Visibly traumatised, Antonio Manuel, 10, goes to Mahele primary school, a remote part of Maputo province, where the Mozambican capital, Maputo, is situated. Manuel, a shy boy, uses both his hands to hold a pencil as he writes in the exercise book. His fingers - on both hands - are joined together after his stepmother placed his hands on top of a hot stove. Manuel was only four when the accident happened.

Robert Mugabe's government has committed severe human rights abuses against the opposition party, has actively repressed the press and the judiciary and is largely responsible for the famine that is currently gripping Zimbabwe, according to a Commonwealth report distributed to heads of government this week.
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* SADC Grills Mudenge
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* Opposition Leadership Face Crackdown
http://allafrica.com/stories/200304080601.html

Over 680 teachers in KwaZulu-Natal - more than 55 a month - died in-service in the year 2000. Most died from unspecified illnesses, and the average age at the time of death was 36. Between 1999 and 2000, there was a massive 70% increase in deaths of female teachers between the ages of 30 and 34. This is according to figures released last week by the Health Economics and HIV/Aids Research Division (Heard) at the University of Natal.

Many important services are still not accessible to people with disabilities in Namibia, says a released report. The study found that only about 25 per cent of Namibian schools are accessible to disabled children while around 38, 6 per cent of disabled children older than five years have never attended school.