Africa

About Lula's statements on Gaza

This article was first published in French by Arguments pour La Lutte Sociale (Arguments for Social Struggle), here . This translation is abridged and lightly edited. —— At the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Brazilian President Lula said: “What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has not happened at any other time in history. In fact, it has already happened: when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.” It’s important for left-wing activists who want to re-establish a genuine internationalism based on truth and not supporting any geopolitical camp, to give some arguments...

Defeat Rwanda scheme, win asylum rights

The Tory government’s “Safety of Rwanda” Bill comes back to the Commons for further debate and a vote on 16-17 January. Tory ultras are pressing to sharpen it, and saying they will vote against if their amendments fall; other Tories dislike the Bill’s conflict with international law even as it is. The Bill declares: “Every decision-maker must conclusively treat the Republic of Rwanda as a safe country... The provisions of this Act apply notwithstanding the relevant provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998... It is for a Minister of the Crown... to decide whether the United Kingdom will comply...

Keeping up with the Star

During Solidarity’s August hiatus, your columnist has dutifully kept reading the Morning Star

War and poverty in Ethiopia

Ethiopia has a population of 126mn and is the second most populous state in Africa, behind Nigeria

AI’s hidden moderators unionise

On International Workers’ Day, 150 workers, whose labour underpins the AI content moderation systems for some of tech’s biggest players, met in Nairobi to form Africa’s first content moderators’ union. The decision by the workers, employed by third parties variously for Meta, Tiktok, Bytedance and OpenAi, is the culmination of a struggle beginning in 2019 after Daniel Motaung, then working for Sama and contracted to Facebook, was fired for his attempts at unionising the workforce. Motaung, who travelled from South Africa, said: “I never thought, when I started the Alliance in 2019, we would be...

Monkeypox: a history of neglect

Outside of its endemic regions in Central and West Africa, confirmed monkeypox rates continue to rise to tens of thousands of people globally, six of whom have died: two in Spain, one each in India, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru; none in the UK. Monkeypox has long been infecting and killing people within Africa, with some variants killing up to 10% of those infected. Over one hundred people in Africa have been killed in this wave, in 2022, alone. It is carried by rodents — not monkeys! — and historically many infections were directly from these rodents: it did not spread far between humans. The...

Stop the Rwanda scheme, oppose new Tory Bill

The government is not actually proposing to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Court of Human Rights that arbitrates it; but it is proposing to seriously curb the UK’s commitment to these institutions. This is yet another front of the accelerated push, from 2019, to shift the UK in the direction of an authoritarian nationalist regime. The labour movement must fight to stop it, and develop clear proposals to reverse it if it goes through. The Rwanda deportation policy, greenlighted by UK courts but shredded by determined campaigning before it was...

War in Ukraine means hunger in Africa

The implications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine for world food could be even more worrying than for fuel markets. Ukraine contains some of the richest soils on earth and has for centuries been a significant exporter of food — its grains fed ancient Greek city states, the Roman and Ottoman Empires. The 18th and 19th centuries saw food become a truly globally traded commodity, with Britain pioneering free trade policies which saw vast new tracts of the Americas and Australasia cultivated for export. The major industrialising European nations followed Britain to become net importers of food...

Stop Tory offshore asylum ploy

Refugees and asylum-seekers hold up banners during a protest at the Manus Island immigration detention centre in Papua New Guinea On 13 April, the government announced a raft of anti-refugee measures, including a deal to remove many asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda. It is even worse than a plan to outsource processing of refugees to offshore detention camps. It will deport them to Rwanda to claim asylum there, allowing them no possibility of settling in Britain. Other announcements include putting operations relating to small refugee boats in the Channel under military command, and a new...

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