Northern Africa is not the only part of Africa where uprisings are taking place. In countries like Swaziland, Gabon, Cameroon, Djibouti, and Burkina Faso we’ve seen massive student uprisings and worker demonstrations brutally suppressed in most cases. Editor-in-chief of Pambazuka News Firoze Manji talks to the Real News Network about what’s happening in Southern Africa.

Since the beginning of the Ivorian crisis, everything and almost its opposite has been said. Almost all Westerners support Mr Ouattara whom they call “elected President”, while the Africans support Gbagbo, the out-going president whom they designate the “reelected President”. Beyond partisan choices for one or the other president, elected or reelected, it is interesting to note that there is another battle, a remote one, which is being played between China and the West in Ivory Coast. Through direct and indirect military support.

The West defends an old idea of Africa, in which it controls everything by its henchmen and willingly accommodates itself with the misery of the masses.

Eritrea, the troubled Red Sea state, is playing a complex, dangerous and destructive game that involves shady international politics, greedy industrialists and gross human rights violations.

Recent years, and now 2010, are seen as years of great natural disasters that also in a great way unify good people all over the world that are rushing to aid those who are suffering. That occasional need involves practically all the continents including Africa. But, in recent years, we need to pay attention also to another type of aid that is being supplied in abundance. This one, however, is actually greatly capable of harming people; it is the “weapon aid”.