With the world marking International Women's Day this week, women in South Africa might find themselves asking what benefits 10 years of democracy have brought them - especially in the important area of reproductive health. "Women have different levels of access to reproductive health services at a range of levels," says Martha Molete, Communication Officer at the Planned Parenthood Association of South Africa (PPASA). She told IPS that urban women generally had more access to health care than their rural counterparts. However, women in rural areas were undoubtedly more aware of their contraceptive options than they had been a decade ago.

The idea of an International Women's Day first arose at the turn of the century, which in the industrialized world was a period of expansion and turbulence, booming population growth and radical ideologies. International Women's Day has assumed a new global dimension for women in developed and developing countries alike. The growing international women's movement, which has been strengthened by four global United Nations women's conferences, has helped make the commemoration a rallying point for coordinated efforts to demand women's rights and participation in the political and economic process. Increasingly, International Women's Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of women's rights.

The South African treatment advocacy group Treatment Action Campaign on Monday threatened to file a lawsuit against the government before the country's April 14 elections unless the government begins its national HIV/AIDS treatment program, Reuters reports.

This paper argues that the government of the United States is contravening its commitment under the "Doha Declaration" of 2001by using technical assistance, bilateral and regional trade agreements, and the threat of trade sanctions to ratchet up patent protection in developing countries. The paper states that the U.S. is pressuring developing countries to implement patent laws which go beyond TRIPS obligations and do not take advantage of its public-health safeguards in order to benefit the influential U.S. pharmaceutical industry.

Kenya's efforts to ensure it has more healthy citizens shows no sign of improvement except for a reduction in the HIV/Aids prevalence, a survey report indicates. Consequently, the Kenya Family Service Provision Survey, launched in Nairobi this week, recommends a radical review of priorities and approaches in addressing the country's health issues. However, the report says there are pockets of past success stories, including a substantial increase in contraceptive use and a considerable success in the overall reduction of family sizes.

Camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in war-ravaged northern Uganda face critical problems of waste management, inadequate access to safe water, high disease prevalence and widespread dependency on food hand-outs, an NGO reported on Monday. Action Against Hunger, USA, said in a statement that the camps were mostly made up of huts with thatched roofs, called tukuls. Because families cooked inside the huts, fumes from the fires had increased the rates of acute respiratory infections among children.

At least 2,500 people have fled Plateau State in central Nigeria following a fortnight of violence between Muslims and Christians that has left 62 dead and more injured, the Red Cross said last Thursday. Patrick Bawa, a spokesman for the Red Cross in Nigeria, told IRIN that his organisation had registered 2,500 displaced people in neighbouring Bauchi State by Wednesday afternoon and more were still arriving.

The seizure of the Hakhaseb multi-purpose community centre-kindergarten at Usakos on Monday has left many children and their family members traumatised. Usakos Municipal personnel, accompanied by armed Police officers, stormed the centre on Monday and locked the complex. Angry mothers told The Namibian that their children were having nightmares and anxiety attacks during the night. "The children are scared that the Police will come and lock them up," said Fielie Walda, whose one-year-old daughter attends the kindergarten.

One of the main promises of the Obasanjo administration when it kicked off in 1999 was to fight corruption. One of the first bills presented to the National Assembly was the Independent Corrupt Practices (and Other Related Offences) Bill. The bill was duly passed. Many human rights activists condemned that Act which was considered too harsh. They argued that the law could be a potent weapon for a dictator to hunt the opposition. On the other hand, the President and the ruling party argued that existing law had too many loopholes which offenders were exploring to escape punishment. Four years after, Nigeria is still deemed the most corrupt country in the world.

Vice-President Nevers Mumba has declared that Zambia shall conquer corruption the same way colonialism was conquered. And the US government has committed US $1 million to enhance Zambia's fight against corruption. Officiating at the Transparency International Zambia (TIZ) stakeholders' workshop on a comprehensive anti-corruption strategy, Vice-President Mumba said the hour had come for Zambia to get rid of corruption.

The Ecohealth Training Awards encourage graduate-level students to examine the relationships between the environment, human health, and development from a holistic perspective through field research that contributes to understanding these relationships as inter-related. The focus of this year’s competition is health in an urban context. Applicants are asked to submit proposals that use ecosystem approaches to human health to analyse the links between human health and urban ecosystem conditions, as well as identify potential intervention strategies based on better natural resource management that improves human health and ecosystem sustainability. Deadline for receiving applications: May 15, 2004

What does it mean to a town to have 10% of its children lose parents? Sarah Crowe from Unicef visited a school in Thaba Tseka, one of the worst hit districts in Lesotho. Residents blame large-scale development projects and road construction that have brought migrant workers to the area for the increasing HIV/Aids prevalence rates.

Celebrities can cause considerable change in society. Little wonder you have the likes of celebrated soccer star Kalusha Bwalya getting involved in the measles campaign, late Princess Diana in the land mine crusade and Bono in debt relief for developing countries, and the list is endless. Having realised the grand impact that celebrities give in effecting social change, the ministry of Labour and Social Security which has been working in close collaboration with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in the fight against child labour in Zambia, have identified local celebrities to help in fighting the scourge. They have picked on two local artistes, St Michael (Michael Zulu) and his wife Sista D (Daputsa Nkhata-Zulu) to be their child labour ambassadors in Zambia.

The African Women's Economic and Policy Network (AWEPON) is a network founded on the principle that women have the fundamental right to shape economic policies that impinge on their lives. It has partners several African countries and works with them to strengthen the capacity of women especially at the grass root and national levels to influence the shape of economic policy. Find out more information about Awepon and other organisations by reading the Femnet bulletin.

Africa is a less corrupt place and there has been a global recognition of how harmful corruption is and how detrimental and damaging it is to development, according to Dr. Peter Eigen, founder of the global corruption watchdog group Transparency International. "On the international front, far more effective measures to protect countries from corruption are now in place. Five years ago, it was not a crime in domestic law for a firm from Germany or Japan or the US to offer bribes abroad. In fact, in many instances bribes were tax deductible! But there has been a sea change in the international legal system now. Some 35 countries have acceded to the OECD Convention Against Corruption, which means that those firms now cannot bribe abroad with impunity in places like Africa." This is an extract from an interview with Eigen in e-africa, the electronic journal of governance and innovation.

Dear sisters,
Happy International Women's Day to you. The 8th of March is meant to be a day to celebrate how far we have come as women worldwide. But for us North of your border, we have no cause to celebrate. I am writing this letter to talk to you, woman to woman. I believe in other women. I don't buy into the now oft heard refrain that "women don't support one another". I celebrate your presence in the highest offices of your land, and I want to continue to have faith in other women.

But, I am making a lot of assumptions in writing this letter to you; that you are in leadership to promote and protect the rights of women. I assume that you feel for other women. Yes it is an assumption that those of us who have worked as feminists know so well. We vote for women to get into high offices and assume that they will stand up for our collective rights.

We think that because one woman has gone through a particular struggle she will easily identify with the struggles of others. That like I said is an assumption that has since been proved to be just that, an assumption. So I am writing this with these huge assumptions that you are interested in the rights of women wherever they are, whoever they are. If you don't, stop reading here.

Sisters you are letting us down. The women of Zimbabwe are hurting. Thousands have been physically abused, raped, are unable to survive from day to day, and millions are groaning under the weight of oppression.

Honourable Zuma, I am not talking about the British's "kith and kin", that you like talking so much about. I speak only of YOUR kith and kin. Black women.
Women who have never owned land in pre-colonial times or post colonial times and who still have not been given any of the celebrated land that was redistributed.

But what all these women know is that their rights are violated day in and day out in the name of this land. Our President is on record for saying that women cannot be given land in their own capacity, unless they don't want to get married. On the former commercial farms all poor black women know is that they have lost their means of survival. You and I can argue from the safety of our good jobs that they were being exploited by the Rhodies. But to them it was a question of half a loaf is better nothing. Now it's a case of no bread is better than half a loaf! In the absence of alternatives they resort to commercial sex work, with all the dangers that it now entails, (your government's denialism around HIV/AIDS not withstanding here. In Zimbabwe we are quite clear that one in every three people has HIV).

Hundreds of female nurses and teachers fled from their rural posts since the 2000 elections till now, because of the politically motivated and organised violence that engulfed our country. Most of them are still unemployed as we speak, because the government refuses to allow them to "transfer".

Those who stayed continue to endure emotional and physical violence from so-called war vets and the Green Bombers. Young girls some as young as nine or ten, have been raped and infected with HIV by gangs of marauding state sponsored thugs. There are no figures of how many black women and their families have been displaced from their homes.

Have you never wondered what life must be like for an ordinary black Zimbabwean woman right now? Let me share with you what I know, bearing in mind my class status. A packet of 10 sanitary pads costs Z$10 000. A domestic worker in Highfield township earns Z$15 000 if she is lucky. I leave the horrors of her monthlies to your active imagination. Saying hello to a doctor is now $50 000. 10 good pain- killers will cost you Z$15000. A one- way trip into town from the nearest township by combi is $500.

Most walk back and forth every day. The woman still has to cook, clean and take care of everyone. Add to all this, the impact of the HIV crisis. It is women who still care for the sick, who have to care for their babies and who are still denied their reproductive rights. We are now back to the good-old system of pulling girls out of schools, because poor families can’t afford to pay fees for both girls and boys. Our gender roles and rights questions haven't gone away simply because we are in a political crisis. They just get worse.

You have probably seen various videos and read countless stories about what is going on in Zimbabwe. I know many of you doubt the authenticity of these stories given the "messengers" who put them out. But let me go back to the woman thing; you and I know the price that women pay for publicly speaking about any human rights violations that they suffer. We know the questions that are asked; What had she done? What was she wearing? Where was she going? Who is she? Can we really believe her? In the case of Zimbabwe's political violence against women add another set of questions; Which party is she from? Are you sure she wasn't paid by the British? Is it really true that Robert Mugabe a whole liberation war leader can do that? And in the case of the socio economic crisis: Surely these figures are exaggerated?

Isn't this just Western propaganda?

That my dear sisters, is why I said you are letting us down. We are dismayed, by the comments that some of you, particularly Nkosazana have made about our situation in Zimbabwe. As any woman in a violent situation will tell you, there are no prizes awarded for speaking out. If anything you are ostracized by your own family/community. You are branded a bad woman, and worse you are violated several times over for daring to open your mouth.

Your public denials and accusations against those of us who dare to speak hurts. Telling us that what we are going through is "British propaganda" is the same as accusing any South African woman who is raped of telling lies.

Your silence and quiet diplomacy does more harm to us emotionally than the physical wounds we carry. Those of you who have ever experienced domestic violence, (and I am sure there are a few among you), or rape must be quite familiar with this; the pain you feel when your own family doubts your story. The anguish you go through when his and your own family accuse you of being the bad woman. The anger when they literally tell you to change your behaviour.

That is what you and your government are doing to the women of Zimbabwe.
Partly blaming the victims, mostly silencing them. As you celebrate International Women's Day, think about the women and girls of Zimbabwe. We are over six million nameless, faceless individuals. Go beyond Bob and Morgan. Talk to us. We are here. As our rights continue to be violated in the name of "national sovereignty", all we ask of you is not to deny our pain. Don't silence us and deny us the space to name our violations and our violators. May none of what we are going through EVER happen to any one of you or any woman of South Africa.

* Everjoice J. Win is a Zimbabwean feminist activist. She is a former Commonwealth Adviser to the Commission on Gender Equality, (CGE). This letter was first published in South Africa’s Mail and Guardian newspaper. It is reproduced here with kind permission of the author.

* Send comments on this editorial - and other events in Africa - to

* Please see the Women and Gender section of Pambazuka News for more information on International Women's Day.

The Argument

We have become so used to the rhetoric of the “global village” that talking about African nationalism sounds anachronistic and outdated. But that is exactly what I wish to address. In this paper, I will explore the “National Question” in Africa and its erstwhile expression, nationalism, in three sections. First, I will discuss the rise of post-Second World War nationalism and its true essence, if you like. Then, I will address the debunking of nationalism in the post-cold war period under the apparent hegemony of neo-liberalism and so-called globalisation. Finally, still holding high the Gramscian adage, “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will,” I anticipate the insurrection of a second nationalism.

Post-War Nationalism
The Essence of Nationalism

Introducing his book Freedom and After, Tom Mboya remembers what he calls the “proudest day of my life.” That was December 6, 1958, the opening day of the All Africa Peoples Conference in Accra, Ghana. Earlier in the same year, there had been a conference of independent African states, of which only eight existed at the time. “These two conferences,” says Mboya, “marked the rediscovery of Africa by Africans.”

"This rediscovery of Africa by Africans was ‘in complete contrast to the discovery of Africa by Europeans in the nineteenth century.’ The Conference of Independent African States had marked the birth of the African personality, and the delegates had all agreed on the need for Africa to rise and be heard at all the councils of the world affairs. "

The conference was attended by some five hundred delegates from political parties, trade unions, and organisations involved in the great awakening that was African nationalism. Patrice Lumumba and Roberto Holden were there, so was Dr. Kamuzu Banda. The nationalist upsurge in the post-war period in Africa was a great moment for a people that had been denied humanity by centuries of slavery and colonialism. Ideologies centered on Kwame Nkrumah’s “African Personality” or Leopold Senghor’s “Negritude” or Kenneth Kaunda’s “Humanism” or even Mwalimu Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa expressed one central theme, nationalism.

The quintessence of nationalism was, and is, anti-imperialism. It was a demand and struggle against, rather than for, something. It was an expression of a struggle against denial – denial of humanity, denial of respect and dignity, denial of the Africanness of the African. It was the struggle for the “re-Africanisation of minds” or to “rebecome Africans,” as Amilcar Cabral put it. Archie Mafeje sums up the period well:

"It was the historical experience of racial humiliation, economic exploitation, political oppression, and cultural domination under European and American slavery, colonialism, and imperialism that gave rise to theories of ‘African personality’ and ‘Negritude.’ At the centre of these theories was the question of the liberation of the Black man – his identity or the meaning of ‘being-Black-in-the-world.’ It was a philosophical or moral justification for action, for a rebellion which gave rise to African nationalism and to independence. The latter was the greatest political achievement by Africans. It was an unprecedented collective fulfillment."

Early African nationalism should not be confused with the traditional discourse on the expression and development of nations in the womb of capitalism in nineteenth century Europe. Rather, it was an expression of a people that was an antidote to White supremacist rule. In a sense, it is correct to say that nationalism was the process, a process of struggle, in the formation of nations. In that sense, perhaps, nationalism preceded nations. Militant nationalists grasped this to some extent although they did not express it as consistently nor did they wholly appreciate the defining characteristic of nationalism, that is, anti-imperialism. In explaining the objectives of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) to the UN Trusteeship Council in 1955, Nyerere said:

"Another objective of the Union is to build up a national consciousness among the African peoples in Tanganyika. It has been said – and this is quite right – that Tanganyika is tribal, and we realise that we need to break up this tribal consciousness among the people and to build up a national consciousness. That is one of our main objectives towards self-government."

This formulation is no doubt problematic. It lends itself to the reactionary side of bourgeois nationalism, or what later came to be called “nation-building theories.” Let us look at another formulation; this time, from a leading member of a national liberation movement and an avowed Marxist – Marcelino dos Santos, then a leading member of FRELIMO. In an interview with Joe Slovo of the South African Communist Party, Dos Santos analyses the tension between tribe and nation:

"The main conditions for [the] successful rejection [of tribalism] are present. On the general point of whether we have already moulded a nation in the true sense of the word, I want to say that a nation is based on concrete realities. And the most important reality in the present stage in Mocambique is the fight against Portuguese colonialism…It is our common fight against our common oppressor, which plays an outstanding role in creating a national bond between all the diverse groups and cultures…Of course, a nation is a product of history and its formation goes through different phases. In this sense, the work for the final achievement of nationhood will continue even after independence, although the fundamental elements of nationhood are already in existence and in the process of being further developed in Mocambique. "

Dos Santos’ conception of nation formation does not differ fundamentally from Nyerere’s presentation of “nation-building,” although their points of departure appear different. Dos Santos, like Slovo, takes as his starting point the Marxist theory of nation (this, presumably, is “the true sense of the word”), which, in its Stalinist version, emphasises the European conception of a nation – common territory, language, culture, and economy. If these ingredients are not present, or not present to a sufficient degree, you have a tribe at worst or a nation in the process of being formed at best. Implied in the European conception of nation also is the idea of voluntarism, that is, forming or building a nation from the top. Perhaps the point to underline in Dos Santos’ exposition is that the anti-colonial struggle is an important ingredient of nationalism. The problem with Dos Santos- and Nyerere-type formulations is that the nationalist petty bourgeoisie, when it rose to power, wavered on anti-imperialism and ended up with top-down statist notions of “nation-building.”

I find Amilcar Cabral’s propositions more fruitful. They contain a germ of great potential in understanding the historicity and specificity of the National Question in Africa. Cabral suggests that post-war African nationalism was a struggle not only to reclaim history but also to assert the right of the African people to make history: “The foundation of national liberation lies in the inalienable right of every people to have their own history.”

Cabral also makes the point that “so long as imperialism is in existence, an independent African state must be a liberation movement in power, or it will not be independent.” These are profound insights. First, nationalism is constituted by the struggle of the people against imperialism, thus anti-imperialism defines African nationalism. Second, nationalism, as an expression of struggle, continues so long as imperialism exists. Third, the National Question in Africa, whose expression is nationalism, remains unresolved as long as there is imperialist domination.

Archie Mafeje builds on these insights, observing that “all the struggles in Africa and most of the Third World centre on the National Question.” He perceives nationalism as the common denominator underlying the different interpretations and connotations of the National Question. Furthermore, he says, nationalism is always a reaction against something. In African history, nationalism has been a reaction to imperialist domination. As proto-nationalism, the reaction was against the colonial phase of imperialism, or political domination by aliens. Since independence, meta-nationalism has been coping with the changing modalities of imperialist domination.

The dominant discourse on the National Question has run along different lines, however. In both the political right and left, the central debate has been over whether Africa has nations and nationalities or tribes and ethnic groups. In the Eurocentric worldview, nations represent a higher level in the evolution of social and political formations than tribes. Fed on Stalin’s rather schematic formula, and therefore unable to find nations within the territorial units called African countries, even radical Marxists, like Slovo, have found it difficult to theorise adequately about the National Question. In the hands of rightwing pundits, it has been worse. The so-called lack of nations has been used to debunk and delegitimise African nationalist movements and their achievements. With the current hegemony of neo-liberalism and the imperialist comeback, the spokespersons of imperialism have been quick to condemn nationalism as nothing more than an expression of ethnicity and tribalism.

Note this typical sample from an editorial in US News and World Report:

"In the Third World, there had been grand ideas of new states and social contracts among the communities, post-colonial dreams of what men and women could do on their own. There were exalted notions of Indian nationalism, Pan-Arabism, and the like. Ethnicity hid, draped in the colours of modern nationalism, hoping to keep the ancestors – and the troubles – at bay. But the delusions would not last. What was India? The India of its secular founders – or the ‘Hindu Raj’ of the militant fundamentalists? What exactly did the compact communities of Iraq – the Kurds, the Sunnis, and the Shia – have in common? The masks have fallen, the tribes have stepped to the fore."

This type of denigration strikes at the heart of nationalism, that is, at anti-imperialism. Be that as it may, let us look more closely at the various aspects and expressions of nationalism.

* This is an extract from a paper 'The Rise, The Fall and The Insurrection of Nationalism in Africa' by Issa G. Shivji, Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam Tanzania. The paper is from Keynote Address to the CODESRIA East African Regional Conference held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, October 29-31, 2003. To read the full paper, please click on the URL below.

The Narc Government is yet to root out grand corruption, several key speakers said last week. The launch of the Transparency International Bribery Index 2003 was turned into a Government-bashing forum with participants saying that grand corruption is still a reality in Kenya. They argued that the current administration only fought corruption in the first few months after it came to power.

Excessive force by South African security forces and deaths in police custody were serious problems in the country's human rights performance, a global rights review has found. The annual United States State Department's Human Rights Reports, a hefty country-by-country survey comprising almost two million words, found that the government in 2003 generally respected the human rights of its citizens.

Government has announced plans to expropriate commercial farms, in an effort to speed up land reform. Prime Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab, making the announcement on NBC radio and television, said farmers who lost their farms would be justly compensated as provided for in the Namibian Constitution. Gurirab said delays in implementing land reform, brought about by the "cumbersome" willing-seller, willing-buyer process left expropriation as the only other way Government would meet the "high public demand for agricultural land".

Economic, political and civil pundits last Thursday frowned on a new 45-strong Cabinet announced by President Muluzi, saying its attribute was “a pain” and its size was “a rebuff of the aims of a loan the House approved only last week.” “The size of the new Cabinet defeats the purpose of a structural adjustment credit [of US58 million] which the National Assembly approved last week for fiscal reforms,” said Economics Association of Malawi (Ecama) spokesman Perks Ligoya.

To mark International Women's Day on 8 March 2004 and celebrate the high professionalism of women journalists, UNESCO is launching for a third time the global initiative "Women Make the News" calling on all media producing daily news to hand over editorial responsibility to a woman editor-in-chief on that day. Through this initiative, UNESCO seeks to give more visibility to women journalists, to their editorial work, as well as to women as voices in the media.

No one is sure just how many people have died due to HIV/AIDS in this town of 15,000 but to the people who live here, the deaths are adding up. The rising death rate here as well as across sub-Saharan Africa, where 29 million people are living with the disease, were enough evidence for 36-year-old Nduka Ozor, a Lagos-based business man and coordinator of the community’s Youth Forum, that people needed to get the facts about the disease.

Nelson Banda is a 28-year-old journalist from Zambia. Fifty-eight year old Moses Mbugua is the head of United Way Kenya, a non-profit organisation that provides support for community programs. In November last year, both men took part in the Men's Travelling Conference - a group of more than 100 men from Zambia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa who travelled across eastern and southern Africa to raise awareness and mobilize other men to support gender equality and end gender-based violence (GBV). The Travelling Conference was organised by the Men for Gender Equality Now Network, an initiative by FEMNET, the African Women's Development and Communication Network.

For the first time in recent years, justices of the Supreme Court are facing a barrage of criticisms related to bribery, according to the latest newsletter of the Independence Advocacy Project. The Chief Justice of Nigeria Justice Muhammadu Lawal Uwais had to speak out openly in court in Abuja in February on the issue: "We have nothing to hide. Let the police step in and do their job. We are interested in getting to the root of the matter. Let me say and assure all who are here and who would hear of this matter that there is absolutely no truth in the several uncouth and insupportable allegations made against me and my brethren in this court."

Civil servants in Kenya have threatened to go on their first-ever strike at the end of March if government fails to award them a 600 percent pay rise. The Kenya Civil Servants Union, which has been in existence for a year, says it has been negotiating with government on behalf of about 250,000 workers - but that little progress has been made concerning wage increases.

The government of Sudan has suspended contact with an umbrella opposition group, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), because it has allowed a rebel group from war-torn Darfur to join its ranks. The government spokesman, Sa'id Khatib, told IRIN on Monday that the government had suspended all contacts with the NDA "about four days ago", because the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) was now one of its members. "We have suspended all contacts until the NDA clarifies why it has brought a fighting group on board," he said. "Fighting and dialogue do not go together."

Top U.S. generals are touching down across Africa in unusual back-to-back trips, U.S. European Command confirmed Tuesday, part of a change in military planning as U.S. interest grows in African terror links and African oil. Trips by two top European Command generals follow last week's similarly low-profile Africa visit by the U.S. commander in Europe, Marine Gen. James L. Jones.

Former Zambian president Frederick Chiluba on Monday appeared before two different courts on corruption and theft charges but both cases were adjourned due to disorganisation in the prosecution team. Chiluba, accompanied by his wife, Regina, first appeared before a magistrate's court on charges of stealing $4-million from the nation's Treasury together with his former director of intelligence Xavier Chungu, but the trial once again failed to take off.

Hutu rebel group FNL continued sporadic attacks on the Burundian capital Bujumbura and surrounding areas, despite January peace talks and in Uganda fighting continued, with Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels massacring as many as 200 civilians in a northern refugee camp 21 February. These are two updates from the African continent in CrisisWatch, a publication of the International Crisis Group, that summarises briefly developments during the previous month in some 70 situations of current or potential conflict.

This paper looks at what the 'right to education' means in theory and practice, and outlines what a rights-based response to education in Africa would entail. It argues that although the concept of rights has become increasingly commonplace in the discourse of international development there is a massive gap between the language and practice of rights. This is starkly apparent in education, where the basic rights of millions of people are routinely violated, and particularly in Africa.

The Burnet Institute is the only Australia NGO that focuses exclusively on health. The Institute's Centre for International Health (CIH) has been supporting HIV prevention activities with a local organisation in Manica province since 2000. However, in 2004, this work will be significantly expanded through the design and implementation of a 5-year capacity building program that will seek to build the technical and institutional capacity of Mozambican organisations involved in the response to HIV in Manica.

Duties will include: manage projects, backstop and provide technical assistance for credit, housing finance and community development programs in locations in Africa; some international travel; assist in new program development, proposal writing, and drafting budgets.

The dramatic increase in social inequalities within and among countries in the last twenty years has had a most negative impact on the health and quality of life of large sectors of the world's populations. In The Political Economy of Social Inequalities, scholars from a variety of disciplines and countries analyze the political and economic causes of these inequalities, their consequences for health, and some proposed solutions.

This study covers a variety of political and economic aspects of Africa's and South Africa's relationships to the world. The author considers the context of global apartheid, in terms of international stagnation, uneven development and African marginalisation, and evaluates the South African setting as a telling site of worsening inequality. Where then does the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) stand on the largest economic and political problems? South Africa's other proposed global reforms are also discussed. Finally, the author records an emerging ideology based not on commodification via globalisation but on decommodification and deglobalisation, and the strategies, tactics and alliances required for African and international progress.

In Uganda when one talks about art it stipulates three things. One may think about the beautiful artefacts like mats, table spreads and baskets whose production occupies a good number of hours of many a housewife. Or better still the numerous utilitarian items like stools, headgear and body accessories made from beads most of which are imported from Kenya. The third and rather obvious evocation is the paintings, sculptures and drawings that are produced as a result of formal and informal training. Among artists and art promoters in Kampala, art refers to the paintings (Kampala artists are of late obsessed with painting; a tendency dictated by the ready market for them) and sculptures produced in conformity with western aesthetics. Read the rest of this article on the African Colours website.

Among the headlines featured in this issue are:
- Engendering peace agreements: A key strategy for successful reconstruction;
- Towards Beijing plus 10: Which way for southern Africa?
- Gender parity in education: countdown to 2005;
- Rumo a Beijing + 10: Que caminho para África Austral?
- Examining gender dimensions in SADC constitutions;
- Searching for alternative development paths;
- News briefs and Calendar of Events.

The international community is facing new repatriation operations to many countries in Africa, and to prepare for this purpose a meeting is scheduled for March 8 to 9 in Geneva. The meeting aims at raising the profile of repatriation and the reintegration of refugees in Africa, thus enhancing the commitment of countries and donor and partner agencies to meet the challenges posed by the exercise.

It is an island of tranquillity in an ocean of squalor, poverty and the hustle and bustle of Africa’s largest open-air market. The small garden tucked away in the Merkato market in the capital, Addis Ababa, is a refuge for hundreds of children, many living on the streets or forced into prostitution by poverty. "This is a place where they can escape from it all and just be themselves," said Anania Admasu, who heads the local charity Children Aid Ethiopia (Chad-Et).

Despite the fact that the Botswana government prides itself on gender equality in school enrolment, girls struggle against huge disadvantages to obtain an education. "The hardships the girl child had to face in the past are still endured today. It all starts at home in the morning when she wakes up to make sure that the house is swept and prepares food for the whole family [before going to school]," said Boipelo Semere, a member of the Girl Education Movement. According to the Ministry of Education, there has been a dip in the enrolment of girls in primary schools from 50.7 percent in 1993 to 49.4 percent in 2003. Girl enrolment in secondary school has also fallen from 53.5 percent in 1993 to 51.9 percent in 2003.

Refugees fleeing fighting in Sudan say government forces are attacking them to get information on rebels. Some of the 25,000 refugees who fled the conflict two weeks ago told the BBC that militiamen and government forces drove them from their homes. The BBC's Grant Ferrett in Chad's capital Ndjamena says the testimonies flatly contradict the Sudanese government announcement earlier this month that peace and security had been restored after a year of fighting.

UNDP and the Government of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea will invest US$5.2 million over the next four years to train 2,000 teachers, 36 education advisors, and 45 school inspectors to implement an "Education for All" project. The aim is to have all children in the central African country attend and complete primary school before 2010, five years ahead of the deadline for achieving the second Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education. This will help the population of one million people reach the over-arching goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015, since illiteracy is a major cause of poverty.

Around the world, in rural and urban areas alike, indigenous children frequently constitute one of the most disadvantaged groups, and their rights - including those to survival and development, to the highest standards of health, to education that respects their cultural identity, and to protection from abuse, violence and exploitation - are often compromised. At the same time, however, indigenous children possess very special resources: they are the custodians of a multitude of cultures, languages, beliefs and knowledge systems, each of which is a precious element of our collective heritage.

Hundreds of Somali refugees are returning home from Djibouti with the start of UNHCR repatriation convoys to north-western Somalia. This comes as aid agencies appeal for $111 million to help the war-torn country. Some 220 Somali refugees returned from Djibouti to the self-declared republic of Somaliland in the north-west last Friday with assistance from the UN refugee agency, bringing to more than 430 the number of refugees who have gone back since the middle of February.

The Centre for Civil Society, based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, is offering two post-doctoral fellowships, as part of our commitment to promote new and innovative research on civil society. The post-doctoral fellowships are for a duration of one year, at R150 000 p.a. The successful applicants are expected to be based at the Centre and to participate in its activities.

The purpose of the Fund is to provide a grant to an African non-governmental organisation, engaged in research and policy development on issues of priority to women. The fund is intended to recognise the work of an African organisation, and to provide flexible and reliable support for initiatives that might not otherwise receive funding from other sources.

This year is the 10th Anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. An international campaign is underway to mobilise to mark this anniversary - "REMEMBERING RWANDA". As our contribution to this campaign, we will be featuring this special section called Remembering Rwanda. We also plan to publish a special issue on Rwanda in April 2004. Get involved! Organise an event in your institution, town, village or city. Send us information ([email protected]) about what you are doing to commemorate the anniversary and to provide solidarity to the rebuilding of Rwanda.

Ten years after the genocide that saw Hutus kill nearly one million Tutsis in just 100 days, Rwanda is still trying to come to terms with its bloody past. Theophile Ntaganda is one of thousands of killers now being released from prison. He killed his mother-in-law and two of his wife's sisters during the genocide. He wants his wife back but she has moved on, forging her documents and marrying again. Filmed over a year, this BBC production is set in a country struggling to come to terms with one of the worst genocides in the twentieth century.