Despite warnings of a third successive year of famine, a government spokesman in Zimbabwe said that the country’s food stocks were sufficient and it would not require relief aid from international agencies. State radio quoted Paul Mangwana, the Minister of Social Welfare, as saying that the Government had “ruled out food imports or receiving aid ...because the country has produced enough food for its requirements.”

This book shares the story of Tsoaledi Daniel Thobejane, an activist who was part of the South African liberation struggle and who suffered at the hands of the Nationalist Party regime. It is a book that is interesting because it examines the struggle through the eyes of the Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO), a much smaller liberation organisation compared to the African National Congress (ANC) that supported the philosophy of black consciousness. This is of value because “struggle discourse” post 1994 has been dominated by the view of the African National Congress (ANC). Thobejane’s book does make a small contribution to the realisation that there were others who opposed the full force of apartheid.

Thobejane takes the reader back in time to a world of hooded informers, traitorous policeman, consumer boycotts, vicious beatings, lives spent in and out of jail, detention without trial and police shootings – the kind of horror that characterised the struggle against apartheid.

Personal memories contain some interesting insights and stories about the struggle against apartheid. For example, Thobejane recounts how activists would cross-dress to escape detection by the police. In the case of one particularly astute cross-dresser, Thobejane recounts that it would take some time before even his own mother would recognise him and allow him into her house.

Sometimes it does feel that Thobejane falls into the trap of rhetorical political speech and the language used to describe the apartheid regime such as ‘beasts of the illegitimate regime’ becomes repetitive, while also obscuring the nuances of allegiances and loyalties that might have existed. Somehow though, the use of this language is excusable, given that the example quoted preceded his description of a vicious police beating and that in the turmoil of the 1980’s “beasts of the illegitimate regime” was probably exactly how a vast majority of people saw the security apparatus of the state.

The book is interspersed with discussions and suggestions about how the lives of ordinary South Africans can be improved, with a particular emphasis on education. While these are interesting and necessary, there is a sense in the latter stages of the book that it risks becoming a political manual rather than a personal insight into the struggle.

Perhaps this is merely a personal observation, but I felt that the strength of the book lay in Thobejane’s personal engagement with his experiences and that the book needed to separate this from the political reflections that he engages in. However, given his strong political background, it is understandable why this was not the case.

That criticism aside, this is an interesting book that highlights the unsung heroes of the struggle and strongly conveys how ordinary people gave so much for the cause of freedom.

* Reviewed by Patrick Burnett, Fahamu

* Published by: Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh
To place an order email: [email][email protected]

* Comment and Analysis: From Coffins to ABC's: Aids prevention in Uganda
* Pan-African Postcard: Truth is the first casualty of war
* Conflicts and Emergencies: Rights reports shine spotlight on Sudan's Darfur
* Human Rights: Focus on Eastern Angola
* Refugees and Forced Migration: Red cross cares for 7500 displaced by Plateau violence
* Women and Gender: West Africa and women's rights: What responsibility for judicial and extra-judicial stakeholders
* Development: Debt relief for poor faces $7.8b gap
* HIV/AIDS: Scaling up Aids treatment
* Environment: The politics of trash
* Books and Arts: A Deeper Wound: The South African/Azanian struggle for liberation

** Many subscribers may not have received Pambazuka News last week due to technical problems. Subscribers can read the entire edition – including last week's editorial on Zimbabwe, ‘The government wants the people to give up hoping’ by clicking on http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?issue=155

Africans are present in nearly every country on the planet. In the diaspora, Africans have produced thousands of newspapers and periodicals beginning in the nineteenth century. Unfortunately this potentially valuable resource is beyond the reach of scholars and others because of the absence of a comprehensive international documentation strategy for the collection, preservation, and access to these publications. The goal of the African Diaspora Press Project is to begin to address this vast task. The Project is in its infancy but over the 10-15 years that such an effort may take, hopes to provide valuable service to the scholarly community and beyond.

The World Bank is accelerating its funding for large dam projects to the detriment of the environment and locals in the countries where the projects are built, a report released last Thursday said. "So often it's the poorest that pay the price for projects that are supposed to bring development," said Peter Bosshard, main author of the International Rivers Network report. "Bank-funded dams have displaced more than 10 million people, flooded millions of hectares of lands and pushed many countries deeper into debt. Yet the bank is set to repeat its mistakes all over again," he added.

Global levels of fresh water resources per capita declined by 1.6 percent between 2001 and 2002 due to growing populations’ pressure on water resources, according to the World Bank’s Little Green Data Book 2004, launched last week at the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. The decline, which is the result of demographic increase, is even more dramatic in water scarce regions such as the Middle East and North Africa where growing populations decreased fresh water resources per capita by 2.5 percent.

Nigerian authorities detained an opposition leader last Thursday ahead of a mass anti-government protest. "They think that by arresting and detaining him they will stop the mass action, but they will not be able to," Balarabe Musa, chairman of the opposition-dominated Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, told Reuters. The group's mobilisation committee chairman Buba Galadima was detained by intelligence officers of the State Security Services in the capital Abuja, he said.

Many Nigerians remain ignorant about Aids. Nigeria has one of the world's highest numbers of people living with the Aids virus, the health minister has said. Eyitayo Lambo said that some 2.3m Nigerians have already died from Aids, while 3.8m were HIV- positive. Only South Africa and India have more people infected with HIV. The rate of Aids infection is much lower in West Africa than in southern Africa, where 30% of the population of some countries is HIV positive. Nigeria - Africa's most populous country, with some 130m people - has been criticised for not doing enough to fight Aids.

Public health experts met in New York recently to discuss expanding access in developing nations to artemisinin-combination therapy (ACT), which offers one of the fastest and most effective cures for malaria, USA Today reports. Malaria parasites have become resistant to older drugs, but funding for the newer ACT remains a problem. ACT costs about $1.50 for a three-day course, compared with 10 cents for older drugs such as chloroquine and Fansidar. Many African governments can devote just $5 per person annually to public health.

The Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) has condemned the continued rising wave of arbitrary arrest and detention of activists and human rights defenders in Zimbabwe. ZimRights' Deputy National Chairperson, Sheba Phiri was arbitrarily arrested by plain clothes police on 28 April, 2004 and detained at Bulawayo Central Police station together with other activists Mr Felix Mafa of PIFT, Goden Moyo of National Constitutional Assembly, Reggie Moyo of Bulawayo Agenda and two others. They were detained, interrogated and released two hours later.

Few would have predicted that a small, impoverished mountainous kingdom in southern Africa would set new precedents in the global fight against corruption, but, against all odds, the government of Lesotho continues to do just that. For the past five years, Lesotho has been doggedly prosecuting multinational companies who paid approximately $2 million in bribes to the former chief executive of the World Bank-funded Lesotho Highlands Water Project, a massive dam scheme that affected thousands of rural families. Their efforts have been remarkably successful. The former chief executive was sentenced to 12 years in prison; a South African man pled guilty to acting as a conduit for the bribes; and, most importantly, three multinational companies have been convicted and fined.

Even within its own ranks, Zimbabwe's ruling party has shown it is intolerant of ambitions hinting at expansion of the tiny independent press. It counts for very little that the government already controls all broadcast media, and that reporters who work for privately-owned publications live in fear of arrest and harassment. Last week a member of parliament (MP) was suspended from ZANU-PF for allegedly courting the publishers of the country's only independent daily newspaper, which was forcibly closed by the government seven months ago.

Police in Nigeria fired tear gas Monday to break up demonstrations over last year's presidential elections, which opposition members claim were rigged. In the capital, Abuja, police used tear gas on a convoy of vehicles carrying opposition leaders. There was similar action against protestors in the largest city, Lagos, where about 20 arrests were made.

Guinea Prime Minister Lounseny Fall has resigned, while on a visit to New York. During an earlier stopover in Paris, he told the weekly Jeune Afrique-L'Intelligent that he was resigning because President Lansana Conte did not give him enough room for manoeuvre to salvage the Guinean economy. A BBC correspondent in Guinea says it is likely that the minister announced his resignation from abroad because he feared for his safety and that of his family.

Preparations for the third and final phase of the Somali peace talks were proceeding smoothly on Friday, according to an Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) source involved in the proceedings. He told IRIN that the organisers of the talks, which are being held in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, under the auspices of IGAD, were pleased with "the way things were moving". "We have already started bringing in traditional elders from Somalia," he said.

Some 44 church leaders in the Central African Republic (CAR) completed last Thursday a four-day training course on HIV/AIDS awareness, organised by the Ecumenical Initiative on HIV in Africa and a local NGO. A member of the Ecumenical Initiative, Rosalie Koudougueret-Malogba, told IRIN that the church leaders, representing 15 religious institutions, were trained on the different means of HIV/AIDS infection as well as means of protection against the scourge.

Africa’s ability to manage the protection and finance the development of her children has been compromised by debts, diseases, armed conflicts and bad governance. As a result, the situation of the African child is alarming. The following are some of the glaring and shameful statistics:
- There are 80 million child workers across Africa and the number is expected to rise to 100 million by the year 2015.
- 120,000 child soldiers (under 18 years of age) have been recruited into Africa’s armed conflicts.
- 300 million African children live on the very margin of survival as victims of abject poverty despite the global prosperity.
- Some 12,100,000 African children are HIV/AIDS orphans and 2.4 million children under the age of 15 years are HIV positive.
- Some 30 per cent of African children of school going age are not in school. Generally, the average government spending on education amounts to 15.2 per cent of the total national budgets.
SOURCE: (UNICEF, Africa Recovery, ILO)

The government of Togo has closed the country's main university for an indefinite period following several days of protest by students which led to violent clashes with the security forces. The disturbances were the worst seen in Togo for several years. Charles Kondi-Agba, the Minister for Higher Education, announced on Sunday that the University of Lome had been closed until further notice "in order to facilitate a genuine and constructive dialogue with the students."

Government and social welfare NGOs are seeking ways to offset a pending education crisis for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) after school heads resolved this week to bar those unable to pay fees. Education Minister Constance Simelane ordered school principals to admit OVC in January, and promised to provide for the orphans' fees. The directive was controversial, with some education authorities and media pundits doubting government's ability to find and expeditiously release funding for fees as well as other needs, like uniforms and textbooks.

More than 60 groups representing farmer, consumer, environmental and development organisations from 15 African countries have sent an open letter of protest to the World Food Programme (WFP). These groups are protesting against the pressure exerted by the WFP and USAID on Sudan and Angola over their respective decisions to impose restrictions on GM food aid. The groups are demanding that the WFP and USAID immediately desist from misleading the governments of Angola and Sudan with a scenario of 'No Choice', and forcing them to accept GM food aid.

The devastating impact of HIV-AIDS on the education sector is of grave concern, says Basic Education Minister John Mutorwa. Motivating the largest allocation in this year's national Budget - a whopping N$2,4 billion - in the National Assembly, Mutorwa said the pandemic had the "potential to nullify all the good work that is being planned and done within the sector". The allocation, which is almost seven per cent more than last year, will provide for the education of 566 740 school children and 27 000 distance education learners, adult literacy for 40 000 people and the services of 23 000 staff, of whom 18 000 are teachers.

The international aid community is placing a growing emphasis on developing local capacity as the key to alleviating poverty and hunger in the developing world. Although ensuring the effectiveness of a capacity-building effort requires appropriate use of evaluation, few organizations have implemented a system for monitoring or evaluating the changes taking place during organisational development.

Europeans, North Americans, or Australians who rely on the tabloid press might well believe that their countries were under siege by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants. Sensationalist journalists and right-wing politicians map out dire consequences like rocketing crime rates, fundamentalist terrorism, collapsing welfare systems, and mass unemployment. But who are the forced migrants whose efforts to escape personal disaster provoke such debate? And can their flight really be said to constitute a worldwide crisis? An examination of migration history, as well as a careful categorization of forced migrants and their motivations, is key to understanding the reality behind the rhetoric and headlines.
by Stephen Castles

The World Organisation Against Torture has asked concerned people to write to the authorities in Kenya urging them to act on an urgent basis and prevent any further attempts to take over the lands of the Chepkitale (Ogiek) people in Eastern Kenya. This follows recent attacks on the Ogiek. The Kenyan government, including local authorities, bear an obligation to prevent human rights violations and to intervene to protect against violence, said the organisation in a press release.

In vibrant prose infused with equal parts satire and social criticism, Mda (The Heart of Redness) charts new emotional terrain exploring the Madonna-whore complex in a South African setting. Readers catch their first glimpse of protagonist Niki in the burnt umber brushstrokes of a Boer priest's canvases. Father Claerhout's models hitchhike from surrounding black townships to earn a pittance shedding their clothes for the artist-priest. While his intentions are innocent, those of the Afrikaner farmers Niki and her friends come into contact with are more prurient.

Freelance journalist Campbell here writes about the cost of diamonds not in dollars to the consumer but in blood, torture, and death for the unfortunate residents of contested mining areas in Sierra Leone. He explains that "conflict diamonds," or "blood diamonds," which account for only three to four percent of all diamonds sold, are mined in war zones, smuggled out of the country, and sold to legitimate companies, financing ruinous civil wars and the plots of international terrorists, including the al Qaeda network. The gems' value and portability have made controlling the diamond mines important to guerrilla fighters, who maim and kill innocent villagers to secure their territory.

This study documents a crucial dimension of the resistance of Nigerian civil society to a repressive and monumentally corrupt military state in the late 1980s and 1990s in Nigeria. Employing a neo-Gramscian theoretical framework, the study relates how a section of the media defied censorship laws, outright bans, incarceration and the assassination of opposition figures, to prosecute the struggle for democracy. It captures the tensions and contradictions between a pliant section of the media which sought to legitimise the state and a critical section of the same media which, in alliance with radical civil society, invented rebellious outlets to carry on the struggle against dictatorship.

Parsalelo Kantai has been shortlisted for The Caine Prize for African Writing (http://www.caineprize.com/) 2004 for his story, Comrade Lemma (http://www.kwani.org/comrade%20lemma.htm). He was recently awarded a Reuters fellowship at Oxford University for a year. Parsalelo is one of Kenya's leading investigative journalists, and the editor of Ecoforum. His Ecoforum cover story, A Deal in the Mara, has thrown light on the business practices in the Mara Conservancy.

The North Sudan programme is one of our largest in the Horn, East and Central Africa Region. A new position has opened up for an experienced and dynamic manager to oversee the Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology, Administration and Logistics teams.

(OSISA) is a leading regional foundation, established in 1997 by investor and philanthropist George Soros, to create and sustain the institutions, policies and practices of an open society, where good governance, human rights and justice are respected and upheld. Its programmes broadly focus on Education, Media, Human Rights and Democracy as well as Information Communication Technologies. In addition to undertaking advocacy, and working through multi-level partnerships with others, OSISA oversees US$5 million in grants annually across a region made up of Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

I was disturbed by Gerald Caplan's facile and superficial accusations against "the Roman Catholic Church" in his article about Rwanda's genocide (Pambazuka News 150). Who is this "Roman Catholic Church" of which he speaks? Many, many official church people were killed in those days as were many lay members. The Roman Catholic Church suffered terribly along with everyone else.

Caplan accuses the Pope of not having apologized for the role of the Church in the genocide. It is hard to understand why a journalist of such reputation ignores the statements that the Pope has made wherein he acknowledges the role that some members of the Church played. In the Church there were both perpetrators and victims.

But the "Church" which encompasses all of the people of God cannot be accused. Many in the Church risked or gave their lives to save members of another ethnic group. There were heroes just as there were villains. We are all guilty of that crime. We are all responsible for its healing. Caplan's article hardly takes us in that direction.

GERALD CAPLAN RESPONDS: Strangely enough, my criticism of the RC Church as an institution is hardly controversial at all. I'd say that most survivors I've met, even those that continue calling themselves Catholics, agree; that in the many presentations at which I've named the Church as one of the great betrayers of Rwanda over the past century, including at a major conference in Kigali in April, no one, Rwandan or otherwise, has ever challenged me; and that almost all students of the genocide concur about the perverse role of the Church. It's true that many Catholics were killed during the genocide, including priests and nuns, and that many played a heroic role in trying to save or protect Tutsi threatened by the genocidaires. But against that are the large number of documented cases of priests and nuns who actively cooperated with the genocidaires.

This of course can be interpreted as individual actions. But the collective responsibility of the Church goes well beyond the despicable actions of certain of its members. It was Catholic missionaries who created the false stereotypes of Hutu and Tutsi in the first place, which led to the unbridgeable chasm between them. It was the Church, through its control of the education system, that brainwashed all Rwandans into believing their destructive ideology. It was the Church that made Rwandans believe that ethnic identity was paramount. It was the Church that effectively co-ruled colonial Rwandan with the Belgians. It was the Church that gave moral legitimation to the Hutu dictators who ruled the country after independence. It was the Archbishop of Kigali to whom Mme. Agathe, wife of President Habyarimana and head of the conspiratorial Akazu, personally confessed. It was the same Archbishop who agreed to join the executive committee of the ruling party for many years, even though that party was based explicitly on Hutu supremacy and anti-Tutsi discrimination. It was the Church at both the highest and the parish level that failed to protest in the years prior to the genocide as anti-Tutsi propaganda washed over the country and massacres of Tutsi accelerated.

All this was bad enough. Then came the genocide. Throughout the 100 days, the Church as an institution failed utterly ever to condemn the genocide, indeed ever to acknowledge that there WAS a genocide happening before its very eyes, not to say with its cooperation. Never did it demand that the genocidaires halt their targeted killings. Nor, after it was over, did the leaders of the Church in Rwanda ever acknowledge their corporate responsibility or apologize for their complicity and/or passivity. As for the Vatican, while it has acknowledged that certain bad apples existed, it too has consistently denied any institutional responsibility. Indeed, it has actively hidden priests suspected of aiding the genocidaires. And to this day it uses language that subtly questions whether there ever was a genocide. In his message on the 10th anniversary of the genocide, the Pope said that in 1994, "serious fighting broke out between Hutu and Tutsi". That's a quite remarkable way to describe an elaborate conspiracy by Hutu extremists to annihilate all of Rwanda's Tutsi civilians. But this way, the Pope need make no apologies for his Church's role, and indeed he has never done so.
It took the Church 2000 years to apologize for its central role in creating and promoting anti-Semitism during its first 2 millennia. Maybe Rwandans just need to learn more patience.

Sudan has been re-elected as a member of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, a controversial move that was protested by the United States and human rights groups after the African group of U.N. member states late last week presented a list of four candidates for four open seats, guaranteeing the election of Sudan, Kenya, Guinea and Togo. At the Economic and Social Council at U.N. headquarters in New York, where voting took place, the U.S. delegation walked out following remarks by U.S. Ambassador to ECOSOC Sichan Siv, who said Sudan's candidacy was "entirely inappropriate" given reports of "ethnic cleansing" in Sudan's western Darfur region.

Over thirteen years after the collapse of the Siad Barre regime, Somalia remains the only country in the world without a government, a classic example of the humanitarian, economic and political repercussions of state collapse, including a governance vacuum that terrorist groups can take advantage of for safe haven and logistical purposes. The International Crisis Group warns in its latest report that if peace is to be attainable, the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) must end its own internal divisions. "The U.S. and EU need to provide more active support to heal the regional rivalries or they will continue to fuel a low-intensity conflict and ensure that no functioning government comes to power," said the ICG.

President Olusegun Obasanjo has directed the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to carry out a comprehensive investigation into the alleged fuel import racket that cost the corporation huge sums of money in foreign exchange. The president also directed the corporation to recover from oil trading companies and their collaborators in the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC), a subsidiary of the NNPC, the total sum of $143 million. The NNPC, which received the report of the committee set up to investigate the rising cost of demurrage paid by the NNPC on its imported fuel cargoes and the mounting debts owed the corporation by major oil marketers, had already sacked seven senior officials mostly from the PPMC.

Uganda can save $700m annually if 10% of the value of Government procurement contracts was not lost to corruption, the World Bank has said. Rogati Kayani, the World Bank's East Africa procurement coordinator, said Uganda loses millions of dollars every year due to substandard procurement practices, which include false declaration, undervaluing of supplies, and outright corruption.

A Mauritanian court will rule next month in a case involving controversial business dealings by the son of France's late president Francois Mitterrand, Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, a lawyer for the prosecution said Monday. Mitterrand, who is already under investigation for alleged corruption, money-laundering and illegal arms sales to Africa, particularly Angola, is accused of having cut former business partner Olivier Collonge out of profits in Iwik, a Mauritanian-based fisheries firm they owned jointly.

Malnutrition due to the ongoing food crisis, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and overcrowded urban areas are all contributing to a rise in tuberculosis (TB) infections in Zimbabwe. Nicholas Siziba, the national coordinator of the Ministry of Health's special TB programme, sounded the alarm while visiting Matabeleland South province - one of the worst-affected in terms of TB rates.

As the cost of medical care in Zimbabwe continues to rise, an increasing number of patients have turned to traditional healers for assistance. As early as five o'clock in the morning, patients accompanied by their relatives start arriving at the homestead of Erina Muguyo, a renowned traditional healer in the Porta Farm area about 30 kilometres west of Harare.

An estimated 2.4 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation facilities, while 1.1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. By 2015, countries across the world have pledged to provide another 1.5 billion people with access to improved drinking water, and another 1.9 billion people with access to basic sanitation facilities. Now, the Swiss Tropical Institute, in a report commissioned by the World Health Organisation (WHO), has outlined the significant economic benefits to the world, and particularly to developing countries, if the Millennium Development (MDG) and World Summit on Sustainable Development goals are met. People with access to safer, cleaner and healthier water and sanitation facilities would become sick less often.

The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) released on World Press Freedom Day its annual publication, "So This Is Democracy?: State of media freedom in Southern Africa". This is the tenth consecutive year in which MISA has issued this publication, which records incidents of media freedom violations monitored by MISA in the previous year. The current edition therefore details media freedom violations in 2003. MISA issued 188 alerts in 2003 about media freedom and freedom of expression violations in SADC countries. This is a decrease of 9,7 per cent over the 208 alerts recorded in the previous year.

On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day 2004, CREDO for Freedom of Expression and Associated Rights emphasised the importance of press freedom and freedom of expression to democracy, stability and development. While agreeing with UNESCO’s global theme of conflict as a serious threat to the media, CREDO’s Coordinator Rotimi Sankore stated “it is important to pay attention to the causes as well as the consequences of conflict. A significant cause of conflict in many countries is a lack of the freedoms of expression, association, assembly and political participation.” “In this context the greatest threat to the media and individual journalists in Africa remains the legal and institutional framework for media law and practice. Criminal defamation laws, sedition and insult laws, absence of freedom of and access to information, illegal licensing of media outlets and journalists, and systematic intimidation is still being used to attack the media, undermine democracy and pave the way for conflict which in turn, further endangers the media.”

Across Southern Africa the legacy of settler colonialism lives on in a dualistic agricultural system that has been perpetuated first by deliberate state policies and, more recently, by the forces of free market capitalism. Small-scale farming, which provides a precarious living to million of poor rural households, remains severely neglected by policy makers in the region. Recent seizures of commercial farms and other land in Zimbabwe and increasing militancy among land activists in the region, suggests that a radical demand for land remains strong among much of the rural population. This paper explores the dynamics of land reform and land policy in Southern Africa with special consideration of the radical struggles for access to land and resources.

A landmark case in the Supreme Court of Appeal that may have a bearing on all future land issues in South Africa has started in Bloemfontein. Forty thousand people living at Modderklip, a piece of land next to Daveyton near the border between Gauteng and Mpumalanga could be evicted if their case fails. However, the direction the government would take is at present the main issue and the topic of international interest. Three years ago the Johannesburg High Court agreed to the request for an eviction order by Abraham Duvenhage, the owner of the farm. However, according to the Modderklip residents Duvenhage could not pay the sheriff the R1.8 million to carry out the eviction. He requested the Pretoria High Court to force the State to implement the laws and provide suitable accommodation for the 40 000 or compensate the land owner.

Conflicts between African lions and human communities threaten the lion's survival throughout its range. A new study by Earthwatch Institute-supported scientists working in the Tsavo region of Kenya investigates the annual toll on livestock and provides a hopeful model for coexistence through compensation and seasonal livestock management. The study, published online in the journal Biological Conservation, concludes that $8,749 would be needed annually to offset the economic damage of a vigorous population of 26 adult lions inhabiting two ranches in Kenya totalling 160,000 acres.

Zimbabwe's participation in the multi-billion-dollar Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP) is in doubt following bickering over the awarding of title deeds. It has emerged that the private sector, which was billed to develop Gonarezhou National Park, has spurned government's offer for a stake in the initiative unless they are given title deeds for their specific areas of interest. The project, which also involves Mozambique and South Africa, has suffered protracted problems on the Zimbabwean side as there is no development as yet of requisite infrastructure such as roads, bridges, hotels and lodges, a senior official in the Tourism and Environment Ministry said.

Without peace, growth, change and development are impossible to achieve. This three week certificate for experienced development practitioners focuses on the concepts, approaches, tools and skills needed to influence policies and practices from the community level up. Apply now to learn about best practices and new innovations in peacebuilding while sharing experiences with practitioners from around the world. Established in 1959, the Coady International Institute is a centre of excellence in community-based development and offers a range of educational programs for development practitioners at the Certificate, Diploma and Master's level. Partial bursary support for tuition is available through the Institute and is awarded on the basis of need.

The Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, a new tri-annual refereed journal providing a forum for the sharing of critical thinking and constructive action on issues at the intersections of conflict, development, and peace, is calling for papers for its first issue. This Volume II No. 2 is focused on evaluation and impact assessment that fall in the peacebuilding and development nexus.

International Justice Tribune is a new online newsletter launched by four professional journalists who until February 2003 edited the journal Diplomatie Judiciaire. For seven years, their association Réseau Intermedia chronicled the work of international tribunals and legal proceedings related to international justice across the world. Without taking sides over the different forms of justice, International Justice Tribune will continue to record the development of international justice and to provide a forum for the challenges and questions that it raises.