Category: Action Alerts

As the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (ACAS), we condemn the Executive Order “Addressing the Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa” issued on Feb 7, 2025 in the strongest terms. In it, the President of the United States identifies a group of white South Africans – Afrikaners – as the victims of racial injustice to such a great extent that they should be allowed refugee status in the United States. The Order also chastises South Africa for having the temerity to take Israel to the International Court of Justice over the genocidal war it has waged in Gaza.

As other executive orders slam the gates of refugee status shut on deserving, needy and desperate people around the world, the 7 February order would be laughable in its incorrect absurdities if what it lays bare for all to see were not so chilling: the historical alliance between extremist, supremacist projects in South Africa, Israel and the United States.

The South African Afrikaner minority was in the forefront of the effort to devise, impose and enforce apartheid: a socially repressive regime so extreme that its name has become globally synonymous with oppression. Although several European nations and generations of their citizens imposed colonialism, warfare, slavery, dispossession and racial discrimination on the majority of indigenous South Africans for centuries, it was the Afrikaner minority (never more than 10% of the South African population) that rose to political power in 1948 and proceeded to implement racial supremacy with dizzying speed.

South Africa achieved majority rule in 1994 after decades of bitter struggle waged domestically and internationally. Since then South Africans have seen many of the hopes of the Nelson Mandela-era “rainbow nation” dashed on the rocks of economic timidity, mismanagement, corruption and state brutality. Despair has set in on almost all fronts.

However, the small steps that have been taken to redress the wrongs of apartheid in terms of land ownership have been completely and cynically misconstrued by the Trump administration. Even right-wing Afrikaner groups in South Africa, the heirs of apartheid – who operate openly and freely as political parties – agree that they have not and do not anticipate becoming refugees and they have no desire to leave South Africa to settle in the USA.

US administrations stoutly supported apartheid through the Cold War era while ACAS and millions of other people and organizations around the world stood in solidarity with South Africans of all races who fought for freedom. Now ACAS unequivocally condemns the resurgence of a shameful legacy of supremacist machinations at the highest levels of American government.

The Feb. 7 Executive Order is just the latest step in a blitzkrieg to Make Apartheid Great Again – American style.

A luta continua!

The Association of Concerned Africa Scholars

February 2025

March 15th, 2021
The Honorable Joseph R. Biden President of the United
600 Pennsylvania Avenue   Washington DC 20500  
President Biden, 
As COVID-19 takes lives, impacts jobs, affects healthcare and drives a global economic crisis, we the
undersigned urge the International Monetary Fund, the G20 and White House to:
? Cancel debt and expand debt relief for developing countries to bolster healthcare, protect the
vulnerable, workers and the environment as they confront COVID-19
? Mobilize additional resources to support all countries impacted by the economic and health impacts of
the coronavirus through increased grants and development bank support, emergency reserve funds
known as Special Drawing Rights and sales from IMF gold reserves 
? Improve debt restructuring, issue debt payment moratoriums and create expedient debt reprofiling
processes for countries impacted by the coronavirus
? Support all countries to emerge from the crisis with more resilience by encouraging policies and
agreements to increase protections for the vulnerable and that protect our planet, instill greater public
budget transparency, implement financial crisis and market protections, promote responsible lending
and borrowing and curb corruption and tax evasion
Sincerely,
220 Signatories as of 3/15/2021:  
Denominations and Denominational Representations 
All Africa Conference of Churches 
The Episcopal Church 
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 
The National Council of Churches 
The Presbyterian Church (USA) 
Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (USA)
And 212 others organizations

“We call for urgent action to end the xenophobic attacks in South Africa. The undersigned represent members of the North Eastern Workshop on Southern Africa, the African Studies Association, the African Studies Association Women’s Caucus, the Association of Concerned African Scholars, and the US-Africa Network. As scholars and activists, we know that this violence directed at “strangers” defies a long history of exchange, migration, and solidarity in the region—especially during the anti-apartheid movement. As friends and family members of southern Africans, we worry about the safety of many who are close to us. And as human beings, we are shocked and heartbroken to see this violence continue. We therefore urge President Zuma’s administration to bring this violence to an end, and to foster policy that prevents such violence in the future.”

ACTION: Please email Meghan Healy-Clancy at healy.meghan@gmail.com with your name, title, and affiliation to sign the petition.

November 27, 2013  Central African Republic: Whose Responsibility to Protect?  (Reposted from sources cited below)
AfricaFocus Bulletin Editor’s note: 

“In the Central African Republic, the scale of the humanitarian crisis is undeniable; the threat of even greater escalation of violence and chaos is real. And there is a consensus that greater international action is essential. But the questions of who does what when, and who pays, remain unanswered. France is sending additional troops to reinforce the African peacekeeping force now in place, but the processes for funding and coordinating African Union and United Nations multilateral actions are still in slowmotion mode….” read more

We the undersigned are responding to a call for international solidarity sent out by the executive committee of a coalition of education organizations in Haiti after the police killing of a protesting teacher, and signed on Oct. 11, 2010, by the coordinators of the coalition François Mario, CNEH (teachers’ union), Eugène Jean, UPEPH (parents’ organization), and Josué Mérilien, UNNOH (teachers’ union). We stand in solidarity with teachers, students, and parents in Port-au-Prince who are organizing for schooling for Haitian children abandoned by the education system, and for decent living and working conditions for teachers and students. We demand an end to the systematic violence against them.

The “Global Food Security” bill is back. After its introduction in the Senate a year ago, Bill Gates and Bill Clinton have been quietly pressing for this piece of legislation that aims to fight global hunger with one hand while orchestrating a giant taxpayer subsidy to pesticide and ag biotech companies with the other. The bill, also known as the Lugar-Casey Act — for Senators Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Robert Casey (D-PA) — would refocus aid programs on agricultural development, with a caveat: public funding of genetically engineered (GE) seeds is what this bill means by “agricultural development.”

Last spring Pesticide Action Network joined Food First, Union of Concerned Scientists and other partners in commending the overall intention of the bill, while calling for the removal of the corporate give-away clause buried in its language. The Lugar-Casey Act directs some $7.7 billion to agricultural research and development, much of which could go directly into the coffers of corporations like Monsanto because of one clause mandating that research funds “shall” go towards GE crop research. Monsanto (the world’s largest purveyor of GM seeds) has done more lobbying on the Lugar-Casey Act than any other interest.

USAID would be responsible for implementing the bill. Over the last two decades, this agency has spent millions of US taxpayer dollars on developing GE crops, with not one success story to show for it. A highly touted partnership between USAID and Monsanto to develop a virus-resistant sweet potato in Kenya failed to deliver anything useful for farmers. After fourteen years and $6 million, local varieties vastly outperformed their genetically modified cousins in field trials.

“At the end of the day, GE crops don’t have much to offer – especially to farmers in the developing world,” notes PAN senior scientist Dr. Marcia Ishii-Eiteman. The bill’s single-minded focus on promoting GMOs runs directly counter to the scientific findings from the most comprehensive analysis of world agriculture to date, the IAASTD

http://www.panna.org/mag/summer2008/agriculture/business-as-usual-is-not-an-option.

This landmark report highlights the need to strengthen agroecological research to support small-scale farmers, while decreasing corporate control of seeds and the food system. “We will be working with partners in the coming weeks to mobilizing a strong message to the Senate reiterating our call to strip the GM clause from the bill,” adds Ishii-Eiteman.

Global Food Security Act
Foreign Policy in Focus
http://www.fpif.org/articles/global_food_security_act