Niketche: Uma História de Poligamia (Niketche: A Story of Polygamy), is Paulina Chiziane’s latest novel, and comes twelve years after Balada de Amor ao Vento (1990), her first work and the first novel by a Mozambican woman. This groundbreaking aspect remains central to Chiziane’s career; for not only has she now made her mark in Mozambican literature, she is also becoming one of the most interesting African women writers to follow. The focus on controversial and provocative themes, and the overt concern with ‘women’s issues’ told from an outspoken perspective make Chiziane someone to watch in years to come.

Mounting hostility to the hegemony of the United States. Stock markets around the world falling to unanticipated lows. Environmental destruction continuing unchecked. Sluggish economic growth. Unprecedented income inequality. Ever larger numbers of desperately poor people. Something is fundamentally wrong. Globalisation is a system in crisis. This book explores this crisis as the United States tries to impose itself on the world under the guise of its war on terrorism. It examines its economic, ecological and political manifestations, and shows how resistance to capitalist globalisation is being organised among very diverse social sectors.

Nine months after sweeping to power on a wave of public euphoria, Kenya's new government has become ensnared in a web of corruption allegations, bitter infighting and, as of last week, a murky murder mystery. Last Sunday gunmen burst into the living room of Dr Odhiambo Mbai, a respected university don. They shot him four times and, as he bled to death, stole away on a public bus. The killing rocked Kenya and deepened tensions within President Mwai Kibaki's government. The politics professor was a key figure in efforts to re-write the constitution and dilute the presidency's wide powers. Angry colleagues claim he was the victim of a political assassination.

Kwani?(www.kwani.org) welcomes you to the long awaited launch of Binyavanga Wainaina's "Discovering Home" and Kwani?, a collection of short fiction, cartoons, photoessays, reportage and satire including Yvonne A. Owuor's 2003 Caine Prize Award-winning "Weight of Whispers". Click on the link for more details.

The Regional Emergency Management Unit at Katima Mulilo has started delivering food aid to the drought-affected Khwe community in the Omega area in West Caprivi. The situation in the area is said to be severe and, according to some reports, as many as 4 000 people are depending on wild fruit to sustain themselves.

The World Bank has released its annual World Development Report, which addresses why government services fail poor people and how they can be improved. Drawing on successful examples from around the globe, the report recommends putting poor people at the centre of the provision of basic services such as health, education, water and electricity.

Women in various professions including the ministry responsible for women have strongly criticised a Dar es Salaam-based political analyst French Manoni's comments that African women are unfit to lead or rule.

This document reports on a workshop held in Cape Town in March/April 2003. It details the background to the workshop, the participants, the strands in which they participated and the main comments made by the women about their use of ICTs.

The United Nations refugee agency has launched revised guidelines for combating sexual and gender-based violence against displaced women and children in a bid to ensure better delivery of services and protection of those at risk. The 158-page book launched last Friday is a revision of the first edition published in 1995 by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Zimbabwean civic groups said Monday they plan to meet this week to find alternative means of publishing information following the closure of the country's sole independent daily paper, threatening a boycott of one of the state-run newspapers. President Robert Mugabe's government shut down the Daily News last week on grounds that it was operating without a license, provoking major international condemnation. The paper's subsequent application to register was rejected.

On a sandy shore whipped by fierce winds and punishing waves, sits Africa's only nuclear power plant. The two reactors here at Koeberg, which came online in the last days of apartheid, pump out 6.5 percent of South Africa's electricity and light most of Cape Town, 12 miles down the coast. This could become ground zero of a revolution in the way Africa - and the world - are powered. South Africa's state energy provider, Eskom, is leading a $1 billion project to develop a new technology that it says will give nuclear power new life, both here and abroad.

Zimbabwe's health care sector has been badly affected by chronic shortages of essential medical supplies. Last Thursday Bulawayo's major state hospitals announced that they were suspending medical operations for all "non-life threatening" ailments because of a critical shortage of essential drugs.

A new discussion list on `Education Rights and Realities' has just been launched. This forum focuses on the right to free, good quality education as it has been defined by successive international conventions and commitments, most recently the six Education for All (EFA) goals agreed by 155 governments at the World Education Forum in April 2000.

Nigeria's new finance minister has pledged to try to rebuild the country's reputation with international lenders and increase transparency in areas such as public procurement. In an interview with the Financial Times, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, recently appointed to the job from her previous post as a vice-president of the World Bank, accepted that Nigeria had to show progress on reform before it could obtain relief on its $31bn (£19bn) foreign debt.

Dissidents in a rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are trying to undermine the peace process in the strife-torn Central African state, an international rights watchdog charged on Tuesday. "According to our information some officers of the Congolese Rally for Democracy [RCD] who have split from their movement are trying to undermine the peace process in the DRC from a base in Kisangani," the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) warned in a statement from the capital Kinshasa.

Ecotourism is touted as a boon to the environment; poor locals working as guides and hoteliers will no longer exploit natural resources for survival. But tourists leave a lot more than footprints, according to a study announced at the fifth World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa. Biodiversity hotspots, home to extraordinary numbers of species, are worst hit. Water siphoned for tourism can upset finely balanced ecosystems. Once natural treasures are destroyed, tourists depart forever, leaving local peoples in worse shape than before the travel boom.

In the first four years of his presidency, President Obasanjo has made an impressive impact locally, regionally and globally as a deliverer of strong messages, innovative programs and increased funding, says the Global Aids Alliance. “We urge him to continue in this same strong vein, inspiring and educating other nations in best practices for addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis from the top rungs of government. But, Nigeria faces an extremely critical point epidemiologically. The country truly hovers on the edge of a major crisis that is all too familiar to its neighbours to the south. Rapid, decisive action is essential to gain control over the epidemic,” says a new report from the Alliance.

In a new report on Niger and Senegal, produced to coincide with the 22-24 September WTO review of those countries' trade policies, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) details continued violations of core International Labour Organisation conventions that the two countries have ratified. The ICFTU calls on the authorities to comply fully with core labour standards and to ensure that more than just a handful of people enjoy these basic rights.

The community in Phiri, after a mass meeting held on the 13th September, decided to organise a march to the Soweto offices of the Johannesburg Metro. During the week 13-19 September community members alongside activists from the APF, SECC and several other APF affiliates conducted a door-to-door campaign in Phiri to mobilise support for the struggle against the pre-paid meters. This campaign was buttressed by an APF-initiated meeting of several progressive organisations and movements (during the same week) in order to form a broad coalition against water privatisation.

Politically motivated violence in August 2003 largely took the form of inter-party violence surrounding the Urban Council Elections held on 30/31 August 2003. Pre – election reports of political violence were received from Bulawayo, Chegutu, Norton and Gwanda among others, according the latest political violence report from the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum.

It is almost ten years since the end of apartheid - a moment that appeared to promise peace and prosperity for the future of the region. It is also roughly a decade after several other major regional political events - Namibian independence, Mozambique's first multi-party election, Zambia's first non-liberation movement government, the Lusaka Accord for (temporary) peace in Angola. The above organisations held a symposium in southern Africa on the grounds that it was an appropriate time for an evaluation. It was also the time for some thinking aloud about the future. Has the promised peace dividend come to the region? Have the hopes expressed for peace and prosperity in the region come to fruition? If not why not and was another path possible? Are we stuck with a choice of authoritarian nationalism or neo-liberalism?

Our three-day discussion analysed developments over the past ten years such as:
· The challenge of turning liberation movements into governments
· The NEPAD initiative - a "home grown" African leaders response to the worsening crises in Africa. But what of its neo-liberal approach and its lack of consultation and participation in planning?
· The formation of the African Union with its commitments to human rights, and setting limits to absolute state sovereignty.
· It is impossible to speak of liberation without coming to gender considerations, and yet development here appears stalled and inherently liable to reverse.
· The HIV/AIDS pandemic, which has tragically become the context within which development has to take place.
· The political, social and economic crisis in Zimbabwe and lack of firm regional response
· The outbreak of peace, initially inside Angola, and then the Democratic Republic of Congo (the 'African scramble for Africa') but the legacy of major divisions and problems of reconstruction.

Eastern African Sub-regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI), is a women's organisation established to facilitate follow-up of the implementation of the Global and African Platforms for Action for the advancement of women within the Eastern African Sub-region. EASSI is looking to fill the vacant position of executive director. It focuses on the enhancement of gender equity and social justice through networking, research, capacity building and advocacy for women.

Responsibilities of the candidate will include: Serving as the IRC representative in-charge of the Rutuna Field Office (approx. 30 national staff); and Supervising needs assessments, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all projects in Rutuna Province (currently water/sanitation, hygiene promotion, and the Roll Back Malaria plan).

The shroud of silence and denial surrounding male sex workers in Africa has left them unable to access services addressing HIV/AIDS and their sexual health needs, researchers say. According to a study presented on Tuesday at the 13th International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa (ICASA), HIV/AIDS programmes targeting men who sell sex in Africa were "lagging behind", if not virtually non-existent.

A local NGO in the Republic of Congo has launched an urgent appeal for an increase in primary school teachers in the war-weary southern department of Pool, where a year of fighting caused tens of thousands of people to flee the region, while fighting trapped many more. Efforts are underway on the part of the government, UN agencies and NGOs to facilitate the return of Pool displaced to their homes.

The South African government has entered into a partnership with Microsoft Computers to develop software in IsiZulu and Afrikaans.

The rebel movement in Cote d'Ivoire suspended its participation in the country's broad-based coalition government on Tuesday and delayed the start of a disarmament programme, accusing President Laurent Gbagbo of obstructing the peace process. Rebel leaders announced the radical move following a two-day meeting in the central city of Bouake and warned there was a real danger that hostilities could resume.

Oil has been spilling from a broken pipeline in the Niger delta for several days, polluting the farmland, fishing grounds and drinking water of five villages, residents in the affected area said on Tuesday.

Dorcus Apecu is a primary seven schoolgirl who keeps her fingers crossed. She is praying that her mother does not take her out of school and get her married due to lack of school fees. At sixteen, Dorcus is already 'over age' in a society where girls are married off early in order to get bride price and reduce family burdens. Dorcus' two sisters are already married because their mother could not afford to look after them after their father died, leaving behind nine children and a jobless wife.

"We want drugs! You talk as we die,” were some of the angry voices by AIDS activists who protested Wednesday against failure by their governments to give them anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs). Some rolled on the ground as others shouted and marched through the 13th International Conference on AIDS in Africa (ICASA), stopping at government, pharmaceutical and donor stands. Donning T-shirts declaring their HIV status, the more than 100 activists under Pan-African HIV/AIDS Treatment Access Movement (PATAM), demanded drugs for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Thirty Ugandan women met in Limuru, 35 kilometres from the Kenyan capital Nairobi, to mark the International Day of Peace on September 21, and chart out ways of bringing peace to war ravaged regions of their country. The women, the majority of them from the war-torn northern Uganda, also attended a four-day peace and reconciliation conference between September 16-19 in Limuru organised by People for Peace in Africa, a pressure group, and Uganda Gender Resource Centre.

The government of Sudan and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) have agreed on security arrangements for the south of the country. This has been the main stumbling block at peace talks that have been taking place in the Kenyan town of Naivasha. Under the deal Sudan will have two armies under separate command and control during a six-year interim period.

The first Arab-hosted annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, in the Gulf state Dubai, which ended on Wednesday, exposed the widening gap between rich and developing nations. Despite Dubai's label as the city of gold - with the highest concentration of jewellery shops in the world - little glittered for poor countries during arguments over aid and the power to shape their own future. The annual meetings offered cold comfort for those fighting to prevent the 30,000 deaths a day from hunger, to help the billion people denied basic education, and to support the 42 million living with HIV/Aids.

Sudanese refugees are continuing to flee from Darfur in western Sudan into Chad to escape militia attacks, according to the NGO, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). While the numbers remained unclear, pockets of people continued to cross the border every night when they could get across more easily, Sonia Peyrassol, MSF Operational Coordinator for Chad, told IRIN. Border officials appeared to be trying to stop the flow, she said, but it was unclear whether it was on the Sudanese or the Chadian side.

News24 reports that the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives has awarded R250 000 to the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). The grant will be used to train health care and community workers in the Eastern Cape in preparation for the mother-to-child transmission prevention programme and the antiretroviral therapy rollout.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced the award September 21 of new grants to conquer malaria, a disease that kills more than 1 million people each year and is considered a major impediment to progress in the underdeveloped nations where it most frequently occurs. The $168 million in grants will be devoted to development of new prevention strategies, new drugs and vaccine research.

President Robert Mugabe called this week for unity between all Zimbabweans, including the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. But the MDC quickly rejected the rare display of conciliatory rhetoric as "public posturing".

African countries have expressed their disappointment at the lack of progress in democratising the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In a statement to the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) of the IMF Board of Governors, Angolan finance minister Jose Pedro de Morais said it was Africa's strong view that a serious process to reform the governance structures in both institutions needed to be developed to better reflect the global reality of the 21st century rather than the middle of the 20th century.

Recently Halliburton Co. was forced to admit it paid a $2.4 million bribe to a Nigerian government official in exchange for tax breaks. Shell has a sordid history in the Niger Delta. Earlier this year, the company was ordered by the Nigerian Court of Appeals to pay the Ogoni people approximately $2 million for environmental damage. The story is an old one. The people are poor while corporations and government officials grow rich on the natural resources that should bring benefits to the poor.

More than 4,500 new Liberian refugees have arrived in the last week in southern Guinea's forest region, stretching the UN refugee agency's capacity in this part of the country.

Protection of refugees and funding for their support in the midst of current financial crises are the two key issues up for discussion as the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) meets this week with its NGO partners ahead of the agency's annual executive committee meeting. But southern NGOs have warned that any funding shake-up could mean yet more bad news for hopes of sustainable funding that allows them to do high quality work with refugees and also build their capacity for future action.

The Cabinet has presented its proposals to the Constitutional Review Commission, which among others, seek to give the President more powers, open up political space and create regional governments. The proposals seek to amend 88 articles of the Constitution, five schedules, one national objective and create 14 new articles.

The Somali leaders committee at peace talks currently underway in Kenya have dismissed a recent statement by the president of the Transitional National Government, (TNG) Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, rejecting the adoption of the interim constitution. In a press statement issued on 18 September, the leaders said that Abdiqassim made the statement "in his personal capacity and do not necessarily represent that of the Somali people since his term of office has officially ended on 12 August, 2003".

Santigie Kanu, a member of the military junta that ruled Sierra Leone in the late 1990s, protested that he was being tried by white men as he pleaded not guilty to war crimes and crimes against humanity, at the country's UN-backed Special Court. "I do not understand why I am standing before white people," he told a court hearing, presided over by Canadian judge Pierre Boutet, on Tuesday.

The lesson that the world has learnt from Robert Mugabe's rule is that when one cannot improve one's image, one gets rid of all the mirrors. The Mugabe led Zanu-PF government must be counting its gains after the closure of the only privately owned daily newspaper group, the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ). ANZ publishes the Daily News and the Daily News on Sunday.

The ANZ was shut down on Friday 12th September 2003. The previous day, the country's Supreme Court ruled that the newspaper group had to register with the Media & Information Commission (MIC) for its case to be heard in the Supreme Court. ANZ is challenging the constitutionality of sections of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA).

Meanwhile, the spectacular failure of the Zanu-PF government in solving the economic, social and political problems affecting Zimbabwe is well documented. Queues for basic commodities are a characteristic feature of every town and city and the cost of goods is sky rocketing - with the official inflation figure pegged at 446.6 percent. For example, a standard loaf of bread costs more than Z$900.00. The minimum wage is pegged at Z$48,000.00 per month. Bank notes are in short supply and the government, through the Reserve Bank, has resorted to printed money in the form of travelers cheques with bank-note security features. Banks are limiting withdrawals to Z$5000.00 per person per day. The country's external debt is estimated at well over US$1,6 billion.

The public is fed with propaganda through state controlled media that the current problems are being caused by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which called for sanctions to be imposed on Zimbabwe. What is not said is that the sanctions are only targeted at 73 Zanu PF officials.

The Zimbabwe dollar rate to the US dollar is Z$5500. This makes a mockery of government's official rate of Z$824 to the US dollar. The food security situation is worsening. Recent estimates from the Food Security Network, a network of non- governmental organisations monitoring the agricultural situation in the country's 58 districts, show that the situation is likely to get worse unless there is intervention from the international donor community.

The health sector is tottering. Government hospitals, the only ones charging affordable fees, are now dying zones for the sick. There are no drugs or equipment. The private sector has taken advantage of this by escalating the costs of medical services to the total exclusion of the working class.

Teachers and lecturers are on strike most of the time. The University of Zimbabwe (UZ) released July examination results in September because of the strike by lecturers. University graduates have to contend with the fact that the unemployment rate is over 70 percent. Youths have been turned into militia - thanks to the National Youth Service programme run by the Ministry of Gender and Employment Creation. The programme is being extended to civil servants, especially teachers.

The Human Rights NGO Forum notes that high levels of human rights violations continue to prevail, some of them consequent on laws such as the Public Order and Security Act (POSA). This has been accompanied by the establishment of a culture of impunity presided over by a seemingly partisan police force. State agents have been frequently reported as being perpetrators of human rights violations themselves. There has been continued inter-party violence as a result of political intolerance. Victimization on the basis of political affiliation remains a common phenomenon.

Elections have, since the Parliamentary Elections in June 2000, been accompanied by organized violence and intimidation. The electorate's freedom of choice in electing representatives in all these elections has been heavily constrained by victimisation of potential voters on the basis of their political affiliation. There have been reports of supplying food in exchange for votes and the use of retributive force where voters are deemed not to have voted in the expected manner.

The story of the crisis is told differently in the government controlled media and the privately owned press. The public media prefers to be optimistic. It prefers to sideline the suffering of the majority and trivializes it where it cannot avoid the story. For example, the country's only broadcaster, Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), prefers to lead with a story about marketing of the Victoria Falls to the regional and international community as if the recently announced hike in long distance fares (and other basic commodities) is not newsworthy.

The private press would usually give prominence to stories of economic malaise. In the Daily News, Zanu PF propaganda would be given daily rebuttal. In addition, the continuing abuse of human rights in the political and other arena would find its full expression in the paper. That the daily private paper was a thorn in the flesh of politicians has always been evident. Prior to the bombing of the Daily News printing press in 2000, leading government spokesperson and Minister of State for Information and Publicity in the Office of the President and Cabinet Jonathan Moyo described the paper as “a threat to national security”. The newspaper has been the target of three bombings and has endured the frequent arrest of its editors, journalists and other staff.

AIPPA purports to promote access to information held by public bodies and regulates the media industry in Zimbabwe. Because of AIPPA, ANZ has lost its equipment including all computers and the printing press. Its owners risk being jailed for a period of two years and its closure may simply be a replica of what happened to Joy TV, which ceased operations in June 2002 on legal grounds.

The MIC has 60 days to consider the ANZ application - by which time it may not be commercially viable after losing advertising and sales revenue. The Government blames the Daily News for failing to register with the MIC instead of revisiting the policies it implemented. Such is the repression the Zanu PF Government has so craftily forced through the legislative assembly. In fact, the government's forced closure of the offices and printing press of the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ) represents the climax of the Zanu-PF led Government campaign to muzzle alternative opinion using all legal instruments at its disposal. This is the first time that a newspaper has been legally banned in Zimbabwe since the mid-1960s, when the former white-minority Rhodesian government outlawed a pro-black nationalist newspaper called The African Daily News.

The Daily News is the latest casualty of AIPPA and government's undemocratic and unjust media policy. Several community newspapers have stopped publishing because of the punitive registration requirements in Statutory Instrument 169C/2002 (Chapter 10:27) of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy (Registration, Accreditation and Levy) Regulations of June 2002. In Midlands alone, five community newspapers, including the Gokwe Times - the only localized news source for the people of Gokwe, stopped publishing after Government announced its intentions to enforce the provisions of AIPPA. In addition, several foreign correspondents have been denied the right to practice in the country using the same regulations. The broadcasting sector is no different. Joy TV ceased operations on legal grounds. No alternative broadcasters have been licensed. Aspiring community broadcasters have been openly told they will not get broadcasting licenses.

The latest event involving the closure of the Daily News has robbed civic society of a platform to communicate their views. It serves as a clear indication to the people of Zimbabwe and the international community that the laws that were hastily crafted under the guise of promoting freedom of expression rights were actually meant to muzzle rather than promote these rights.

* Sizani Weza is Advocacy Officer with the Media Monitoring Project (MMPZ), an independent organisation that monitors media output and information rights developments in Zimbabwe. ([email protected])

* Please send comments on this editorial to

The Real Progress Report on HIPC, launched just in advance of the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in Dubai, provides policy makers, politicians, NGOs, campaigners and debtor governments with real information about the progress of the HIPC initiative. Intended as a shadow version of the official HIPC Status of Implementation Report, it answers the questions that the official HIPC reports do not: How much debt has actually been cancelled? Are creditors really sharing the burden of debt relief under the HIPC initiative? Is HIPC debt relief enough to allow countries to meet the Millennium Development Goals? Why is HIPC moving so slowly?

A Nigerian Islamic appeal court has cleared single mother Amina Lawal of adultery, for which she had been sentenced to be stoned to death. In a split verdict a panel of five judges at the Sharia Appeal Court in the northern city of Katsina, found in favour of the 31-year-old mother of four at her second bid to get the sentence lifted.