Pambazuka News 778: Saluting the greatest: Muhammad Ali and Black Power
 Muhammad said he was pleased to come to Ghana - from an America where black people had to struggle for their ordinary human rights - to find back people running their whole country “beautifully”. Americans, he said, were being misinformed that Africans were eating each other and climbing up and down trees.
 When Cassius Clay stood up in Miami, Florida, and said my name is Muhammad Ali, he was in fact the greatest boxer and African patriot. When he stood up in front of a federal courthouse in Houston, Texas, and said “my fight is right here with you,” that was the Ali of the people. That was the greatest. But he, too, had his contradictions.
 Muhammad Ali lost his boxing title, and almost lost five years of his life to prison, for refusing to fight in the racist and imperialist war waged on Vietnam. If one truly admires Ali for speaking out against the war on Vietnam, then, by principle, one should vehemently oppose today’s imperialist wars of aggression.
The boxing champion won many battles in and outside the ring during the 1960s and 1970s. Ali’s life illustrates the role of African Americans in sports and its relationship to the broader struggle against national oppression.
 His often weightless songs came in cascades and cemented his reputation while he avoided opening his mouth so as not to put his foot in it. The absence of substance was disguised and presented as something else but in order to get to it, you had to wade through an endless litter of frilly things and hesitant, incoherent silences and arrogant attitudes. This is indeed Prince’s most remarkable achievement.
 The BPP’s revolutionary legacy offers many useful lessons in organizing work to create a just and emancipated world. But radical organizations and organizers should be wary of the BPP’s top-down leadership approach. Moreover, the party was ill-advised in believing that the lumpen, especially the criminal elements, could serve as a revolutionary force.
 Ten years after acquiring the Chergui gas concession in Kerkennah through a corrupt deal, and five years after Tunisia’s uprising for bread, freedom and social justice, the British oil and gas company Petrofac faces growing discontent on the island. In the first two weeks of April, Kerkennah was the scene of violent police repression of protests against the oil company.
Mozambique, long touted as an African “success story”, is sinking under debt. International lenders and donors have been angered by revelations of at least $2.3 billion in secret loans taken in 2013-4. Inflation is rising and so is the cost of living. The government is clamping down on critics speaking up about the crisis. The future looks uncertain.
He took the stand that he did, because he believed he was doing ‘the right thing’ for his community, his family and the government he had helped put in parliament. Tragically, today the state has reneged on their side of the bargain and failed to ‘do the right thing’ for Philani.
 A family in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa has been battling with the African Union over a piece of property in the past five years. But the family’s predicament is only a small part of a wider struggle under a soulless system that has little regard for the lives of its people.
African Studies remains a colonised space. While the early writings about Africa are based on colonial expeditions, missionary exploits and anthropological ethnographies, contemporary scholarship is dominated by non-Africans who have positioned themselves as the authoritative voices in a 21st century scramble for influence, as if Africa has no intellectuals or knowledge production of its own.
 The joint university experiment, by pooling resources within the same sub-region and drawing on the different strengths of the three member colleges and their respective host countries, represents an early and instructive model of South-South cooperation.
 DreamAfrica is a platform through which the old tradition of African storytelling is preserved and the telling of new stories is facilitated. It is also a common entertainment and educational platform in the household and school.
 It is not just the Biafrans. There are widespread perceptions among virtually all Nigerian groups that they are marginalised and they seek redress in a new Nigeria. The reason for this is the supplanting of federalism with a Jacobin unitary state. The erosion of multiple poles of political power by military dictators and subsequently by an all-powerful presidency has exacerbated the spectre of the fear of domination everywhere in the country.
 The government and policy-makers in Israel can help stop the ongoing genocide of the Igbo by boycotting all dealings with the Nigerian government. For a state like Israel to continue doing business with a genocidal state like Nigeria is not any different from sponsorship of state terrorism.
The media in all its diversity has an important role to play in fighting female genital cutting/mutilation. Opening public dialogue about FGM/C will contribute in raising awareness among people. Through the media it is possible to address world leaders to take a stand and make resolutions to ban FGM/C and engage in empowering and educating generations to say no to this form of abuse.
 In November 2016 we will launch Amnesty’s second Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the subject of refugee and migrant rights to educate and empower audiences in the 25 to 35 age range to take action on the human rights issues associated with Amnesty’s Global Campaign on People on the Move . The 3-4 week course, requiring 2-3 hours of participants’ time per week, will be launched in November in Spanish, French and English.
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Henry Makori and Tidiane Kasse - Editors, Pambazuka News
Yves Niyiragira - Executive Director, Fahamu
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