In this week’s [mp3] The Kennedy Thirteen, members of the embattled shackdwellers’ movememt Abahlali baseMjondolo are arraigned in court, miners stage a sit-in at a Mpumalanga mine, and Tanzanian workers push for salary review implementation. This bulletin is part of a partnership between Worker’s World Media Productions and Pambazuka News that seeks to highlight labour issues affecting Africa’s workers.

MISA-Swaziland notes with great concern that the Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology (ICT), with due respect, seems to be playing double standards in that it has unilaterally decided to go ahead and propose a statutory media council when it initially endorsed voluntary self-regulation and has been in the forefront of this process with previous Ministers leading it.

On 22 October 2009, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) expressed its growing concern over the organized campaign against journalists and activists in Tunisia.

Private radio stations have cancelled political programmes in Guinea as journalists continue to be harassed by opposition supporters and the military after last month's massacre at an opposition rally, says the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA).

The human rights record of the Zambian military is being tested in court by two former air force officers who allege they were fired for being HIV positive. Stanley Kingaipe and Charles Chookole claim they were tested and treated for HIV without their knowledge, and then discharged for being medically unfit a year later.