I’ve just watched this amazing video of Egypt’s 25 January Day of Anger protests. In the face of an oncoming water cannon one man turns and stands before it, blocking the spray and inspiring others to also stand up to it.

If I got rid of my demons I’d lose my angels
- Tennessee Williams

I’m so wishing I was young enough to do this:

The International Youth Initiative Program

How do you want to change the world?

One year of making sense. A course in how to bring your own initiative into being.

YIP (The International Youth Initiative Program) is a one-year social entrepreneurship training for international youth ages 18 to 25.

The year combines practical work with theoretical content designed to develop your skills in leadership, facilitation and self-awareness.

Courses with international experts, innovators and world changers give you an overview of current global issues, challenges we face in society and areas where we must take an active role to create a better future.

Learn by doing – Engage with the local community in practical projects and put your new skills and theories to test.

Four-week International Internship – Experience new cultures and ways of working at projects or organization exploring issues of sustainability.

Location: Jarna Sweden – Known for initiative and innovative sustainability.

Don’t wait to take the next step in creating your future! The next YIP year begins August 2011 and ends June 2012. Application is open from January to June 2011. (Acceptance dates in March and June.)

Find out more

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. He was only 35 when he died, but in his comparatively short life, he managed not simply to help what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo gain independence from Belgium, but he inspired an idea.

Lumumba’s political career was not very long. He was Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo for almost three months before he was deposed in a coup during the Congo Crisis, and then murdered. The exact details surrounding his death are not clear, but the Belgian government and the CIA were implicated. In 2002 the Belgian government formally apologised to the Congolese people for Lumumba’s murder.

Lumumba is an African icon because he stood steadfast in his belief that the African people had a right to determine their destiny without interference. At Congo’s Independence, the Belgian monarch made it clear in his remarks that he expected Belgium to play a leading role in the Congo’s future, and Lumumba stood defiant in the face of Imperialism:

‘No Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that it is by struggle that we have won [our independence], a struggle waged each and every day, a passionate idealistic struggle, a struggle in which no effort, privation, suffering, or drop of our blood was spared. We will count not only on our enormous strength and immense riches but on the assistance of numerous foreign countries whose collaboration we will accept if it is offered freely and with no attempt to impose on us an alien culture of no matter what nature’.

Lumumba understood then that while Congo, as did other African countries subsequent to that, had achieved political independence, it was yet to gain economic freedom. It was because he was a threat to colonial interests that sought to maintain their economic relationship with postcolonial African countries that Lumumba was enough of a threat to be assassinated. More than anything Lumumba struggled against “an institutionalised relationship between Africans and Europeans,” in all it’s forms, which facilitated the exploitation of Africans and their resources. As he did then Lumumba represents the idea of unencumbered self-determination, the idea that Africans can truly be free.

In an article titled Lumumba’s ideals and the symbolism of his life, Lyn Ossome writes:

Today due to greed powered by its own African neighbours, who under the watchful eye of the United Nations continue to fuel ethnic conflicts and amass far too many civilian casualties, the country lies in political, economic and social tatters. The paranoid miscalculations of the U.S. and its allies during the Cold War cost Africa many inspiring leaders and perpetuated conflict in a number of countries that have paid long and hard, among them Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Mozambique, and the DRC. In Sudan, a long civilian war robbed Southern Sudan of its economic soul for more than two decades, and the semi-autonomous region that stands poised to secede from its northern counterpart today is one that is desperately clinging to the hope of Pan-African solidarity and visionary, steadfast leadership. At the contentious heart of its secession lies its enormous mineral wealth, caught within the same cross-hairs of imperialist interests and intervening African interests against which Lumumba struggled until his death.

Zimbabweans have been urged by the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Charles Ray, during the Martin Luther King Day commemorations to emulate Dr Martin Luther King Jnr where their voices are heard in a non-violent manner. Read more here. It is true that we need to use non-violence to bring change and address areas of injustice in Zimbabwe. I believe every Zimbabwean has a little ‘Luther’ living in them but the environment around us is not conducive.

Take the example of men and women working with WOZA and MOZA. In 2010 83 members were arrested while they were having a peaceful march to mark International Peace Day. In Bulawayo two were arrested during a public meeting with the Competition and Tariff Commission to present views on ZESA. In Mutare two women were arrested a day after a peaceful protest.

Mr Ray, like Dr Martin Luther Jnr, has an ‘I have a dream…’ for Zimbabwe that is. The dream that was instilled in the 1990s when the government promised, ‘Education for all by the year 2000′, ‘Housing for all by the year 2000′ and ‘Health for all by the year 2000′. I still feel this can be achieved some year, say 2020. But my question today is how then do I gather 10 people to listen to my dream and not be picked up for being a public nuisance? I don’t just want to use my voice, I also want to do silent acts that bring change to Zimbabwe, which I so much love and I am so proud to be Zimbabwean. Like Rosa Parks, I want to remain seated for the cause of my plight. But I’m rather scared to give up my life like the vendor in Tunisia.

To celebrate Dambudzo Marechera’s posthumous 59th birthday this year, Zimbabwean writer, editor, and anthologist, Ivor Hartmann (administrator of the official Dambudzo Marechera fan page on Facebook – endorsed by The Dambudzo Marechera Trust – with over 5,000 fans and the only consistently updated web page solely focused on Marechera), will be compiling an anthology entitled and themed Remembering Marechera. It will consist of essays, reviews, short stories, poems, etc. that follow the title/theme.

Find out more from Zimbojam