5.06.08 land reforms and land take-overs

Summary:

Colleagues of mine in Zimbabwe were jailed and tortured by the Mugabe administration, but I was expected by pro-Mugabe activists in the USA to say nothing, and indeed, to deny everything.

Summary:

The Botswanan Supreme Court ruled that their eviction by the government was "unconstitutional." Yet repression continues.

Summary:

At the World Social Forum (WSF) in Nairobi, Kenya, African civil society rejected the Rockefeller and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations' $150 million Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa -- AGRA. The Green Revolution consisted of converting cropland to "high-yield" seeds which need to be purchased each season, and which require intensive fertilizer and pesticide use.

The creators of AGRA promise to bring benefits to the African continent's 180 million impoverished farmers who, they claim, have until now been bypassed by the first Green Revolution.

Summary:

Grassroots International has developed a program of grantmaking that is designed to provide critical support to the most exciting social change organizations in the global south, particularly rural movements that are struggling for the right to food, land and water. Some of these movements began as confederations of cooperatives, while others originated as movements that created cooperatives in order to organize production...