A near-$20 billion (13.8 billion pound) investment by China's top state-owned aluminium producer in miner Rio Tinto and some of its best assets shows how Beijing can use the commodities downturn to buy good assets, and raise the game of China Inc. While China has a long-term strategic interest in securing resources supplies, its big banks are among the most likely to buy minority stakes in foreign counterparts, analysts said, as Western peers bleed red from the global financial crisis.

Emerging economic powerhouses China and India may be encouraged to strike a “grand bargain” at a coming London summit in which they will take on a greater role in the international financial system in exchange for keeping down protectionist barriers. The deal could be struck at the April 2 summit of the Group of 20 (G-20) countries in London - to be attended by US President Barack Obama - and forms part of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s efforts to seek sweeping reforms of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

The trade and industry department has formally asked China to extend import curbs on clothing and textiles from that country. The request was apparently made without consulting industry players, as none of the industry’s representative bodies was aware of SA’s bid to extend the quotas.

South Africa is hoping that its participation in the forthcoming International Engineering and Technology Fair (IETF) in Bangalore, as well as recent investments in India by South African firm Sasol, will lead to doubling of bilateral trade to $12 billion by 2010. The 18th IETF, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry, will be held Feb 23-26, and will see 500 exhibitors from 25 countries.

The National Coalition on Mining reports that the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources has declared that mining will no longer be allowed in protected forest reserves. This decision follows years of destruction to Ghanaian forests by mining interest, which have displaced thousands of citizens and contaminated water supplies.

The University of Westminster has three new studentships available for students starting their PhD research in October 2009. Each studentship includes a stipend of £15000 and a fee waiver, and applications must be received by 5pm on March 3rd, 2009. Applicants need to apply for one of the specific projects advertised at

IPID (the International Network for Postgraduate Students in the area of ICT4D) together with GSHCID (Graduate Students in Human-Computer Interaction and Development) are organising a workshop for "young" researchers to be held on Friday 17 April 2009 8:30am - 5:00pm at Carnegie-Mellon's campus in Doha, Qatar.

We are pleasedto announce the next intake for our Advanced Conflict Transformation course which will be taking place in South Africa starting from the 4th of May to the 29th. The training now has independent modules, each running for a period of one week. Participants can apply for whichever modules they are keen to attend.

CREAW is a non-governmental, non-partisan, membership organization whose goal is to transform society by empowering women and expanding frontiers for women's rights and freedoms. CREAW aims at setting standards in upholding human rights and empowering society through civic education, legal advocacy and women's rights awareness. CREAW seeks to fill the position of Finance officer

The Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, has condemned the killing of Malagasy broadcast television journalist Ando Ratovonirina and called for improved safety of journalists. “I condemn the killing of Ando Ratovonirina,” declared the Director-General. “Ando Ratovonirina died in the line of duty, while reporting on events that are important for the whole of Malagasy society. His loss is a blow to a profession that is essential to the fundamental human right of freedom of expression, a right that is important to each and every one of us, a right that is vital for democracy and good governance.

The Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford (RSC), in collaboration with the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute (HPG), is organising an international conference on the theme of /Protecting People in Conflict & Crisis: Responding to the Challenges of a Changing World/. This conference aims to convene a broad range of academic researchers, humanitarian practitioners, policy makers and civil society representatives to review the state of policy and practice in the broad field of humanitarian protection as
we look forward into a potentially turbulent 21st Century.

The swearing in of the Prime Minister and the ministers in a unity government in Zimbabwe should be hailed as a landmark in the political development of the country. We acknowledge the political leaders in Zimbabwe for forging this outcome and the role played by SADC and former President Thabo Mbeki in facilitating the process. Now, everything must be done to sustain the momentum generated and make it irreversible. In particular SADC must closely monitor the arrangement to make sure that there is full implementation and the desired outcomes are realised.

IPHU and PHM UK are pleased to announced 'People, politics and Global Health; Actions to change the approach', a six day short course for health activists, scheduled for London, 30th March to 4th April, 2009. IPHU aims to contribute to achieving Health For All by strengthening the people's health movement by providing learning opportunities which are well targeted and address priority learning needs and which are well designed and presented.

On March 20-22, a conference will be held in Toronto at the University of Toronto to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide, which claimed the lives of some 1,000,000 in approximately 100 days. The conference, which will focus on lessons learned / not learned from the Rwandan Genocide, will feature some of the world's most renowned genocide scholars and genocide activists. Hundreds of scholars, students, teachers, members of the Rwandan community, and other members of the general public are expected to attend.

We women of Africa from Angola, DR Congo, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Sudan and Zimbabwe, together with activists and supporters from UK WILPF and diaspora organisations, aware of the negative consequences of neo-colonisation in Africa, have gathered in London in November 2008 to voice our concerns. We take this opportunity to ask the general public for their support and to raise our demands to decision-makers including the international community, national governments and non-governmental agencies.

February 11 to 13 saw the first days into the trial of murdered lesbian soccer player, Eudy Simelane, at the Delmas Circuit Court. Four men, aged between 18 and 24 were to appear before Judge Moses Mavundla on the charges of murder, robbery with aggravating circumstances and rape. On February 10, a bus load of activists left Kwa-Thema (Gauteng) to 'camp' in Delmas (Mpumalanga) for the duration of the trial.

This symposium will bring together students of media, journalism academics, communication professionals, civil society groups among others to discuss the Kenya Communications (Amendment) Act, 2008 and Kenyan media reportage of it.

On the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, BBC News asks one of Africa's pioneering scientists, Dr Ave Kludze, of the US space agency Nasa what inspired his stellar career and what he thinks of the standard of science teaching in Africa today.

In mid December, 2008, Robert Fowler, a career Canadian diplomat who is currently the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy to Niger, and his aide Louis Guay, an official at Foreign Affairs, were abducted in Niger. They were kidnapped not long after visiting a mine operated by Montréal-based SEMAFO (Société d’exploitation minière-Afrique de l’Ouest). The president and CEO of SEMAFO, Benoit La Salle, told the National Post: “Louis [Guay] called me and said he was going down there on a UN mission and that he heard the mine was a Canadian success, and he wanted to report this back to Canada.”

The 53rd United Nations Commission on the Status of Women will consider the theme: "The equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including caregiving in the context of HIV/AIDS" at its 53rd session at United Nations Headquarters in New York from 2-13 March 2009. As part of efforts to increase its focus on national-level implementation, the Commission will return to this theme in two to three years time to review the implementation of the policy recommendations adopted and to identify remaining gaps and challenges.

The case against the Co-Publisher and Managing Editor of the Gambia's Point newspaper, Mr. Pap Saine, standing trial for alleged false publication and broadcasting was Thursday adjourned by Magistrate Sagarr Jahateh of the Kanifing Magistrate's Court to 25 February 2009 for hearing.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Professor Philip Alston, met with victims and survivors of the Mt.Elgon conflict. The civilian population in the area had been trapped between the violence of the Sabaot Land Defence Force (or SLDF) and a military and police operation within Mount Elgon's district.

An unidentified armed group has launched an attack on the presidential palace in Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea. The West African country's ambassador to London accused Nigerian militants and said they had been repulsed.

Robert Mugabe on Thursday swore in 19 deputy ministers to a new unity government with opposition agriculture nominee Roy Bennett still held in detention on a criminal charge. The ceremony finalised the historic unity government formed last week after years of political turmoil between Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Belgium has lodged a case at the International Court of Justice seeking to compel Senegal to prosecute former Chadian President Hissene Habre. Mr Habre, who is accused of crimes against humanity, has lived in Senegal since being removed from power in 1990.

The United Nations Security Council should act with urgency to send additional peacekeepers to northern Democratic Republic of Congo, where the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) continues its brutal attacks on civilians, Human Rights Watch said in a report. The Security Council is expected to discuss the situation in Congo on February 17, 2009.

The rebel Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) brutally slaughtered at least 100 Congolese civilians in the Kivu provinces of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo between January 20 and February 8, 2009, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch researchers interviewed dozens of victims and witnesses who recently arrived from neighboring areas of Ufamandu and Walowaluanda (North Kivu province) and from Ziralo (South Kivu province) at displaced persons camps near Goma, the capital of North Kivu.

Environmental experts warn that climate change will lead to oceanic acidification and increase surface water temperatures, especially around the African continent. This will affect fish stocks and, as a result, threaten the livelihoods of small-scale fishing communities. "Acidity levels of our oceans predominantly affect fish larvae, which depend on calcium carbonate in the seawater to build their shells, skeletons and cell coverings," explained professor Geoff Brundritt, chairperson of the Global Ocean Observing System in Africa (GOOS Africa). "A higher acidity level hampers this process."

More than 15,000 Congolese have fled to South Sudan since the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) began launching attacks in north-east Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the United Nations refugee agency reported today. “It is critical to move all of these refuges away from border areas both for security reasons and to facilitate distribution of aid,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Ron Redmond told a news briefing in Geneva. “Access to the refugees will soon become impossible when the seasonal rains begin in April and roads become impassable.”

Repairing Zimbabwe's battered economy could cost as much as $5 billion, said Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on Friday, adding the country is looking to attract direct foreign investment to help its recovery. Meeting South African President Kgalema Motlanthe and Finance Minister Trevor Manuel to discuss a recovery strategy, Tsvangirai said Zimbabwe planned to use a number of currencies but was not considering adopting the rand as legal tender.

HIV prevalence in Kenyan adults has remained relatively steady since 2003, at around 7%, according to a major national study presented to the Sixteenth Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) on Wednesday. However, less than one in five HIV-positive adults were aware of their HIV status, and over half had never been tested for HIV at all.

Starting antiretroviral therapy earlier, before the development of symptoms, is the most likely way to reduce the high death rates after treatment initiation seen in people with HIV in resource-limited settings, two large cohort analyses show. The studies also show that the major disadvantage of starting treatment late - an increased risk of death - may persist for some years, burdening already overstretched health systems with illness that could be avoided by earlier treatment.

At its thirteenth general meeting on February 1st in Rabat, Transparency Maroc (TM) commended the efforts of many public institutions and civil society in fighting corruption in Morocco, but still described it as not good enough. Corruption remains deeply rooted, and the problem is only growing, according to the organisation.

São Tomé and Príncipe government has charged 38 people for allegedly trying to topple President Fradique de Menezes last Thursday, government has confirmed. Last Friday, justice ministry spokesman Justino Veiga announced the arrest of a group of men after the foiled coup and the confiscation of more than 310 assault rifles in the home of one of the opposition party leaders.

The recent two-percent drop in HIV prevalence in Zambia may not be a true reflection of the state of the pandemic in the country, health officials have warned. UNAIDS Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor Dr Michael Gboun told IRIN/PlusNews that while there has been a marked decline of HIV in the general population, some geographical areas and groups were showing an alarming increase.

, it is understandable that you are very upset with professor Mamdani, who so eloquently puncture all the lies you are peddling about Zimbabwe. But please, stop portraying yourself as a friend of Zimbabwe and an anti-imperialist. You are neither in the way you act in the case of Zimbabwe.

In your article you are mixing up things in order to pretend being an anti-imperialist.

You are of course totally right when you talk about the “pseudo-humanitarianism of the so-called international non-governmental structure." I suppose you have in view the so called international NGO-community, heavily supported by Western governments. In Sweden for example, the most NGOs engaged in developmental business are funded by the (conservative) government (between 80 to 95 percent). Western governments in many cases use the NGOs as a tool and human rights as a pretext to destabilise intransigent countries that oppose a neo-liberal agenda. Zimbabwe is a showcase and WOZA epitomize these organisations, wholly funded by the British as it is.

But you are deadly wrong when you talk of the “Mugabe dictatorship” and blame it for all the malice in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe has been ostracised from normal economic relations with the most powerful nations and financial institutions in the world for more than a decade. That is now taken its toll.

Then you mix things up. I follow you when you write that Idi Amin was manipulated by the British and eventually removed by Tanzania. A justified intervention, it seems.

But then it is not easy to grasp you. Do you really mean that the end goal of the present British Zimbabwe policy is, in connivance with Mugabe and Bredenkamp, to rob the Zimbabwean people? And that they will force Tsvangirai into a coalition government in order to perpetuate the scam? Isn’t there a spin to much in your machinations?

And in order to stop this heinous piracy you are calling on the Obama administration and US Justice department to prosecute the Britons who have been involved in corruption and fraud in southern Africa? Jesus! Aren’t you a little naïve here, Mr Campbell?

More interestingly and revealingly is that you are calling for the blocking of all international payments to Zimbabwe. Economic ostracism is partly to blame for the predicament in Zimbabwe and it is obvious how liberals change colours when they scent blood.

Recently Dagens Nyheter, the largest morning paper and leading liberal paper in Sweden, wrote:

“If the (Zimbabwean) borders were totally blocked, making it impossible to get food or money into the country, Mugabe would have difficulties to salary “his cronies” and would run the risk they may turn against himself.”

This way of putting things reveal of course a (white) liberal pipedream, namely that a deluge of blood would purify Zimbabwe from Mugabe and at the same time teach all the Africans and anti-imperialists elsewhere a lesson: stop support the cancer* in your midst or you will face the same destiny!

I remember when Madeleine Albright once got the question if the sanctions against Iraq were worth the price of 500.000 dead Iraqi children and answered: It’s a hard choice, but I think, we, think, it’s worth it.

Now, if the economic strangulation of Zimbabwe will succeed and the government of President Mugabe removed by this way of foreign intervention to the price of hundreds of thousands dead Zimbabweans, we will ask the Campbells around the world; Can you really justify such a price for the removal of Mugabe?

And most likely they will answer us: Yes, we can!

Mahmood Mamdani in skirts the Gukurahundi, never named, and completely dismisses the extent of it at some level:

"The Shona-Ndebele divide so conspicuous in the two guerrilla movements produced great tension after independence between the mainly Shona government and the mainly Ndebele labour movement, with Mugabe's ferocious repression in Ndebele areas in 1986 remaining the bloodiest phase in post-independence Zimbabwean history."

But Gukurahundi began in 1981 and it was at its worst, if I recall, between 1983 and 1985 -- though 1986 was no picnic for the Ndebeles. It continued in "relaxed" forms from 1986 to 1990 and into the next decade. Mamdani paints it as something that happened in 1986. He doesnt call it genocide, which it was/is.

Later Mamdani (recent citation on Zimbabwe) says:
"The first casualty was the rule of law, already tenuous by 1986."

Why 1986? This is like the recent book by gerard Prunier on Congo that cites the beginning of the war as 1998. There's something at work here, and its called "interests."

Perhaps the best analyses from which to situate Mugabe is that by UCSD professor Francis Njubi Nesbitt, whose definitions of collaborators with white power would cast Mugabe in the "comprador class".

An excellent article, especially for white people. Of course, Njubi doesn't get into the "silences" produced by Mahmood Mamdani, especially as pertains to the great lakes. (Mamdani was --is? -- very close to Museveni and Kagame and Jacques Depelchin).

Thank you Prof. Mamdani for, one of the few comprehensive articles on Zimbabwe. My focus, however, will be a point by point rebuttal to some of the falsehoods that

3) Kashiri is correct. The constitutional project was in response to the NCA. And no, the NCA was not, and is not a "democratic force". 100% of its funding comes from the US and the EU. While many members honestly believe they are fighting for democracy, their sponsors have always been focused on regime change. The NCA gained prominence when the West decided Mugabe had to go for disturbing western economic interests by fighting off the invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Back then, there was no other credible political organization to use to get at Mugabe, thus the NCA became that vehicle.

In response to Horace Campbell's : I can see where you are coming from. All the aspects of African Kleptocracy and neoliberal capitalist influence you describe are familiar for an African like me. I was in Harare 2001 and I had travelled there severally before.

When one reads such opinions as yours and compares them to Mahmood Mamdani's, it is easy to be confused. But here is my question, given that most African countries are ruled by Neoliberal kleptocrats, why is Zimbabwe special? Reading your article,

I would have liked to see data, schorlarly, right? showing how the 2001 ZIDERA has less impact on Zimbabwe as opposed to Brendenkamp and co. Since Kleptocracy was there before ZIDERA, are you saying what we see in Zimbabwe today is solely because of Kleptocracy? A historical review from 1979 and the issue of land redistribution could help set the context.

Otherwise, it sounds like you are saying Mugabe has no moral basis to fight imperialism without honestly analyzing the effects of ZIDERA on the people of Zimbabwe. In addition, how does Mugabe's support to Congo's Government feature here? The war in Congo, the imperial and capitalist interests in Congo are as much a factor here. Furthermore, South Africa has to face complex land redistribution issues sooner or later and how they deal with the Zimbabwe issue is critical. This is true of Namibia.

Now be honestly scholarly.