Last week the BBC published a story entitled , making public the fact that ethnic groups in the Rift Valley were rearming in preparation for future election violence. Apart from this being a very worrying story, the backlash this has had on Ken Walfula – who gave subsequent interviews to Kenyan newspapers on the matter – has been disconcerting, argues L. Muthoni Wanyeki in this week’s Pambazuka News. Ken Walfula is now facing charges of incitement and the circulation of false and alarming information from the Kenyan government. Furthermore, as Wanyeki points out, there has been both public and private discussion of rearming, such as that undertaken by the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation Monitoring Project. This is an issue the Kenyan government needs to take seriously, the author stresses.

This week’s Pambazuka News brings you a contribution by Stuart Wilson on the attacks on Abahlali baseMjondolo in Kennedy Road. Wilson has worked closely with and represented Abahlali in court. He reflects on the recent attacks on the movement in Kennedy Road and the horrific reaction these attacks have received from the authorities. It is all too clear that the attacks signify the closing of political space in South Africa and the fact that constitutionally protected citizens are by no means practically protected if their actions go against the powers that be, Wilson concludes.

Keith Goddard, champion for the struggle for lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people's rights in Zimbabwe, passed away on 10 October, Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) has announced.

Ballot papers and other electoral material will be given to provincial elections commissions on 18 October, which leaves just 9 days to distribute to polling stations before the vote. Two Mozambican companies are involved – Sotux is supplying voting booths and lamps and Académica is supplying the clear plastic ballot boxes. The rest of the material is coming from South African companies, Lithotech and Uniprint.

South African police have fired rubber bullets and tear gas at crowds of protesters angry at a lack of services and proper housing in their townships. Thousands of residents in two communities east of Johannesburg had barricaded roads and marched on public offices, setting one building alight.

The tit-for-tat expulsion of thousands of Angolan refugees living in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the repatriation of thousands of undocumented Congolese migrants working in Angola, is raising fears of a "humanitarian catastrophe" in the making. According to ANGOP, the Angolan state-run media outlet, the number of Angolans forcefully removed from the DRC since a large-scale repatriation operation kicked off in August 2009 had topped 23,000 by 13 October.

Gender Links is commissioning commentary and opinion pieces and personal accounts or ‘I’ stories around different thematic areas on the impact of the FIFA Soccer World Cup 2010 on the advancement of gender equality and women’s economic empowerment throughout the SADC region. The aim of the contributions are to highlight the gender dimensions of the FIFA Soccer World Cup 2010 through people’s lived experiences and relevant opinion pieces.

Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement of South Africa, an organisation representing thousands of people who live in informal settlements, and its President, Mr Sibusiso Zikode, approached the KwaZulu-Natal High Court, Durban, challenging the constitutionality of the KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act. The High Court dismissed the challenge.

Outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) from Russia often surprises outside observers by its landmark deals. One of them was the purchase in September 2009 of a 55% stake in General Motors’ German affiliate Opel by a consortium of the Canadian car maker Magna and the Russian state-owned bank Sberbank. The latter is the largest creditor of the Russian car maker GAZ, and may represent its commercial interests in the contract. With this deal, Russia has bought into the industrial heartland of the world economy and could potentially access more advanced technology. This acquisition hints at the growth of Russian OFDI in general, which has prospered despite fears in many host countries that the investors are subject to Russian political interference, a fear that recently announced Russian policy intentions may allay.

Applications are now open: The Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program2010- 2011. The Program is especially designed to support candidates from groups that have historically lacked access to higher education. Eligible candidates who belong to marginalized and excluded groups and communities such as scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, other backward classes, religious minorities, women, physically challenged and those with other kinds of socio-economic deprivation are encouraged to apply.

Targets to cut the number of hungry people in the world will not be met without greater international effort, UN food agencies have warned. The UN's annual report on global food security confirms that more than one billion people - a sixth of the world's population - are undernourished. It says the number of hungry people was growing before the economic crisis, which has made the situation worse.

Forty years after the rights of Africa’s refugees were enshrined in a landmark convention, the continent’s leaders are due to make legal history again by adopting a new instrument to assist people displaced within the borders of their own country. The African Convention on the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa is the main agenda for the heads of state summit on refugees, returnees and IDPs in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, from 19-23 October.

In the wake of recent events in Guinea and in light of information related to the alleged commission of crimes under ICC jurisdiction, ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has confirmed that the situation in Guinea is under preliminary examination by his Office.

Aggravated homosexuality will be punished by death, according to a new bill tabled in Uganda's Parliament. The private member's bill was tabled by Ndorwa West MP David Bahati (NRM). A person commits aggravated homosexuality when the victim is a person with disability or below the age of 18, or when the offender is HIV-positive.

In this week's emerging powers news, focus shifts to China's dealings with various African countries, notably Guinea, which has been under the spotlight for the brutal suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations. Elsewhere, a GreenPeace report accuses Chinese and under multinationals of breaching environmental regulations.

This Report is on the recent Genocide at Bundu Waterfront in the Township axis of Port Harcourt in the Rivers State of Nigeria. The Report is presented by the National Union of Tenants of Nigeria and based, not only on newspaper publications, but more on the personal experiences by officials of the union who visited the scene and equally had interviews with leaders of the affected community who confirmed the incident and gave useful information to the union.

Some 260 Sudanese refugees jailed for entering Lebanon illegally have been deproted, according to a Sudanese Embassy official. The refugees were sent back on a Sudan Airways flight, the official said. In a statement to the Sudan News Agency, head of Sudan’s Expatriates Affairs Amin Taha al-Girain said 2,871 Sudanese nationals had also been voluntarily returned from Libya.

Poor South Africans could receive 70 kilowatts worth of free electricity if Eskom is granted a 45 percent "smoothed" tariff increase, says it's Chief Executive Jacob Maroga. "We recommend that it be increased to 70 kilowatts and that the cost be carried by industry," Maroga told reporters as the parastatal unveiled details of its Multi-Year Price Determination 2 (MYPD 2) for the three-year period, beginning in 2010 to 2013.

Supporters of the slain military leader of Burkina Faso, Captain Thomas Isidore Noel Sankara, have denounced international support for the regime of President Blaise Compaore saying it was doing all it can for him "to rule for ever". Commemorating the 22nd anniversary of the assassination of Captain Sankara in the Burkinabe capital, Ouagadougou, they gathered at the Daghnoen cemetery, a district in Ouagadougou, around the tombs of their idol and his companions who were assassinated on 15 October, 1987 during a coup.

Botswana’s ruling party claimed victory in the country’s general election on Saturday extending President Ian Khama’s rule over the world’s largest diamond producer for another five years. Khama’s Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), in power since independence from Britain in 1966, said it had secured a majority of the parliamentary constituencies. “We have reached the 29 out of the 57,” Langston Motsete, a member of the BDP’s election committee, told Reuters.

The Congolese government's military operation in eastern Congo, Kimia II, backed by United Nations peacekeepers and aimed at neutralizing the threat from a Rwandan Hutu militia group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), has resulted in an unacceptable cost for the civilian population, said 84 humanitarian and human rights groups in the Congo Advocacy Coalition.

The United Nations top envoy to the Côte d’Ivoire is slated to hold a series of meetings next week in a bid to jump-start a critical step threatening to disrupt the nation’s much-delayed presidential elections, scheduled for late next month. The initiative aims to give new impetus to efforts which would lead to the posting of the final voter list for the Côte d’Ivoire’s long-awaited polls, which were to have been held as far back as 2005 and are now scheduled for 29 November.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) sounded the alarm on the worsening humanitarian situation in the Horn of Africa today, noting that nearly five million children under the age of five in the region are now hungry. This marks an increase of 1 million since May, while the number of people in need of emergency assistance in the region has also risen, climbing from 20 million earlier this year to 24 million, the agency said.

Unidentified gunmen shot and wounded three peacekeepers, two critically, from the joint African Union-United Nations mission in Darfur (UNAMID) in an attack on Saturday in the war-ravaged region on the western flank of the Sudan. The police unit came under fire near Zalingei, West Darfur, while escorting a UNAMID garbage truck. The armed men stole the police vehicle and escaped.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe will chair a weekly cabinet meeting on Tuesday without members from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's party, which boycotted the unity government last week, state media reported on Sunday. Tsvangirai announced on Friday that his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party would disengage from Mugabe's "dishonest and unreliable" ZANU-PF party in the country's coalition cabinet set up in February.

The World Bank has announced a 10-year US$215 million fund to support the countries of the Central African region in developing their high-speed telecommunications backbone infrastructure to increase the availability of high-speed Internet and reduce end-user prices. Three countries - Cameroon, Chad and Central African Republic (CAR) - are participating in the initial US$26.2 million phase of the Program. A further eight countries are also eligible to participate in the Program - Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Niger, Nigeria, São Tomé and Principe, and Sudan.

Incorrect use in routine practice of a World Health Organization (WHO)/UNICEF HIV screening tool for children at primary health care clinics in Limpopo and KwaZulu Natal provinces, South Africa leads to the failure of life saving interventions, Christiane Horwood and colleagues reported in a study in the September 22 2009 edition of BMC Pediatrics.

The African Union IDPs Convention would be the first international instrument of its kind and would send a signal to the rest of the world about the seriousness with which Africa, home to around half of the global total of internally displaced persons (IDPs), considers the issue.

It was, Malawian police say, a routine sweep for criminals at one of the country’s busiest border posts. They were looking for criminals. But when police arrested 14 prostitutes as part of their search, and then allegedly forcefully tested them for HIV and charged them for "deliberately trading in sex while having a sexually transmitted disease", human rights organisations had to step in.

The pace of diplomacy on Sudan is increasing, with talks set to resume on Darfur and active engagement by the African Union, the United Nations, and the United States in efforts to move Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement forward as it approaches the last year of a projected 6-year interim period. But, says veteran Sudan analyst John Ashworth, in fact the agreement "is not Comprehensive, nor Peace, nor an Agreement. Its failure could ignite a new war even more deadly than the two previous conflicts in Southern Sudan.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is one of the greatest challenges facing post-democracy South Africa. In 2007, the country, which is home to less than one per cent of the world's population, carried 17 per cent of the global burden of HIV infection — and the virus continues to spread relentlessly. The government's response to the epidemic during the last decade has contributed to this disproportionate burden. It not only questioned the reliability of HIV testing, the safety and efficacy of antiretroviral drugs and the accuracy of statistics on AIDS-related morbidity and mortality, but also the very premise that HIV causes AIDS.

Farmers in Benin are implementing their own research findings to boost the soil fertility and moisture retention of their plots. The experiment is part of the project Strengthening the Capacity to Adapt to Climate Change in Rural Benin (PARBCC) — established in late 2007 — which aims to create a three-way conversation between farmers, meteorologists and the government, and help farmers make informed choices about when to sow and harvest crops.

The East Africa Internet Governance Forum (EA-IGF), which first convened in 2008, aims at creating a community of practice that will, in the long term, become a sustaining foundation for meaningful participation of East African stakeholders in internet public policy debates at the national, regional and international level. This year’s EA-IGF was held in Nairobi Kenya, with over 200 participants from varying sectors, from fifteen different countries. This year’s forum focused on cyber-crime, policy regulatory needs consumer issues, critical internet resources, and access to broadband.

Officials are warning renewed fighting is likely between two rival clans in breakaway Somaliland, where they are reported to have amassed a large number of weapons and positioned hundreds of militiamen near disputed farmland in Gabiley region. "We are afraid new conflict could break out any time," a police officer, who requested anonymity, told IRIN, adding that the clans had at least 1,000 militiamen, armed with automatic rifles such as AK47 rifles and BKM handguns, in or near the Elberdale farmland area.

The planting season in Zimbabwe is fast approaching, but farmers are struggling to access crucial agricultural inputs, bringing fears of yet another poor harvest. "Before the government of national unity came into being [in February 2009] ... new farmers would receive fuel, fertilizer, seed and implements at almost giveaway prices, and sometimes for free," said Thomas Chirandu, a large-scale farmer in Mashonaland West Province who had prepared his land but could not afford to buy maize seed and fertilizer.

Khadijo Mahamud, a mother of five, goes to Bakara market every day to look for work, despite the constant shelling. Her youngest child is 10 months old but Mahamud knows she has no choice but to leave him with her 10-year-old and venture out to find food for the family. “I have to leave the children and try and find something for them to eat; I will do almost any job," she told IRIN on 14 October. "Some days I get to wash clothes, but other days I work as a porter or clean stores.”

In this memoir, Ambassador Mohammed Sahnoun, first assistant secretary-general of the then Organization of African Unity (OAU), recalls Mwalimu Nyerere’s historical role in the creation of its Liberation Committee. Nyerere’s “lucidity and his strategic skills”, he reminisces, “were remarkable at all levels, as was his courage, bearing in mind that his own country was newly independent [1961] and that its state institutions were also at their formative stage.” When “conflicts occurred, as they inevitably did at the OAU and in the area of liberation politics, Nyerere, as the mwalimu that he was, used his gifts of analysis and reasoning to reach the right resolutions”. Sahnoun thus affirms, “It was a unique privilege to have worked with such a leader.”

Salma Maoulidi unpacks Nyerere's legacy in the realm of racial and religious tolerance. “As Nyerere became more exposed to politics and other races,” she observes, “he attained the sophistication of tolerating mutual coexistence where acknowledging the humanity of others in lieu of settling scores informed a more encompassing political strategy.” However, despite all his efforts and those of the liberation struggles, prevailing racial and religious tensions continue to find expression in post-independence Tanzania. Salma concludes that “Tanzania’s inability to overcome the vestiges of racial and religious exclusion exposes the government’s and the ruling party’s inability (or unwillingness) to address racial and religious discrimination that continues to dominate Tanzania’s political culture in a forthright and objective manner.”

Pambazuka News brings to you the first Mwalimu Nyerere Memorial Lecture delivered by Haroub Othman on 14 October 2005 at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Haroub reminisces on the glorious days of the ‘Dar es Salaam School’, the massive impact it had on the liberation of Africa and the role that Mwalimu Nyerere played in shaping its development away from a colonial and Western intellectual mould. On his last visits to the University of Dar es Salaam, Haroub recounts, Mwalimu made “one very important point, that Africa South of the Sahara was on its own” and as such we “have to rely on ourselves, and to cooperate among ourselves.” Taking a leaf from that spirit of Pan-Africanism, Haroub reminds us that “the Southern African-subcontinent is facing a deep crisis”, urging its “present intelligentsia to transform our societies and to give content to human dignity”.