African countries are missing an opportunity to work closer together to boost trade and infrastructure
Egypt
Posted inGeneral
Africa is slowly losing the power of praise poetry
The oral tradition, which has numerous functions in society, needs to be preserved for future generations
Posted inNews/Politics
Egypt: Time to end the diplomatic farce
Egypt’s regime is at it again. Having stuffed its notorious prisons with political dissenters and wantonly murdered hundreds of protesters, the military-backed government has issued an ultimatum to civil-society organisations. They must register under a regressive, Hosni Mubarak-era NGO law, which empowers officials to weed out civil society organisations deemed critical of state policy — […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Internal conflicts the new norm of 21st century
We have entered a time where clashes within nations have eclipsed clashes between nations. The mass street demonstrations sweeping across the globe have pitted governments against their people. Even in democracies the people are distrustful of their own governments as many are more interested in acquiring and then maintaining power than in the well-being of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Egypt needs a Mandela
The tumultuous tides of human protesters on the streets, bridges and squares of Cairo and Istanbul, speak of frustration with the world as it is and a yearning for a better life. A clear and precise vision of that better life as articulated in the Freedom Charter by our visionary Nelson Mandela is what contributed […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Egypt, it is a military coup
The conventional wisdom, regarding the Middle East, has always been that a group of democracies living side by side would usher in a new era of peace and co-operation in the region. In tandem with this we must have regard to the stated quest of, primarily, western countries in locating the moderate majority of Muslims […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Egypt: How not to do a political transition
You’ve been elected in your country’s first democratic election. Well done. That’s the easy bit done. Now you need to actually start governing. That, as Morsi found out in Egypt, is the difficult bit. Reasons abound for the overthrow of the Morsi government in Egypt. I want to focus on two issues: inclusive leadership and […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Have we forgotten Mohamed Bouazizi?
Two years ago last Friday, a young man from Tunisia named Mohamed Bouazizi died of burn wounds after literally igniting what the world has come to know as the Arab Spring. Bouazizi, a fruit and vegetable vendor immolated himself after suffering humiliation at the hands of a police officer who confiscated his goods, ostensibly because […]
Posted inMedia
The revolution will not be retweeted. RT this if you agree
Azza is an Egyptian media professional and blogger I met in Berlin this year, in early spring. As clunky as it may be, more so to point it out, I mention the season for its symbolism. Spring is a time of renewal. In the spring young shoots sprout from where old, frost-bitten branches hang and […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
The advent of “democracy” in Egypt
Egypt’s presidential elections this month have been accompanied by the expected media fanfare in Europe and the United States. News outlets are awash with pictures of ink-stained fingers, photographs of people standing in snaking queues to vote through the heat of the day, and headlines hailing the elections as a historic “victory for democracy”. If these representations […]
Posted inGeneral
Alain Badiou, the “event”, and political subjectivity
Alain Badiou, whose work is, as far as I can tell, not widely known in the English-speaking world – where Peter Hallward has done a lot to compensate for this lack – is a contemporary thinker who has done much to refine the philosophical understanding of the human subject. As Hallward observes (in the Translator’s […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Will the real pharaoh please stand up
The resignation of Egypt’s cabinet this week shows the paralysing complexities surrounding the process of transition to democracy in post-revolution societies in the Arab world. Only in Tunisia, the country that ushered in this huge wave of change in North Africa, has the transition to democracy been relatively smooth, albeit accompanied by some challenges. It’s […]