We are blessed to have lived in the days of Dr. Alex Magaisa. The greatest Zimbabwean public intellectual of our time. He was a good man; a genuine man. Alex was supposed to see a different Zimbabwe. His life's work was for that Zimbabwe.

On Africa Human Rights Day, 21st October, we publish a special thought-provoking reflection from Dr. @SolomonADersso, Commissioner at the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights. Forty years later, has the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights delivered on its promise? Read on. – at Gambia

Bob Marley and the new Zimbabwean flag Circa 1980 Marley is photographed here at his house, 56 Hope Road in Kingston, Jamaica, now the Bob Marley Museum. On his window hangs a Zimbabwean flag. Marley's potent support for African liberation culminated in April 1980 when he performed at the country's independence celebrations at Rufaro Stadium in Salisbury, now Harare, an invitation he considered one of the greatest honours of his life. Edgar “Two-Boy” Tekere, a nationalist, was credited for being the mastermind behind Marley's invitation. After 16 years of armed struggle, the nationalists craved a revolutionary dance. For the cultural and historic note of the visit, Marley brought along his two sons Ziggy and Stephen. Ziggy was to later remark during a CNN interview around February 2024 while promoting the Bob Marley: One Love biopic, that their visit to Zimbabwe was the most special moment he had with his father. Zimbabwe was to be one of only two African countries Marley performed in. The other was Gabon where he staged birthday performances for President Omar Bongo in 1980. The band only learnt that Bongo was a dictator while in-country. It was too late to return. He had a favour to fulfil to Pascaline Bongo, Bongo’s eldest daughter with whom he shared a romantic affiliation. Bongo himself privately disapproved of Marley, viewing him and The Wailers as a ragged group of weed smoking Rastafarians and a revolutionary, and refused to officially receive him at the palace, instead delegating his son Ali Bongo to meet them. Ali, his father’s successor, and now exiled in Angola after a 2023 coup, is the guy who recorded the infamous “make noise” video in 2023 while under house arrest in Libreville. An incongruity, yet unstartling, Robert Mugabe too was initially appalled and unenthusiastic about having Marley perform at Zimbabwe’s independence celebrations. Mugabe - the Black Victorian, as Percy Zvomuya calls him - preferred British pop star Cliff Richard to a dreadlocked Rastafarian musician. The nationalists overruled him. Mugabe who in 1996 during a state visit had received the Order of Jamaica, did not drop his cultural and political aversion to Rastafarians. He used a three-hour speech at the University of Zimbabwe in 2012, ostensibly to motivate young men to pursue academic training, to traduce Jamaican and Rastafarian men as drunk and perpetually under the influence of marijuana. The diplomatic row was instant. Marley ever visited two other African countries, Ethiopia and Kenya in 1978, but did not stage public concerts there. While in Ethiopia, Marley wrote the song "Zimbabwe" together with United Nations Jazz Band member Gibson Mandishona at a time when the country was still called Rhodesia, released a year later in October 1979 on the album "Survival". Mandishona, a scientist and statistician, led a leisure music band of some nine UN experts which circuited social functions in Addis Ababa. Herbert Murerwa was the group’s drummer, later Mugabe’s long-time finance minister. Dr. Mandishona died in 2023 having served as Zimbabwe’s first black director of the Central Statistics Office (now ZimStat) and helped set up ZIMRA, the Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre (SIRDC), and the Harare Institute of Technology. Marley died a year after his performance in Harare. – at Gambia

Courting Justice for Yahya Jammeh Era Crimes Sitting comfortably in Equatorial Guinea, exiled from his land and protected by Africa’s longest serving leader Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Yahya Jammeh left destruction back home. His ruinous 22-year rule in The Gambia left scars, many still fresh, and visible in everyday life. In some cases – many cases, the destruction is irreparable. Today, the Gambia is pursuing an ambitious transitional justice process, with a milestone being the approval by the Authority of the Heads of State and Government of ECOWAS of the creation of a special Gambia-domiciled ECOWAS-backed Special Tribunal, a hybrid court to try those responsible for the gravest crimes identified through the country's truth commission process. In April 2013 Mahawa Cham, an exiled former Gambian parliamentarian, alongside a prominent businessman, Saul Ndow, was lured from Senegal, captured and transported to The Gambia, never to be seen again. A member of Jammeh’s notorious elite paramilitary hit squad, known as the "Junglers," later made unconfirmed and unverified confessions of participating in the murder of the two and burying them at a farm. The Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) officially concluded in 2021 that Cham was summarily executed during Jammeh’s dictatorship and recommended the investigation and prosecution of perpetrators. The Government of The Gambia accepted the TRRC’s recommendations. Then prosecution did not come. Seeking Justice, eight members of Cham’s family, with the support of the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA) and our friends at the African Network against Extrajudicial Killings and Enforced Disappearances (ANEKED) approached the ECOWAS Court of Justice in Abuja, Nigeria. Following months of discussion, in July we signed a settlement agreement with the Government of The Gambia, and on the 5th of October 2026, the ECOWAS Court adopted the amicable settled as a judgment by consent. The Government of The Gambia has committed to investigating and prosecuting the unlawful disappearance and killing of Mahawa Cham within one year of the date of settlement, to compensating Cham’s family at a figure already agreed to by the parties and approved by the Court, and to exhume and surrender the mortal remains of Cham to his family for proper burial. IHRDA and ANEKED will remain enganged with this matter until full implementation of the judgment. Caption: The Solicitor General and Legal Secretary of The Gambia, Hussein Thomasi, and I flank the children of Mahawa Cham after signing the amicable settlement, 20 July 2026. My colleagues Awa Gai, Abdulmalik Bello, Michael Nyarko and Sirra Ndow who all played key roles were also in the room.

With devastating wit, mischief and jocularity, Professor @ChidiOdinkalu examines the tripple entente of bribes, sex and voodoo in the Nigerian diplomatic service, in a review of the book Diplomatic Bedlam. Now, I have no evidence for this, but something tells me many countries in my continent stand guilty as charged! Happy reading. fij.ng/article/bribes-bimbos… – at Arnavutköy, İstanbul

In the dining hall of New College, Oxford, a portrait hangs prominently of the fabled late Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera. Commissioned by the college and created by artist Nina Mae Fowler, the striking monochrome portrait commemorates the acclaimed and iconoclastic author. Marechera originally attended New College on a scholarship in the mid-1974s after being expelled from the University of Rhodesia for anti-colonial student protests. His turbulent relationship with Oxford ultimately led to his expulsion from New College in 1976. A short career notwithstanding, Marechera is one of the most important figures in the cultural history of post-Colonial Africa. "Someone of coruscating intelligence, a natural rule breaker and a brilliant writer, his time at Oxford was stormy and eventful", says New College. In 1987, he died in Harare, all too young, still defiantly refusing to accept any labels or attributions of belonging. In 2020 German literary academic Flova Veit-Wild finally published 'They Called You Dambudzo' a memoir of her encounter with Dambudzo, including their "intense, personal and sexual relationship". I'm still searching for the book! – at Gambia