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The outstanding documentary Darwin's Nightmare examines how global growth functions in Mwanza, Tanzania, an abjectly impoverished city on Lake Victoria whose inhabitants are afflicted with AIDS, environmental ruination, and hunger amidst the profitable exportation of local fish to the affluent Western European market. Capitalism is, after all, not designed to feed people but to make money.

this is not limited to the public sector. In the private sector, tribalism promotes the creation of self-sustaining and mutually supportive bubbles based on ethnicity. During the hiring process, tribalist bosses will preference people from their own social grouping for top jobs. In workplace disputes, they will not be impartial but will often favour their tribal comrade. During business deals, especially within corporates and multinationals, ethnic affiliation becomes a big factor in building trust between two parties and often in concluding mutually beneficial deals.

It’s shocking that in this day and age – in the so-called “new” South Africa – there are few public figures willing to call the actions and voting patterns of Afrikaans- and English-speaking white South Africans for what they are: narrow-minded tribalism.

The real tribalists (and racists) who Mbeki failed to mention are white South Africans, who effectively come together to vote as a bloc for only two political parties: the white-led Democratic Alliance and the smaller white nationalist Freedom Front Plus.

the real reason I suspect Tandon is so vociferous is the inconvenience Bond’s analysis creates for his faux pan-Africanism, for the delusion that local elites are in some way spearheading an indigenous Southern anti-imperialism.

Sobukwe was arrested in Soweto, Johannesburg, in 1960 and subsequently imprisoned for organising and leading the March 21, 1960 anti-pass march. It was a peaceful protest against an indentification card that was mandatory for Africans under the apartheid regime. The march culminated in the settler-colonial regime massacre of people at Sharpeville and Langa townships of present-day Gauteng and Western Cape respectively. While wee may probably never be able to hear Sobukwe’s voice again because the settler-colonial regime ensured he remains silent beyond his grave by banning him and destroying the audio material containing his voice, his ideas remain. We wish we could hear him talk.

there had to be an African democratic government

there had to be rapid extension of industrial development to help, among other things, alleviate pressure on the land as well as ensure full development of the human personality in a socialist context.

It is my submission that regarding presidential terms limit, under Rwanda’s constitution, Kagame has only two options: either to abide by the Article 101 provision that ‘Under no circumstances shall a person hold the office of President of the Republic for more than two terms’, or overthrow the constitution and his government, which would allow him to write a new constitution.

Consider the biases in academic reward and promotion. Teaching is undervalued. Peer-reviewed publication is rewarded, particularly if it appears in high-ranking journals that prefer certain methodologies and questions. Those methods are typically quantitative. They build beautiful castles in the air or palaces on foundations of sand.

Supervisors in foreign universities rarely have the subject matter expertise, so they tend to guide students towards more theoretical approaches. Examiners and peer reviewers likewise reward and reinforce their own disciplinary biases. On the other hand, it is common to see junior Western scholars doing rather uninteresting quantitative studies or superficial case studies. Despite their shortcomings these studies are published. These scholars, then, become the group that undertakes peer review.

To become an academic in a Western university she or he may be obliged to unlearn important knowledge, and learn frameworks and skills that are actually irrelevant to the situation at hand but are necessary for being considered a professional academic.

Another one would be to require that a president is not electable unless he or she has a minimum of multi-regional support.  It is not enough that a head of state has a majority of the people of his or her side; that majority must also be distributed nationally.  Perhaps the president should demonstrate a strong support in at least three regions out of Ethiopia’s current nine regions

There is also the novel concept of electoral polygamy which in principle dis-ethnicises politics and creates strong ethnic checks and balances.  It requires that every member of the house of representative have two constituencies – one primary which may be his or her own ethnic group and the other constituency distant from his or her own roots.