Note: this article was published shortly before Mugabe announced his resignation, with immediate effect, at approximately 4pm (UTC).

Tensions are reaching boiling point in Zimbabwe after the Army Commander, General Constantino Chimurenga, threatened that the army could “step in” if the ruling party, ZANU-PF, continues with the purge of veteran leaders in its ranks.

Like a hydra-headed monster, once again, ethnic tension has risen to near boiling point, threatening to tear Nigeria apart. This time around, it is the renewed call for secession of the South Eastern region (the Igbos) from Nigeria by the “Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)” to form the Republic of Biafra, that is haunting the nation. Similar agitation for Biafra in the late sixties eventually led to three years of civil war from 1967 to 1970, in which over two million men, women and children perished.

Over the last few days hundreds of thousands of people have returned to the streets of the West African country of Togo to protest against the brutal dictatorship of Faure Gnassingbé. This is a continuation of a mass revolutionary wave which have hit the entire region over the last period.

Alan Woods - editor of In Defence of Marxism - discusses the political earthquakes that have shattered the status quo and shaken the Establishment in country after country: from the victory of Donald Trump, to the Brexit vote.

The year 2016 ended with two more dramatic and bloody occurrences: the assassination of the Russian ambassador in Istanbul and the brutal murder of people in Berlin who were peacefully enjoying preparations for Christmas. These events were linked to the bloody morass in the Middle East and more specifically to Syria.

The massive wave of defiance against Donald Trump’s election shows that millions of youth and workers will resist his government. Trump cannot resolve the crisis of capitalism and the poverty, bigotry, and instability that come with it. The Democrats and labor leaders have rolled over and offered to work with him. The International Marxist Tendency (IMT) has a different perspective. We are confident that Trump’s anti-worker agenda can be stopped in its tracks. This is our proposal for a program to fight and beat Trump.

In the same week that Donald Trump is set to become the 45th president of the United States, a maverick of a different sort is threatening to destabilise the whole West African region.

The spectre of Lehman Brothers is haunting Europe.

"As in the entire third world, women, especially poor women workers of Pakistan, are suffering. Sometimes I feel that they need a socialist revolution more than anyone. It is the only way to freedom! "(Anam Patafi)

The grisly images on television and social media are unrelenting: car bombings, nightclub massacres, killer cops, and cop killers. It is what Lenin called capitalist “horror without end”—without end. Not only in “far away” Iraq, Afghanistan, and Mexico, but in some of the most prosperous cities in the richest country on earth. This is the gruesome face of the capitalist crisis, the crisis of a system that threatens to take the entire human species down with it.

Over the last few days the Southern African country of Zimbabwe have experienced escalating protests which shook the Mugabe regime to its core. Sporadic protests have broken out over the last few weeks because of a severe shortage of cash. But over the last few days these protests have increased in intensity.  Dramatic scenes have played themselves out as  workers, civil servants and small traders took to the streets to protest against the latest crisis. This culminated in a national stay away on 6 July by public sector workers who have not received their wages for June.