Nigeria's Daily Trust commemorated the second anniversary of Pan-Africanist Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem's passing on 25 May with a special memorial supplement, featuring contributions from Okello Oculi, Kole Shettima, Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, Horace Campbell, Aderemi Oyewumi and Nengak Daniel Gondyi. .

As South Sudan prepares to become officially independent in July, Reporters Without Borders says it is appalled by recent developments affecting press freedom and appeals in particular to the new country’s president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, to release the Darfuri journalist Mohammed Arku without delay. Employed by Sudan Radio Service, Arku was arrested by South Sudan’s security services in Wau on 11 May for taking photos without government permission, although the area where he was arrested is not a militarised one.

We the 100 plus delegates from various countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, having met in Tshwane, South Africa, over three days to commemorate Africa Liberation Day and deliberate on African affairs and global issues hereby resolved the following Tshwane Declaration.

Taking a senior role in the organisation, the Associate Director provides operational leadership in the programmatic and administrative realms. Specific areas of responsibility include organisational leadership and development, program development and implementation, as well as financial and administrative oversight. The position is based in San Francisco.

The Refugee Law Project (RLP), Faculty of Law, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, in collaboration with the African Transitional Justice Research Network (ATJRN) is accepting applications to its 2nd Institute for African Transitional Justice (IATJ), an annual week-long residential programme with a focus on Transitional Justice issues in the context of Africa. The Institute, which is scheduled to take place from 20th – 27th November 2011, in Kitgum, Northern Uganda has as its theme: 'Whose Memories Count and at What Cost?'

In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers...

It is the time again when we seek entries for the prestigious FitzGerald prize for young African journalists. This offers a scholarship for a promising, young (under 30) African journalist or aspirant journalist to do a post graduate BA hons degree at the University of The Witwatersrand ’s Journalism Programme in Johannesburg, starting in early 2012, and to join Reuters thereafter for a period of work experience.

'Iman Tari,' a voice calls forward. Tari, a stout woman wearing a black burqa and white headscarf, rises from her seat. A young man in his late 20s stands up beside her and supports her as she walks. Her feet step slowly and steadily across the cement floor to a table laden with microphones and earpieces. Tari inches closer to the microphone and begins her testimony to the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, TJRC, established by Parliament in 2008 to investigate the gross human rights violations and other historical injustices in Kenya committed between 12 December 1963 and 28 February 2008. The TJRC spent 32 days in April and May holding hearings in the Eastern and North Eastern provinces.

Somalia, which has not had a functioning government in almost two decades, is listed as Africa's deadliest country for journalists with 34 journalists killed since 1991, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Despite these killings and daily death threats, a few reporters remain in the country to provide the world with an inside view of the fighting that plagues Somalia.

The four-day Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) meeting of ministers responsible for gender and women’s affairs ended in Windhoek on Thursday, 2 June. Issues on the agenda included the SADC regional gender programme and review of progress made by member states towards promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. Progress made in the signing and ratification of the SADC protocol on gender and development was also on the agenda. Thus far 13 member states have signed the protocol, while seven have deposited their instruments of ratification with the SADC Secretariat.

From 9-26 April, Nigeria held parliamentary, presidential and governorship elections. During the last parliamentary term, only 7.3 per cent of the representatives in Nigeria’s upper and lower houses were women. In this year’s election, 200 out of 2400 (8.33 per cent) candidates for the House of Representatives and 80 out of 720 (11.11 per cent) candidates for the Senate were women. Abiola Akiyode of the Lagos-based Women Advocates Research and Documentation Center (WARDC) says that overall, 909 out of 10037 (9.06 per cent) candidates for all elective positions were women. These positions include the Presidency, governorships and parliamentary seats. There has been an overall regression in women’s representation in political decision-making positions.

A senior Egyptian general admits that 'virginity checks' were performed on women arrested at a demonstration this spring, the first such admission after previous denials by military authorities. The allegations arose in an Amnesty International report, published weeks after the 9 March protest. It claimed female demonstrators were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges and forced to submit to virginity checks. The general said the virginity checks were done so that the women wouldn't later claim they had been raped by Egyptian authorities.

The state security agency is probing links between various loose-knit 'business forums' fomenting xenophobic violence across the country. The move comes as momentum builds in the number of attacks against foreign-owned businesses across the country and follows ­violence directed at Somali business people in Port Elizabeth. On Wednesday 1 June, police held back a crowd of more than 100 – including members of the Greater Gauteng Business Forum (GGBF) – in Ramaphosa informal settlement near Germiston, east of Joburg, as they attempted to forcibly close foreign-owned businesses there.

Six powerful explosions have been heard in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, as warplanes flew over the city. A powerful but distant blast was felt in the centre of the city at around 1900 GMT on Sunday 5 June, followed by stronger explosions a few minutes later, an AFP correspondent said, unable to immediately determine the targets. NATO fighter jets earlier launched intensive air raids on the capital and its eastern suburbs.

A former Egyptian minister, Youssef Boutros-Ghali has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for squandering public funds and abuse of power. He is also expected to pay a fine of approximately $11 million. The ruling delivered in his absence indicates the country's determination to deal with past mistakes as it prepares for a new dispensation. Youssef Boutros-Ghali, the nephew of former UN Chief Boutros Boutros-Ghali, was a finance minister and a close confidant of Gamal Mubarak, son to the ousted president Hosni Mubarak. Reports that we couldn't verify independently indicate that he is in currently living Beirut. An arrest warrant has been issued by the International Police, the Interpol.

Pambazuka Press and The Africa Centre invite you to:

In the field of international security, discussions about women and children are usually marginalised. But is it possible to achieve human security without placing women at the centre of the policy agenda?

Discussion with Funmi Olonisakin, Awino Okech, Ecoma Alaga and Ekaette Ikpe, chaired by Patricia Daley.

The speakers' important new book,

In a review of Omar Barghouti’s 'Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions', Estelle Cooch praises the author’s profiling of the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement, mixing of the analytical with the anecdotal and emphasis on Palestinian agency.

Sonny Onyegbula pays tribute to Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem some two years after his passing on African Liberation Day.

Reflecting on the need to challenge power and its abuses, Alemayehu G. Mariam encourages young people in Africa to organise, become politically engaged and work together in defence of human rights.

Reflecting on the availability of documentary sources, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe discusses the history of the Igbo genocide.

Sceptical about the effectiveness of the ‘roadmap’ being implemented by Madagascar’s ‘de facto authorities’, CCOC (Collective of Citizens and Civic Organizations) has issued a memorandum on resolving the country’s two-year crisis.

NATO’s (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) sustained assault on Libya ought to lead to calls for its leaders’ prosecution at the International Criminal Court (ICC), writes Yash Tandon, though ‘we know this will not happen’. A new regime run by ‘the people’, Tandon stresses, will merely see itself at the service of empire, helping to ensure access to oil, shore up Europe against refugees and bolster the region against forces deemed threatening such as Hamas and Iran; the challenge remains for Libyans themselves to sort out their differences and unite.

Sharon and Conway Payn from the Symphony Way pavement dwellers discuss the unkept promises the South African government made about housing and their experiences on Symphony Way.

Launched on Africa Day (25 May), a new five-part series of radio documentaries chronicling the lives, challenges, dreams and positive contributions of migrants living in South Africa is hitting the airwaves. In ‘Breaking Borders’, five migrants tell their stories of where they came from, what life is like for them in their new home and what their goals are for the future. Keep on reading to find out more and listen to the documentaries online.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/531/we'llgowhenfinished_tmb.jpgThe impact of climate change on women in Ethiopia, questionable carbon credit and biofuels schemes, a Liberian activist’s work with child soldiers, and France’s commercial ties to its former colonies are among the topics covered in this week’s round-up of the African blogosphere, compiled by Sokari Ekine.

Béatrice Hibou speaks to France-based Tunisian dissident and intellectual Sadri Khiari about the roots of the Tunisian revolution and why no-one saw it coming.

Looking at how Kenya's inheritance laws leave women in the lurch, Salma Maoulidi says it's impossible for African women to celebrate Africa Day when they are ‘not celebrated in the most intimate of spaces’ – their families and communities.

‘[I]t is transparently clear now that NATO has exceeded its mandate, lied about its intentions, is guilty of extra-judicial killings--all in the name of “humanitarian intervention”’, writes Cynthia McKinney from Tripoli.

‘The current Libya invasion by the West is absolute portrayal of their failed impracticable democratic ideologies,’ writes Seth Ofori, in response to an article by Jean-Paul Pougala.

With the country witness to sustained, diverse protests in the face of a repressive and unrepresentative regime, Burkina Faso’s people are no longer scared of their government, writes Pierre Sidy.

Following last week's municipal elections in South Africa, Abahlali baseMjondolo have issued a statement on the threat posed by the eThekwini Municipality’s Land Invasion Unit.

A documentary made by South African film-makers Dylan Valley and Aryan Kaganof tried to piece together the real story of what happened to the residents of Hangberg, Hout Bay, when police attacked the community and destroyed their homes in a forced eviction in September 2010. But when a magazine interviewed Kaganof about what he discovered, he found that the media still shies from talking truth to power.

‘As feminists, we see the arrest of former International Monetary Fund director Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual assault charges as an opportunity to increase public awareness and as a wake-up call to renew action against sexual violence, not only in the US where his arrest occurred and in France, where media and many public figures are portraying him as the victim, but around the world.’ demanding ‘freedom from sexual assault and harassment’ for women ‘at all strata of society and in all corners of the globe.’

'Several major events have taken place on the African continent since the start of 2011, in a particular global context. Already weakened by its unfavourable historic position in the global system, over the past two decades Africa has endured the horrors of neoliberal austerity measures, the pillage of its resources and the privatisation of warfar. Africa is more than ever at a crossroads because of the failure of the neoliberal model, the crisis of capitalism and the exhaustion of neocolonial modes of growth,'writes GRILA, in a statement to mark African Liberation Day on 25 May.

As you arrive at Hauwa Memorial College (HMC), Funtua, Katsina State, you are welcomed into its classrooms with these quotations: ‘Today's struggle is tomorrow's success’; ‘Better die in a quest than be a coward’; ‘A gentleman without policy is like education without certificate...’ and more written by the students. But the words are not the only things that catch your attention. HMC, Funtua, is is in a state of abject disrepair and two years after its founder's death, the place is under the threat of closure, writes Evelyn Osagie

Botswana's government closed all primary and secondary schools on Monday (16 May) after violent clashes between police and students angry over a strike by teachers and other public workers. The violence began last week at a secondary school in Molepolole, a village 60km south-east of the capital Gaborone, and spread to schools across the country. Students have missed most of their classes since teachers and other public-sector workers went on strike on 18 April. Public service employees are demanding a 16 per cent salary increment, while government is offering five per cent.

SA is not in any kind of energy crisis, despite the unfolding crisis at nuclear plants in Japan, an activist organisation has said. 'It's [the energy crisis] a complete fabrication. Of our total capacity, domestic users account for 18 per cent,' Muna Lakhani, Cape Town branch co-ordinator for Earthlife Africa told News24. Recently the government has announced that it intends to move toward a green energy production, but has come under fire from environmentalists for continued discussions on nuclear energy.

Urging the Angolan government to withdraw a cybercrime bill before parliament, Human Rights Watch said it would undercut both freedom of expression and information, and pose a severe threat to independent media in the country. Human Rights Watch expressed its apprehension that the bill would help security forces to confiscate data and create harsher penalties for crimes in electronic information technology. Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said, 'This bill fails to establish clear safeguards to protect the public's right to know and right to speak and deepening the existing restrictions in Angola's media environment, where many Angolans have turned for open debate on matters the government wants to restrict.'