Pambazuka News 473: Land reform is common sense
Pambazuka News 473: Land reform is common sense
Each year between 50 000 to 100 000 women worldwide are affected by obstetric fistula, a hole in the birth canal. The development of obstetric fistula is directly linked to one of the major causes of maternal mortality: obstructed labour.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya's (UOC) Department of Food Systems, Culture and Society are partnering to offer a fully accredited, online certificate in Food Security: Assessment and Action.
This is a statement prepared by participants at the special meeting of the African Union s Extended Technical Committee on the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plan for Africa in Pretoria, February 18-20. The Statement reflects the views of participants, on how to move forward with approaches national and regional strategies for country-driven pharmaceutical innovation and access to medicines.
Gado's cartoons this week feature a trouser-dropping Jacob Zuma appealing for sanctions on Zimbabwe to be dropped, and the Kenyan parliament's offer to pass President Obama's healthcare bill – at a cost.
The press conference celebrating 100 days before the World Cup kick-off left the big question unanswered, argues Azad Essa: How will South Africans benefit from the World Cup? For Essa ‘only the dim-witted, government or FIFA communication officers walked away feeling that the World Cup was really about anything more than ending Afro-pessimism and stroking a couple of shiny suits'.
Pambazuka News 472: Staggering from pillar to post: Zimbabwe's 'unity' government
Pambazuka News 472: Staggering from pillar to post: Zimbabwe's 'unity' government
Sitting in my office in Johannesburg reading the daily newspaper published for the Beijing+15 Review at the Conference on the Status of Women in New York, I feel a sense of discomfort, a sense of a world going wrong. First, I read the article ‘Playing it safe or losing ground?’ where we find out that the Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, is not present at the meeting. Second, the governments' have agreed to come out with a Declaration after the Review, not an outcomes document.
Women are yet to make significant inroads into the media 15 years after the Beijing Platform of Action recognised its centrality in advancing women’s rights. Preliminary findings of the 2010 Global Media Monitoring Project conducted by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) suggests that women constitute less than a quarter of those interviewed, heard, seen or read about in mainstream broadcast and print news.
Rescue teams in Uganda are still digging into heaps of mud in an effort to rescue survivors of a landslide that has so far killed 88 people while 400 are still missing. Lack of advanced rescue equipment has complicated the rescue efforts. There are no earth movers on site and some residents are digging with their bare hands.
International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has accused leaders from across Kenya's political divide and businessmen over their role in the post-election violence. Details of Mr Moreno-Ocampo’s submission to the Pre-Trial Chamber show how the suspects planned and executed what he refers to as a “criminal policy” against civilians.
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe said on Thursday that he was prepared to stand for re-election if asked to do so by his Zanu PF party. "If Zanu PF says yes, I will," 86-year-old Mugabe, who has ruled the former British colony since independence in 1980, told journalists in a rare press conference. Elections are due in two years.
Zimbabwe's power-sharing government looks unlikely to step down in 2011 as planned because it has failed to draw up the reforms needed to ensure free and fair elections, political analysts say.
The main opposition party in Togo has claimed widespread irregularities in the country's presidential election. People in Togo voted on Thursday to chose a new head of state - five years after hundreds died following the last, disputed election.
The UN has begun talks with Democratic Republic of Congo on withdrawing its peacekeeping mission - the biggest UN operation in the world. UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said his officials would take a month to assess how the pullout of 20,500 personnel could be carried out.
HIV has become the leading cause of death and disease among women of reproductive age worldwide, the UN programme on HIV/Aids says. At the start of a 10-day conference in New York, UNAids launched a five-year action plan addressing the gender issues which put women at risk.
Guinea's new transitional government should take concrete steps to ensure redress for victims of the September 2009 massacre of more than 150 opposition supporters in a stadium in the capital, Conakry, Human Rights Watch has said in a letter to the new government.
The European Union Election Observation Mission to Sudan should consider the impact of ongoing human rights abuses and insecurity on the elections process, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to the mission on March 2, 2010.
Fifty Congolese human rights and civil society organizations, along with Human Rights Watch, have lodged a formal complaint against Colonel Innocent Zimurinda, a senior army officer based in North Kivu province, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Since October 2009 a total of 114,017 refugees have fled armed clashes in Equateur Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and found refuge in the Republic of Congo (RoC). These clashes originated in inter-communal disputes over farming and fishing rights but later widened to other parts of the province.
Uganda’s members of parliament (MPs) are pressurising government to make public details of oil production-sharing agreements it signed with various international oil companies.
Adolescent girls have often been missing in policy and programming. Yet many believe that their well-being the key to eliminating poverty, achieving social justice, stabilizing the population, and preventing foreseeable humanitarian crises.
After the Democratic Republic of Congo cancelled an IFC backed mining contract over disputed payments, the World Bank arm has declared that it will not begin new projects in the country until the dispute is resolved. The IFC is currently active in nine projects in Congo with a commitment of $104.6 million.
The South African authorities must investigate the delayed police response to last month's attacks against refugees and migrants and their property in Siyathemba Township, 80km south east of Johannesburg. The authorities must also ensure that those responsible for the attacks are held accountable.
Client: ActionAid
Subject: International Communications Advisors
Closing date: 18th March 2010
International Communications Advisor
£30K - £45K (depending on location and experience)
Various: 1 x Africa (Johannesburg/Nairobi); 1x Europe (London); 1 x Asia (Bangalore/Delhi/Bangkok); 1 negotiable (all must be located in an ActionAid existing office)
ActionAid’s programmes are changing the lives of millions of people and challenging the decisions which keep poor people locked in poverty. Join ActionAid’s International Communications team as an International Communications Advisor and help ensure our external communications and campaigns around the world continue to get the attention and support to make a difference.
Providing communications consultancy and capability development services to our international and national teams, you will deliver strategies and advice, and support the development, implementation and monitoring of plans that increases the quantity and quality of our communications outputs and thereby raise profile and funds.
You are a strategic thinker with high level technical capability in more than one core communications discipline (online/media/brand/publications). You have experience of producing, coordinating and implementing multi-media communication strategies and of working in an international environment.
In addition to your communications expertise you have a track record of capacity building through training, facilitating and coaching, knowledge and experience of organisational development and the gravitas to quickly develop effective working relationships at all levels in a multicultural environment.
To apply for the role of International Communications Advisor go to:
Closing date: 18th March 2010.
We are an equal opportunities employer. We warmly welcome applications from all sections of the community and aim to promote diversity. Reg. Charity No: 274467
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemns firmly the physical assault and violence by security operatives and supporters of the opposition Sierra Leone people’s party (SLPP) in Bo, Southern Sierra Leone against ten journalists.
Following a request for additional information from the International Criminal Court (ICC) earlier this month, its Prosecutor has named the 20 people he says are most responsible for the deadly post-election ethnic violence which swept Kenya in December 2007 and January 2008.
The United Nations mission in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) is closely monitoring efforts to establish a government – including an independent electoral commission – and to resume plans for long-awaited elections in the West African country, where a political crisis following the dissolution of the government last month sparked deadly street protests.
Africa is lagging behind the rest of the world in developing renewable energy projects with initiatives aimed at producing clean and ‘green’ energy remaining largely under-exploited, warned a new report released by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
At least 30 people were killed in Sudan after clashes between two rival tribes in the volatile southern region, witnesses said. Deputy state governor David Noc Marial has said clashes began after armed men from the Dinka tribe's Atuot and Ciek clans clashed in south Sudan's remote area over the weekend.
A dispute could break out between Ghana and neighbouring Ivory Coast, if immediate steps are not taken to enter into appropriate negotiations to redefine the international boundary between the two nations. Ghana's Western neighbor Ivory Coast is reportedly laying claims to portions of the huge oil wealth in the deep waters of the Western Region of Ghana.
In this week's emerging powers news roundup, Asian tree provides low-cost water purification method for developing world, China strengthening Africa’s infrastructure base, Diamond regains its glitter thanks to Chinese demand, and Indian tourists to South Africa expected to double by 2012.
Africans are getting wealthier more quickly than previously believed, according to a new study that also suggests the poorest continent's riches are spreading beyond the narrow confines of its elite. "Africa is reducing poverty, and doing it much faster than we thought," the study by U.S.-based economists Xavier Sala-i-Martin and Maxim Pinkovskiy said.
About a year ago, Muqtar Ali's brother was shot dead by gunmen in the busy Bakara market of Somalia's capital Mogadishu, and his $200 in cash was stolen. Ali says that if a new mobile money transfer service unveiled by Somalia's biggest mobile telecoms firm last month had been in place then, his brother would still be alive.
In the context of its ongoing work on new trade and development partners in Africa, the Development Centre hosted a presentation and debate of Asia/Africa expert Deborah Brautigam’s new book The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa. Professor Brautigam began by explaining away the greatest myths surrounding China’s engagement in Africa and ended with a summary of the different approaches to development held by China and traditional donors to the region.
Over time, women’s rights advocates have named a host of contributing factors to violence against women. Perhaps none of these has been less explored than the proliferation and unregulated use of small arms and light weapons – until now. A new book, Sexed Pistols: The Gendered Impact of Small Arms and Light Weapons, explores how these weapons impact women and men differently.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has insisted that Zimbabwe’s unity government needs to make more progress before targeted sanctions against the Mugabe regime are lifted, resisting pressure from South African President Jacob Zuma.
The national executive council of the MDC has resolved that SADC should be called in to mediate in the long running stalemate between parties in the Global Political Agreement. Party spokesman Nelson Chamisa said his party had evaluated the political landscape currently prevailing in the country and found out ‘things were going backwards instead of forward.’
Civil society organisations have warned of worsening human rights abuse at the hands of state security agents, explaining that in the last three months there has been an escalation in the number of threats, intimidation and harassment against its members.
More than a dozen people were killed and many more were hurt when two clans clashed in central Somalia, residents and community elders said on Friday. The Qubeys clan and the Suleyman sub-clan of the Habargidir clan started fighting the previous day in Amara village, 90 km north of the pirate base town of Haradheeere. The fight was over a dispute over land ownership.
Africa's economic growth could be held back for another generation unless global investors help the world's poorest continent to improve its unreliable energy networks, a British minister has said.
HIV stakeholders are calling on the Medicines Control Council (MCC) to speed up the registration of critical anti-HIV medication or face legal action. The Southern African HIV Clinicians Society has sent an appeal to the health minister to intervene and address the MCC registration process which they describe as the single biggest obstacle to getting affordable access to medicines.
The Government has unveiled the National Information Communication strategic plan that will run from 2010 to 2014, and is expected to usher the country into the global information "super highway".
Federal Government has said henceforth, patients attending Federal Government Hospitals can now report on the quality of services through SMS. With the support of MTN and Glo GSM Networks, who are providing the platform with which the service are being provided, the Federal Ministry of Health said it is poised to check the activities of quacks through the Patients' Feedback Platform with the generic shortcode 30500.
This year's 8th Annual Digital Africa Summit is set to be Africa’s premier ICT business summit, creating more opportunities for learning, partnerships and business, with ICT’s, telephony and broadband being globally recognized as a prerequisite for social and economic development the opportunity to engage positive change has never been greater.
A study presented at the recent Seventeenth Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections founds that Ugandans presenting at a TB clinic grossly overestimated the likelihood that they had HIV. It also found that those who thought they had HIV were significantly less likely to refer members of their household for HIV testing than those who did not think so.
Slower progress towards achieving Millenium Development Goals on health is strongly correlated with a country’s burden of HIV disease and non-communicable diseases, according to an analysis by researchers from the London School of Hygiene, Oxford University and the University of California San Francisco published today in PLoS Medicine.
Kenyan women are becoming infected with HIV during pregnancy at very high rates, and repeat testing prior to delivery, or at the earliest possible opportunity after birth, should be encouraged in order to reduce mother-to-child transmission, Kenyan researchers reported last week at the 17th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in San Francisco.
Three major public-sector unions launched a general strike Wednesday (March 3rd) after two months of negotiations with the government reached an impasse. "We're not fans of strike action," Democratic Labour Federation general secretary Abderrahman Azzouzi said, "but after a two-month halt in the negotiation process, we had to do something."
Maghreb countries should abandon protectionism in order to boost lagging regional trade, according to participants in a recent conference on economic integration organised by Tunisia's Foreign Ministry. The conference on Maghreb Economic Integration, which was held on February 17th to mark the 21st anniversary of the establishment of the Maghreb Union, was attended by high-ranking Tunisian officials, businessmen and professors.
Kenyan companies are missing billions of shillings in new revenue because of lack of expertise to develop projects that help reduce carbon dioxide emissions and therefore earn from the global carbon trading market. The global carbon trading market, which rewards projects that help reduce emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, is now worth estimated Sh12.5 trillion ($170 billion), according to industry data provider, Carbin Point, but only a very small fraction of this money, estimated at two per cent, is coming to Africa.
A severe shortage of highly-trained medical personnel is one of the many challenges to providing health care at a local level across Africa. Task shifting - permitting less-specialized people to carry out certain functions - is one proposal to over come this, but it is meeting resistance.
The 4th International CBA conference (21-27th February) gathered representatives from the developing world to share knowledge and developments in community-based adaptation. The Community Based Adaptation Exchange (CBAX), an IIED and IDS project, collaborated with the AfricaAdapt Network to report from the conference via blogs, photos and videos. The coverage of the event has been hosted on the CBA-X platform.
Education - particularly the education of girls - is fundamental to development, and is increasingly recognized as not only a national but also a global responsibility. The recent international effort called the Fast Track Initiative has significantly expanded basic education, notes Oxfam International in a new report.
The opening of an exhibition by young, black women artists at Constitution Hill turned sour when Arts and Culture Minister Lulu Xingwana stormed out of the exhibition, calling the work "immoral". Xingwana, whose department gave R300,000 to the Innovative Women exhibition, which was launched in Johannesburg to coincide with Women's Day last August, left before she was due to speak at the opening.
An online petition containing more than 450,000 signatures has been presented to the Uganda Parliament, urging members to withdraw a proposed bill that, if passed, would broaden the criminalization of homosexuality in the East African country and introduce the death penalty in certain cases.
About 27 students, suspended from UMthwalume high school, on suspicion that they are homosexuals, have been allowed back in school. This was a result of a meeting between parents of suspended learners, the school governing body and the Department of Education of Ugu Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal
Al-Shabab, the Somali Islamist opposition group, has announced it will stop World Food Programme (WFP) operations in Somalia. The armed group said on Sunday that food distributed by the UN agency had disadvantaged local farmers and accused the WFP of being politically motivated.
Women & Mobile: A Global Opportunity is a study on the mobile phone gender gap in low and middle-income countries. The study report was launched at the Mobile World Congress by Rob Conway, CEO of the GSM Association (GSMA), Cherie Blair, Founder of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women and Brooke Partridge, CEO of Vital Wave Consulting. The Mobile World Congress was held in Barcelona, Spain, from 15 - 18 February 2010.
A new initiative to bring environmental and financial benefits to local communities in the impoverished highlands of Ethiopia has been announced in Ethiopia. The Humbo Assisted Natural Regeneration Project is Africa's first large-scale forestry project to be registered under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol. It will bring both economic and social benefits to poor communities in Ethiopia as well as environmental benefits as the project will cut an estimated 880,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over the next 30 years.
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has signed a grant agreement of US$8 million with the Republic of The Gambia to improve the production and marketability of livestock and horticulture products, specifically targeting rural women and youth nationwide.
Medical male circumcision is now widely recognized as an important HIV prevention tool, and several African countries have included it in their national HIV strategies. IRIN/PlusNews lists the progress of 13 nations in eastern and southern Africa identified as priority countries for male circumcision scale-up by the UN World Health Organization.
A husband and wife can keep separate homes, but only with the husband’s approval. A divorcée can keep her ex-husband’s name – if he agrees. A girl should be able to marry at 15. These and a dozen other changes to the family code are being proposed by Mali’s top Islamic council, even though they were blocked last August after strong opposition from some Muslim leaders.
The government of Sierra Leone has announced that from Independence Day (27 April) it will abolish user fees for pregnant women, lactating mothers and children under five, but will this, on its own, improve their lot?
Upenyu Makoni-Muchemwa interviews Freedom Nyamubaya, one of the few field operation commanders in Zimbabwe’s war of independence. She is now a writer and rural development activist. Makoni-Muchemwa finds Freedom shaped by her past: ‘If I weren’t in the struggle, I wouldn’t be the same person. It was an education in itself; it was managing to live with nothing.’ When asked about her past desire to start a political party in Zimbabwe, Freedom states: ‘Politics is no longer about any ideologies, or policies, it’s not about building the country. I would like to be remembered as somebody who contributed to the development of the youth, or the development of Zimbabwe.’
With the death of both Rashid Kawawa of Tanzania and Akena Adoko of Uganda in January this year, Kintu Nyago compares their legacies. Of Kawawa he says: ' If Nyerere… was the grand architect of Tanzanian nation building, regional liberation and security, then Kawawa was his trusted, skilled, implementing mason.' Of Adoko, however, Nyago is not so praiseworthy. He argues that Adoko's actions were 'selfishly and politically calculated:… intended to retain power… against the wishes of the people of Uganda.'
If Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill is passed into law, the implications for LGBT people, and for the rights of everyone across Africa are ‘horrific’, writes Sokari Ekine. ‘Utterly inhumane’, the bill violates all African Union and International human rights legislation and treaties to which Uganda is signatory, says Ekine, but if it were to be passed, the chances are strong that some of 38 African countries criminalising same-sex relationships would attempt to copy it. Can a new book ‘Urgency Required: Gay and Lesbian Rights are Human Rights’ help to prevent legislation that threatens to cast homosexuals as ‘illegal beings’ rather than human beings?
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/472/62731_diego_garcia_tmb.jpgM... socialist party Lalit de Klas has written to environmental NGO Greenpeace UK, asking it to reconsider its support for plans by the British government to create a marine protected area on the Indian Ocean island of Chagos, where Britain also maintains ‘a polluting nuclear base’ in Diego Garcia. The Chagossians were forcibly removed by Britain and the US and decolonisation of the island should be the first priority ‘for all concerned people’, says Lalit de Klas. ‘After decolonisation, the people whose land and sea it is can decide on how to protect and nurture it best, how to affect a clean-up of the base once it was closed down, and how to re-generate it into the beautiful atoll it once was.’
South Africa’s African National Congress, has degenerated to the point where it poses ‘a clear and present danger to the integrity of society’ writes Richard Pithouse. Whereas empowerment ‘used to be imagined as a collective and political project that could transform society from below’, says Pithouse, ‘it is now understood as a matter of personal incorporation into the minority that is able to profit from an increasingly unequal society.’
My mother said they found oil
Somewhere in western Uganda.
I am not excited, she said.
She sounded pained, but resigned.
Stoic, perhaps.
She has seen a lot, my mother.
‘Me, I’m not excited,’ she said,
And shook her head slowly.
‘Oil is trouble.’
She looked at me.
I looked at her.
We said nothing.
She shrugged and turned back to the counter.
You see,
Money’s mad temptations tug.
History’s heavy shoulders shrug.
Rewind, Repeat. Rewind, Repeat.
Rewind, Repeat. Rewind, Repeat.
Vicensia Shule reviews Issa G. Shivji's 'Where is Uhuru? Reflections on the Struggle for Democracy in Africa', a book in which the author 'eloquently expresses his thoughts on the evils of imperialism and neoliberalism'.
Waheeda Amien argues that while recognising polygyny – the practice entitling a man to more than one spouse – respects cultural and religious rights, this is done to the detriment of individual rights. Not only does polygyny discriminate against women in African and Muslim communities in equality terms, but wives, children and husbands are financially and emotionally affected. Amien, however, does not necessarily advocate monogamy, rather she holds that the aim should be ‘to work toward an egalitarian society where intimate and family relationships are based on an understanding of substantive equality for all involved.’
The ‘magic’ of Daniel Mandishona's ‘White Gods, Black Demons’ is that ‘it feels startlingly familiar’, writes Bella Matambanadzo. Another book to add to the ‘treasure trove’ of literature on the Zimbabwean question, each portrait in Mandishona’s anthology of short stories is ‘the product of prodigious observation and research’, writes Matambanadzo. ‘What a reader will cherish is that there is a kind of fidelity about the stories that leaves you knowing it to be true', while healthy 'doses of candour give breadth and wisdom, to what is a collection of comic tragedy told with tenderness'.
In this week's review of the African blogosphere, a new report on the recent crises in Niger and Nigeria, Africa's tendency to deify its leaders, Sarkozy's visit to Gabon, and calls for a new approach to advocating for gender equality the use of ICTs.
Less than a year after the formal establishment of BRIC, South Africa has started to flex its muscle in its bid for inclusion in this group of global emerging powers, writes Hayley Herman.
American televangelist Pat Robertson was 'partially right' in saying that 'black people’s souls were compromised by evil', Charo Mina Rojas writes from Haiti. But it's not because people of African ancestry sold their souls to evil, it's that the evil of colonialism took their souls and 'traded with them'.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/472/i_neda_agha_sultani.gif
Hayley Herman reviews a blog entitled 'China in Africa: The Real Story', by Professor Deborah Bräutigam, author of the highly acclaimed book, 'The Dragon’s Gift'. This blog deals with the myths and realities of Chinese aid and economic engagement in Africa.
In the wake of the rise of the conservative Tea Party Nation (TPN) in the US, Horace Campbell discusses the resurgence of racist, anti-civil rights political sentiment under the support of 'big capitalists'.
With Nigeria locked in a constitutional crisis, Funmi Feyide-John discusses the role of the US government's interference. While praising the Nigerian government for its ability to calmly transfer power to Vice-President Goodluck Johnson following President Umaru Yar'Adua's absence due to poor health, Feyide-John writes, the US's alleged favouritism towards particular political players risks severely undermining democracy in Nigeria through casting whoever ultimately ends up as president as a foreign puppet. In meeting former military dictator Ibrahim Babangida in Yar'Adua's absence, Feyide-John stresses, the US's actions give credence to suggestions of its intent to secure a Nigerian base for its AFRICOM (Africa Command) initiative and bolster its access to oil, as part of political dabbling which will doubtless have a lasting impact on Nigerian politics.
President Zuma is 'not a saint', writes Alfred Muleka, but as a proud Zulu man, a traditonalist and a nationalist, he deserves 'protection and respect under the constitution'. Polygamy is not illegal in South Africa, says Muleka, so let's respect this right rather than judging it by Western stanadards.
The purchase and creation of private land by external interests feature in Gado's cartoon this week.
On February 21, 2010, the world witnessed the launch of a global initiative to support pro-democracy forces in Swaziland: the Swaziland Democracy Campaign (SDC). This is a product of many years of working together between South African and Swaziland organisations, which includes political parties, trade unions, churches, youth and students organisations.
The University of Sussex Students’ Union has called for global resistance to the United States' plans to establish and consolidate AFRICOM on the African continent.
Foreign investors are pouring billions of dollars into large extractive projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo, writes Peter Bosshard, but in ‘a classic case of the resource curse’, the projects ‘are not promoting the country’s long-term development’, but attracting ‘short-term profiteers, conflict, and corruption’. The World Bank’s rehabilitation of the Inga 1 and 2 hydropower dams are the latest example of this trend.
In accordance with its vision of “promoting credible elections and democratic governance in Africa”, EISA plans to deploy a 3 member pre election assessment mission to the Central African Republic (CAR). This forms part of EISA’s election related activities in the CAR which will include the deployment of a continental observer mission to the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections scheduled for April 2010.
Professor Mahmood Mamdani has been appointed to head Makerere University Institute of Social Research (MISR). This means the renowned scholar will be returning to the university after 17 years. Mamdani's five-year contract takes immediate effect. He will replace Dr. Nakanyike Musisi who left last year when her contract expired after 10 years of service.
Plans to transform the east African oil sector by building a pipeline from south Sudan to the Kenyan coast were boosted this week when a Japanese company expressed interest in joining the project.
Any popular movement that is serious about building the power of the poor and about demanding the full recognition of the equal humanity of the poor will face many challenges and tests, write Abahlali baseMjondolo: 'We have confronted and passed many challenges and tests since 2005. The attack on our movement in Kennedy Road has been the greatest test that we have faced so far. But we have passed it.'
Zimbabwean activist Tichaona Masiyambiri narrowly escaped death with the help of local police, after a gang of armed youths attacked him following his address to villagers as part of a civic education programme at Nhakiwa Shopping centre in Uzumba.
Food security and economic growth are being undermined by the collapse of more than 90% of the farms that the government bought for restitution or redistribution to victims of apartheid. Minister of Rural Development and Land Affairs Gugile Nkwinti also warned that, while the government would invest heavily to rescue these failing farms, it would also crack down soon on foreigners buying up South African land.
Ethiopia is one of the main targets in the current global farmland grab. The government has stated publicly that it wants to provide 3 million hectares of farmland in the country to foreign investors and around 1 million hectares have apparently already been signed away. Much of the land that these investors have acquired is in the province of Gambella, a fertile area that is home to the Anuak Nation.
Anticipating Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's departure from office is much like waiting for Samuel Beckett's character Godot to arrive, Alemayehu G. Mariam writes – it never happens. Zenawi's preference for mud-slinging over logical debate in the face of criticism means everybody gets covered in mud, Mariam stresses, and merely underlines his administration's determination to rule according to its own greed and fear.
president sexmachine
runs out of semen
calls in juju magic
to foster a son like
father like pornstar
overzealous the heir
strips in public
it is not the clothes
that are off but the mind
the naked head gives
another meaning to nudity
groupies throw not their undies in the air
but their brains out of their heads
the hearts are locked
in the wallets
the bluenotes woke up everybody
the blandnotes sends everyone
to endless slumber
the business chamber
is a torture chamber
on the road to damascus
marx the dessident
transfiguers to max the pet
on the johannesburg stock exchange
socialist tongues are strangled
the new booby traps
are the equity shares
sophisticated snares (to) turn
revolutionary firebrands
into business brands
former guerillas into gluttonous
consumerist gorillas
from the khaki
to the gucci
we whistle vivaldi
where we once
chanted amandla
we shout armani
Gertrude Hambira, general secretary of Zimbabwe's General Agricultural and Plantation Workers Union, has been forced into hiding following harrassment by the police. The International Union of Food workers is urging people to call on the Zimbabwean government to provide Hambira ‘with effective protection and to carry out a prompt, full and impartial investigation into the circumstances of her attack in her family home.’
The Conflict, Security and Development Group (CSDG) at King’s College London together with the Africa Leadership Centre (ALC), is pleased to announce a call for applications for the Peace and Security Fellowships for African Women for 2010/2011. These Fellowships are intellectual and financial awards for personal, professional and academic achievements, as well as the recognition of future potential.
Building on last year’s successful launch of PLURAL+, a youth video festival on migration, diversity and social inclusion, the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) again invite the worlds youth to submit dynamic and forward-thinking videos focusing on these issues.
'The story of Lillian is very sad and its just one example of the thousands of women who die at child birth,' writes Caroline, while Susan says that it 'is sad that our people die out of preventable circumstances'.
More than 3,000 local election observers, 6,000 soldiers, and representatives of international election transparency watchdog groups are scattered across Togo on the eve of a presidential election crackling with tension, yet billed as a "national reconciliation" by its leaders.
This latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, analyses the situation resulting from the Global Political Agreement (GPA) that broke the stalemate following failed 2008 presidential elections and led to formation of the unity government in February 2009. It concludes that all domestic signatories of the GPA, as well as the South African mediation, must embrace democratic transformation as the vital objective of the transition.
The 45-member Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), presiding over one of the largest gatherings of women at the United Nations, listened Monday to dozens of speakers spelling out the successes and failures of gender empowerment worldwide.
Every Tuesday you will find 70-year-old Precious Dlamini under a tree, weighing children and babies from her local community as she monitors their health and nutrition. Though she may not have any official qualifications to do so, Dlamini is a retired teacher, she devotes much of her time to caring for the orphaned children in her community and educating people about a healthy lifestyle.