Ota Benga Alliance For Peace, Healing and Dignity

Reading about what has happened at Kennedy Road Settlement in Durban makes me wonder. More like wondering and wandering from society to society, from places in history and geography. Has capitalism become the greatest laundering scheme, the greatest organized gang?  read more »

Dearest Friends,

Like many people in South Africa and around the world, I am still stunned by what has been done to the people living at the Kennedy Road Settlement in Durban.

From 2005, AbM seems to have managed to overcome many obstacles, but, or so it seems, it has not been able (yet) to overcome the biggest one, namely appearing to be giving a lesson in emancipatory politics to the ANC.  read more »

Dearest Friends,  read more »

Dearest Friends,

Warmest greetings to all.

In times like these you must be like the person on a not well traveled road who has had a serious breakdown and is wondering when help will appear. Changes in the wind sound like some car/hope in the distance.  read more »

Dear Friends, Foes and all those in between,

Before May 2008, we only knew of Abahlalibase Mjondolo. (AbM), then
in May 2008, we met members of Abahalalibase Mjondolo, at the Kennedy Road Settlement. Each one spoke, expressing in various ways the meaning of emancipatory politics; and then, the next day, we met again with S’bu Zikode, the President of AbM.

After he described the situation in which they were living, we asked what was the way out. “Healing” he responded.  read more »

A poem linking Israel's December 2008 to January 2009 siege of Gaza to Haiti.

First , not quite, but we have to start somewhere,
There were the Arawaks, the Caribs and the Amerindians
Then their land became known as Hispaniola,
As Saint Domingue, as the economic jewel
Of French overseas possessions
Thanks to Africans kidnapped, chained, shipped
Processed, codified, stamped as property
While always knowing they belonged
To no one but humanity
And through fidelity to humanity
Turned Saint Domingue into Haiti
Fraternity, equality and liberty
Their only motto  read more »

Jacques Depelchin is CAPES Fellow (2007-9) (Brasil) and Co-founder of Ota Benga Alliance for Peace, Healing and Dignity (www.otabenga.org). This is a response to an article in the March 2009 issue of Foreign Policy, “There Is No Congo,” written by Jeffrey Herbst (Provost of Miami University in Ohio) and Greg Mills (Director of the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation).[2]  read more »

Pour celles et ceux qui, envers et contre tout
Luttent dans un temps immortel que
Vivent les immortelles pulsions de l’humanité
Libérée des amarres séculaires visiblement
Et invisiblement ancrées dans l’esclavage
Dans une abolition avortée par la colonisation
Sous les couleurs de la civilisation
Préparant, le savions-nous,
Une triomphante globalisation  read more »

Reposted from Pambazuka News December 4, 2008. Jacques Depelchin is co-founder and Executive Director of the Ota Benga Alliance. An earlier version of the article was posted on this website as "The Food Crisis Is Not Just About Food."
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In an article exploring the history of socio-economic inequality, Jacques Depelchin calls for an interpretation of the current food crisis over the historical longue durée. As a direct consequence of an entrenched, centuries-old capitalist system, the author argues, the market as a ‘modernising’ force has consistently enriched the lives of a few while impoverishing a poor majority. Understanding the food crisis, Depelchin contends, rests first and foremost on re-considering humanity’s relationship to nature and championing historical narratives true to the voices and experiences of the global poorest of the poor.
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As events unfold in DRC, the usual questions are being asked: who is responsible for the current war within the war, which never really ended in 2003, and its ensuing humanitarian crisis? In the pages of one of the most respected dailies of Kinshasa (Le Potentiel), well-known philosophers have offered conflicting ways of looking at, and analyzing, the conflict.  read more »