Africa

Will the revolutions in North Africa also bring down the "Socialist International"?

Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD), the leading party in the "Socialist International" for many decades, is talking about leaving the "International". Both Mubarak's NDP in Egypt, and Ben Ali's RCD in Tunisia, were until their downfall members of the "Socialist International". An article by SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel in the liberal Frankfurter Rundschau points out the obvious, that the Socialist International is irrelevant, that it is no longer a "voice for freedom", that many member parties should be expelled from it, that it is embarrassing that parties such as Mubarak's or Ben Ali's...

Morocco: the King must go!

Achil Guerrier, a member of the Courant Marxiste Revolutionnaire (CMR, Revolutionary Marxist Current) in Morocco, spoke to Solidarity Social-democrats and Stalinists and Maoists hope to see the King become a constitutional monarch. Revolutionary Marxists and the left-Maoists of “Voie Democratique” are for a socialist Morocco and for the departure of the King. Young people split along these lines are using the internet to organise demonstrations. We have so far avoided real debates on the level of politics, but organise joint demonstrations on the basis of social, political and economic demands...

Algeria: "link democratic and social demands"

President Bouteflika announced some liberalisation measures after riots over the price of food in January in which five people died. But protests have continued. A man tried to set himself alight during a protest outside Algeria’s Employment Ministry for “a decent job for every Algerian” and unemployment benefit equal to half the minimum wage. The protest was organised by a group called the National Committee for the Rights of the Unemployed. The government has banned a rally planned for Saturday 12 February called by the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD: no relation to the Tunisian RCD)...

Remember David Kato: fight for LGBT liberation

David Kato, one of the most prominent spokespeople for gay rights in Uganda, has been murdered. David was one of several LGBT individuals targeted by a recent campaign by Rolling Stone , a small Ugandan newspaper. The paper published the names and whereabouts of several people as part of an article which called for them to be hanged, and repeated the hoary homophobic slander that gays were infiltrating schools to “recruit” children. Kato and others successfully sued the paper, which has denied any connection between its campaign and Kato’s death. The murder comes against the backdrop of an...

Student struggles go global

Students all over Europe — and, indeed, the world — are planning a wave of high-level direct action as part of the Global Week of Action, called by the “International Students Movement”. This movement, while originating as the initiative of a small number of activists based in Germany, has used the internet and social networking sites to create an impressive worldwide network of contacts that have responded to its calls for international action for free education.

Workers of the world: Zimbabwe, Botswana, Hong Kong

Zimbabwe teachers plan strike; Botswana mineworkers seek reinstatement; migrant workers strike in Hong Kong. ZIMBABWE: The Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe has vowed to strike when school term begins on 27 January if the government does not increase its basic minimum salary, currently at US$2. The union is also protesting at appalling work conditions, and argue that schools should not open following the cholera outbreak in the country. Some parents’ have made charitable donations to teachers to keep them in work and the schools open. Union official Oswald Madziva said, “parents now want...

Self-determination for the Sahrawi people!

Following the 1884 Berlin conference where the big powers carved up much of Africa and distributed the parts among themselves, the Spanish state claimed a protectorate over a large part of what is now known as the Western Sahara. The French grabbed most of the rest of Morocco, together with a vast chunk of north West Africa. Later the Spanish extended and amalgamated areas to form the “Spanish Sahara”. The people that lived in the Spanish Sahara were largely nomadic Arab-Berber tribes speaking the Hassaniya dialect. They resisted Spanish rule. In 1957-8 there was a uprising encouraged by the...

Congo: Warlords fight for mining riches

On 16 November Congolese “rebel” leader Laurent Nkunda — self-declared protector of the minority Tutsi population in Congo — agreed to a ceasefire with Joseph Kabila’s government. This ends weeks of fighting in eastern Congo between Nkunda’s group, the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), and the central government army backed up by UN troops. 250,000 have fled their homes, to makeshift shelters and camps away from the fighting. They are now at risk of death from diseases such as cholera. This recent round of fighting is rooted in the historical and ongoing conflict between...

Kenya: thieves fall out

The December election was, by all accounts except the Kenyan government’s, rigged to ensure the “re-election” of president Mwai Kibaki. Since then Kenya has been plunged into ethnically-based violence. Many hundreds have been killed and many hundreds of thousands displaced — overwhelmingly from among the poor. The US, Britain and their allies saw Kenya as a relatively stable ally in the war on terror and a bulwark against Islamist threats from Somalia and Sudan. Now the threat to stability in East Africa is so great that the big capitalist powers, who at first in effect congratulated Kibaki on...

Algerian Trotskyists recover forces

From 5 to 7 September the first summer school of the PST [Socialist Workers’ Party of Algeria] took place in Algiers, with about 200 activists and sympathisers taking part, from 19 regions. One third were young people, one quarter women. The PST saw its forces and its activities collapse, like those of most left movements, during the terrible years of the armed struggle by the Islamists. Recently it has seen a revival, with meetings of several hundred people. More than 2000 people have joined this party, which proclaims itself in political solidarity with the LCR [of France] and the Fourth...

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