Acting deputy chief justice Zak Yacoob has responded indirectly to president Jacob Zuma's concerns about the power and intellectual vibrancy of the Constitutional Court. Zuma has questioned the split decisions emanating from the Constitutional Court: 'It is after experience that some of the decisions are not decisions that every other judge in the Constitutional Court agrees with...How could you say that [the] judgment is absolutely correct when the judges themselves have different views about it?' Yacoob said he would be 'perturbed if the 11 judges of the Constitutional Court agreed with each other, judgment after judgment, year after year' as it would suggest a court lacking in rigour and debate. Yacoob's statements come at a time when there is increasing public debate around the role and powers of the constitutional court. Both the government and members of the ruling ANC have made critical noises about the incursions of the judiciary into the political sphere.

Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe has asked the public protector to look into claims of corruption levelled against his partner, Gugu Mtshali - but he would do well to remember that this isn't the first time she has been linked to dodgy business dealings. This weekend, the Sunday Times reported that Mtshali had solicited a R104-million bribe to get government support for a South African company that tried to secure a R2-billion sanctions-busting deal with Iran.

Students in Swaziland will have their scholarships revoked if they engage in political activity, if the Swazi Government has its way. New rules for students presently being drafted state that ‘at its discretion’, the Scholarship Selection Board can terminate a scholarship ‘when a student is a member, supports or furthers the activities of a banned entity’. In Swaziland all political parties are banned, as are a number of pro-democracy organisations, including the Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO) and the Swaziland Solidarity Network.

As police and illegal vendors in Zimbabwe’s capital clash over licenses, others urge the government to address the underlying problems of unemployment and poverty. A federal government plan aims to address both, as the city government and residents association discuss a solution on the ground.

Reporters without Borders has said that Egypt remains on the list of countries 'under surveillance' in the area of freedom of internet activity and online content filtering. The North African country steered clear of the newly updated 'internet enemies' list, which along with the report was impacted by the so called Arab Spring. The report cited attacks against cyber dissidents, activists, and journalists seeking to expose alleged violations by military officers against peaceful protest movement trying to organize its second wave against the military rule.

This is a recording of a speech made by Arundhati Roy as a part of the Anuradha Ghandy Memorial Trust Lecture that was delivered on the 20th of January, 2012 at Xaviers college, Mumbai, India.

Platform has released a new briefing analysing Uganda’s draft 'Petroleum (Exploration, Development and Production) Bill'. The report – entitled 'The Ugandan Upstream oil law: A search in vain for accountability and democratic oversight', highlights the lack of parliamentary oversight, transparency, or consultation or involvement of affected communities in the proposed oil law. At the same time, the Bill does include clauses that restrict information flow and could potentially threaten or close down public debate.

Starting 2010, FEMNET has been partnering with South African-based African Democracy Institute (Idasa) and Zimbabwean-based Public Affairs and Parliamentary Support Trust (PAPST) in the Fredskorpset (FK) Exchange programme. The Exchange programme facilitates the exchange of personnel (ages 22 – 35 years) within participating organizations with an aim to transfer expertise/skills and promote networking for a period of nine months. The programme is supported by FK a government body under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Norway.

On the 50th anniversary of Kenya’s independence, many minority and indigenous communities feel that despite some constitutional gains, increased ethnicization of politics has deepened their exclusion, making their situation worse today than it was in 2005, a new Minority Rights Group International (MRG) report shows. The report titled 'Kenya at 50', reviews the current status of minority and indigenous groups in Kenya, particularly how legal and policy changes over the last five years have responded to the social, economic and political challenges confronting them. ‘Despite the adoption of the new Constitution in 2010, very little has changed in the way the Kenyan state approaches the question of minorities,’ says Marusca Perazzi, MRG’s Governance Programme Coordinator.

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the rights of a group of Somali and Eritrean nationals who were intercepted by Italian Customs boats and returned to Libya in 2009 were violated, under several provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights. Although this historic decision of the court was for a case under Italy's agreement with the Qaddafi regime, it has clear ongoing relevance, as refugees and other migrants continue to face real threats in their countries of origin, as well as in Libya. This link to the AfricaFocus Bulletin contains three short commentaries, with background explanations, on this significant court ruling, from the UK Human Rights Blog.

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...

Decades after peasants’ networks have advocated for a new legal instrument to protect the rights of small farmers to land, seeds, traditional agricultural knowledge and freedom to determine the prices of their production, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) may decide to start drafting a declaration on peasants’ rights next week. 'The idea of an international declaration on peasants' rights comes from our (base) because many small farmers don’t have access to land, work, water and seeds,' Henry Saragih, the general coordinator of Via Campesina, a movement representing more than 200 million small farmers around the world, told IPS.

Continued fighting in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has forced more than 3,000 civilians into Uganda since the beginning of this year, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says. In a statement, the UNHCR said that an average of 50 people were passing over into Uganda every day this year, after a series of attacks on farms and villages in the volatile northeastern region.

Kenyans on the micro-blogging sites Twitter and Facebook on Sunday heavily criticised global television network CNN for depicting grenade blasts in Nairobi as an eruption of 'violence' in the country. The news channel was forced to pull down a video seen as misrepresenting events by depicting Saturday’s grenade attacks that killed six and injured 63 as being widespread.

More than 200 have been killed and several others are missing in fresh fighting between two rival ethnic groups in the troubled Jonglei state of South Sudan officials said, raising stakes ahead of a disarmament exercise set for mid this month. The fighting erupted Friday (9 March) morning in cattle camps in Akobo County when armed men from Pibor in the same state crossed in from the Ethiopia borders and attacked the area, Jonglei state Local Government minister Duop Lam said.

A strike by health workers entered its 10th day on Sunday as private and referral hospitals struggled to cope. 'I am concerned about the anxiety, including psychological torture, Kenyans have gone through in the last few days due to the industrial action,' Health minister Anyang’ Nyong’o said in a notice. 'We are working around the clock to address the issues and reach an amicable solution,' read the statement, dated March 9.

A military court in Egypt has acquitted an army doctor accused of carrying out forced 'virginity tests' on women protesters, state media reports. Ahmed Adel was cleared because the judge found contradictions in witness statements, the state news agency said. The case was brought by one of the women, Samira Ibrahim, who said the 'tests' took place after they had been detained during protests last year. Demonstrators gathered outside the court to protest against the ruling.

Despite longstanding laws against gas flaring - the burning of natural gas during oil extraction - in Nigeria, and shifting deadlines to end the practice, the activity continues, with serious health consequences for people living nearby. In the Niger Delta, where most of the flaring takes places, residents living near gas flares complain of respiratory problems, skin rashes and eye irritations, as well as damage to agriculture due to acid rain.

The Prison Radio newsletter features posts about - and writing and commentary by - Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is serving life imprisonment without parole in the US for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, but whom many activists consider to be innocent. It also contains other news about prisoner campaigns and solidarity.

In line with calls from the Global South for changes in the UN governance system, a survey report carried out in 2010 showed overwhelming support for changes in the mandates and functions of the UN agencies and for NGO and private sector representation in UN governance. The government respondents to the survey were also equally strongly in favour of both, and more so than the UN respondents. Download the report by clicking on the link provided. To participate in a 2012 survey report, please .

Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has cautioned against blindly supporting President Jacob Zuma in his court battle with the DA as divisions among the federation’s leaders intensify. The Supreme Court of Appeals is expected to deliver its judgment on the application by the DA to set aside the decision of former National Director of Public Prosecutions, Mokotedi Mpshe, to halt prosecution on fraud and corruption charges against Zuma. In his political report to the federation’s central executive committee, Vavi said they could no longer use political excuses to protect Zuma.

After a massive strike by trade union federation Cosatu on 7 March, Lukhona Mnguni writes for Umbilo that he would 'definitely be feeling uncomfortable politically' if he was President Jacob Zuma. He compares the strike to a similar one that took place in the lead-up to the ANC 2007 elective conference in Polokwane that toppled former president Thabo Mbeki and asks if there is a realignment of forces poised to dethrone Zuma come an ANC elective conference in Mangaung in December.

In this letter to Members of the Executive Board of The United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO), James McFadden of the Fulbright Commission highlights the detention of a medical doctor in Equatorial Guinea as a reason for why the UNESCO-Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences should be scrapped.

A campaign by US activists to capture alleged Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony has gone viral on the web. Invisible Children's half-hour film on the use of child soldiers by Kony's Lord's Resistance Army has been viewed nearly 10m times on YouTube. But an article in Foreign Affairs accused Invisible Children and other non-profits of having 'manipulated facts for strategic purposes' was circulated on the web.

At the battered terminal of Tripoli’s tiny Mitiga airport, over 150 young men and women jostle to be repatriated home to Nigeria on Libya’s Buraq airlines. This journey to Lagos is one of hundreds the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has facilitated since the start of the uprising against Gaddafi’s regime over a year ago. IOM estimates that one million migrant workers were in Libya sending remittances home before the crisis, a heavy footprint for a Libyan population of under seven million.

'I am an Arab woman of colour, and we come in all shades of anger.'

The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on authorities in Togo to investigate a report that police assaulted a photojournalist after he took photos of officers seizing a motorcycle during a protest, according to media reports and local journalists. Koffi Djidonou Frédéric Attipou, a photojournalist with the weekly Le Canard Indépendant and the biweekly magazine Sika, told CPJ he was covering a protest over government human rights violations when he turned his camera to police confiscating a demonstrator's motorcycle nearby. Togolese police, facing numerous allegations of heavy-handed and abusive tactics, have had a number of recent confrontations with journalists covering their activities, according to news accounts and CPJ research.

Land is crucial to resolving South Africa's wealth gap. Here are 12 practical steps that could lead to a solution.

The development of the new constitution must follow a participatory approach: the government must provide and implement clear mechanisms for the participation of the Tunisian people in this historical process, which go beyond simple monitoring of and via the media. This was one of the recommendations made by participants of the seminar 'guarantying freedom of expression in the Constitution' organised by ARTICLE 19, Alpha Steppa, the development league of Kasserine, and Moulahedh at Sbeitla from 25 to 26 February.

The young journalist was not only devoted to his work but also to the community and the whole nation of Haiti. Those who were close to him remember Jean Ristil as courageous, humble and socially conscious.

The Zimbabwe chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) has criticised ‘empty’ promises of media reform made by the country’s coalition government. The criticism comes with less than a week left for Media and Information Minister Webster Shamu to implement key media reforms, after an alleged agreement by the principals in the unity government. Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai told a press conference recently that this agreement had been reached during a weekly meeting with his coalition partners more than two weeks ago.

This letter was written from jail and urges UNESCO delegates to cancel the President Obiang prize. Dr Mansogo also urges UNESCO to call upon the Equatoguinean government to release all political prisoners.

A full commitment to transformative change differs from a commitment to charity that does not recognise its inherent problematic nature, because the latter sustains itself on marginalization.

By merging domestic and foreign intelligence, the new Bill raises the unenviable spectre of the all-powerful apartheid-era Bureau of State Security – and not without good reason.

Millions of newborns, children and mothers continue to die needlessly, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where rates of child mortality are the highest in the world. In this region one out of every eight children die before their fifth birthday, twenty times the rate of industrialised countries. Speaking at a Healthcare in Africa conference yesterday (WED) Carolyn Miles, President and CEO of Save the Children, said although there has been a reduction in the under five mortality rate, the death of newborns was still the 'stubborn piece of the problem'.

The third Global Health Watch report shows that health financing, including dwindling support for AIDS, is one of the challenges facing global health. The third edition of the Global Health Watch report provides an analysis of health challenges facing the world today. It also seeks solutions to these challenges. The new edition identifies three main issues that affect people around the world. 'We talk about the three acts – the three main crises that face poor people every day...the crises of finance, of food and fuel, which are life crises squeezing people’s lives throughout the world,' said Peter Benjamin of the People’s Health Movement, during the launch of the report in Johannesburg.

Brushing aside high-level UN appeals for cooperation to halt murder and violence against gays and lesbians around the globe, Muslim and Arab countries recently stalked out of a Human Rights Council panel to tackle the issue. The 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Pakistan described homosexuality as 'licentious behaviour' while African group leader Senegal said it was not covered by global human rights accords.

The Tunisian unemployment rate reached 18.9 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year, with nearly three-quarters of jobless citizens under the age of 30. The rate marks a 0.6 per cent rise from the second quarter of 2011, according to data released by the Tunisian National Institute of Statists (INS) on 23 February. The total number of jobless Tunisians was reported at more than 738,000, a jump of 33,500 people.

The Brazilian government is stepping up South-South aid, to strengthen the South American giant’s status as a donor country and its international clout. It now provides assistance to 65 countries, and its financial aid has grown threefold in the last seven years. A project to extend financing for food purchases to five countries in Africa has helped confirm that Brazil, traditionally a recipient of aid, has taken its place among the group of foreign donor countries.

As the power struggle between capital and the working class intensifies over whom and how the economic crisis will be resolved, the working class would do well to recall the lessons of 2011 and build on them.

Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity can and has been used to deny fundamental rights that are guaranteed to all individuals under international law.

Gambia has appealed for food aid after it said that 70 percent of its crops failed during the last growing season, extending the reach of a food crisis already hitting millions of people across Africa's Sahel strip. Gambia's agriculture ministry said the impact of poor rains last year had been exacerbated by high world food prices, crippling household incomes in the West African state, which has ridden out previous food crises.

Twenty-five South Africans who suffered at the hands of the apartheid security police have claimed a small victory after a United States court ratified a settlement between the claimants and General Motors. Khulumani Support Group attorney, Charles Abrahams, has been quoted as saying that, 'The settlement is a small amount. It was a show of good faith on the part of General Motors, considering that they are bankrupt.' The claimants and the Khulumani Support Group, a lobby group for financial reparations for victims of apartheid, will share an amount of $1.5-million.

Nuclear power is the epitome of extremely dangerous concentration of energy, with massive cost externalization and is antithetical to the very idea of justice.

Newmont Gold has allocated around 20 per cent of its 'core assets' to two projects in Ghana - both of which have now come under fire from local communities. Human rights abuses have been reported from the Ahafo mine. And, in February, the people of Yayaaso, Adausina, Ntronan and surrounding communities in the Birim North District, eastern Ghana, carried out a peaceful demonstration against Newmont' proposed Akyem project.

Chances are that, no matter where you live on Earth, land acquisitions for mining, oil and gas might soon be at your door, says this report from the Gaia Foundation. 'This trend is now a major driver of land grabbing globally, and poses a significant threat to the world’s indigenous communities, farmers and local food production systems, as well as to precious water, forests, biodiversity, critical ecosystems and climate change. This report alerts global citizens to the dynamics in the extractive industries as a whole, and shows the alarming scale of this overall trend.'