanzanian Teacher

Zeyad El Nabolsy writes about a fascinating first-hand account of how Tanzanian Marxists interpreted and criticized economic, social, cultural, and political developments in the country in the 1960s and 1970s. El Nabolsy celebrates Karim F. Hirji’s memoir, The Travails of a Tanzanian Teacher which provides a vital and critical Marxist account of Julius Nyerere’s reforms.

On Walter Rodney’s Legacy: when anger and organising took over

ROAPE’s Chinedu Chukwudinma speaks to Anne Braithwaite about Walter Rodney’s assassination, and the activism of the Working People’s Alliance-Support Group in the UK. As a founding member of the group, Braithwaite explains that though Rodney was betrayed, then assassinated, his body destroyed and concerted efforts made to tarnish his record, people around the world continue to develop and build on his immense legacy.