Mohamed Ahmed Noor was under no illusions when he agreed to take on the job of mayor of Mogadishu, capital of Somalia. He was living in the relative safety of London when the offer was recently made. He sat his family down and told them he may not be coming back. 'I explained the dangers of the job, that I may be killed and that one day they may hear on the news that the mayor of Mogadishu has been assassinated, or killed in an explosion.'

South Africa's local government elections are widely expected to take place in May, but since the five-year term ends in March the polls could even be held sooner. Less than 55 per cent of the electorate turned out to vote in the last round of local government elections in 2006 - and many have since been disappointed by their ward councillors. Rhodes University political science lecturer Richard Pithouse says there will be high levels of repression in the months leading up to the local government elections.

Pambazuka News is pleased to announce the call for submissions for the first annual Pambazuka Samir Amin Award. This award, launched to mark Samir Amin’s 80th birthday in 2011, pays tribute to the extraordinary contribution Samir Amin has made to our understanding of the exploitation of the peoples of Africa and the global South.

Police in Malawi have arrested a senior journalist with the sensational weekly tabloid which was briefly banned by authorities in October for not properly registering with the government. Malawi's President Bingu wa Mutharika has threatened to shut down newspapers he accused of lying that up to one million Malawians will need food aid.

IkamvaYouth, a township-based volunteer programme that gets learners out of poverty and into university has once again shown that transformation is possible, despite the odds.

The results of this year’s SA Reconciliation Barometer survey, conducted by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR), found that a majority of South Africans still agree that they are trying to forgive those who hurt them during apartheid. Close to three-quarters feel that they want to leave the past behind and move forward with their lives. However, writes Kate Lefko-Everett, the 2010 survey results also reveal some enduring concerns about the delivery of justice that pose challenges to further reconciliation, particularly in a context in which experts, analysts and practitioners have begun to question whether the wounds and traumas inflicted under apartheid may prove to outlast political will to help them heal.

Air Tanzania managing director, Mr David Mattaka, allegedly proposed the use of an 'agent' to push for a multi-billion shillings fleet modernisation deal with American plane maker – Boeing. The claim, in a confidential diplomatic communication from the US embassy in Dar es Salaam, says the ATCL boss implied that the middleman would help to push for the deal that the embassy officials pegged at some $537 million (Sh750 billion) in sales. Mattaka vehemently dismissed the reports and said he did not at any time do what is being claimed in the memos, reports Tanzania's The Citizen newspaper.

A YouTube video is currently creating a stir among the Ivorian online community, reports Global Voices. It shows militaries beating up prisoners in the 'Maison d'Arrêt et de Correction' prison (MACA). According to the person who posted the video, the prisoners are Alassane Ouattara's partisans. Since the beginning of the political crisis in Ivory Coast, dozens of people have been arrested in Abidjan for their political opinion, and jailed at the MACA.

Last week marked the first anniversary of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that devastated the impoverished Caribbean nation of Haiti, leaving a quarter of a million of its people dead, more than 300,000 injured, and approximately a million and a half homeless. One year after this natural disaster, the horrors facing Haiti’s population have only deepened, with a cholera epidemic claiming thousands of lives and a million left stranded in squalid tent camps.

The World Health Organisation launched a plan on Wednesday to stop a form of drug-resistant malaria from spreading from Southeast Asia to Africa, where millions of lives could be at risk. It would cost about $175 million a year to contain and prevent the global spread of the artemisinin-resistant parasite which first emerged along the Thai-Cambodian border in 2007, the United Nations agency said.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu’s public criticism of Israeli policy towards Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank has triggered accusations of anti-Semitism and calls for him to step down as patron of the South African Holocaust Foundation. Sign a in support of a man whose ‘life has been lived in the spirit of “never again” – the ultimate lesson of the Holocaust.’

There has not been much progress in government's job creation project due to the economic crisis that hit the world recently, President Jacob Zuma said during an interview with the South African Broadcasting Corporation, reports the Mail and Guardian. Speaking a day after addressing the 99th African National Congress (ANC) anniversary celebration in Polokwane, Limpopo, Zuma said the issue of job creation was going to be a central issue at the upcoming ANC congress, as well as how resources would be allocated to see to it.

President Zuma’s latest plan to address stagnating land reform is a positive move, say land and agricultural experts, but clarification of the details, the input of all stakeholders, and government support for black farmers is crucial to its success. Speaking at the ANC’s 99th birthday bash in Polokwane this weekend, Zuma said land reform would be based on the de-racialisation of the rural economy to enable shared and sustained growth, as well as the democratic and equitable allocation of land across gender, race and class.

It's a 'whopping' increase in the matric pass rate, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said triumphantly last Thursday morning. But education specialists were immediately divided on the question of whether so unexpected and so huge an improvement is educationally both believable and reliable as a true indicator of pupils' aptitudes. At 67,8 per cent, the pass rate for the 2010 national senior certificate (NSC) outstrips 2009's 60,6 per cent by 7.2 per cent and all nine provinces recorded increases in their pass rates as well, reports the Mail and Guardian.

The January 2011 edition of Gay Kenya has articles on being gay and being safe, a Kenyan activist who has been granted asylum in the US and the do's and don't's of gay dating sites.

At the end of 2010, Zimbabwean citizens remained broadly supportive of power sharing as an antidote to political crisis. But they were increasingly critical of the halting performance of their country’s coalition government. Most people also perceived declining civil liberties and feared resurgent political violence. Yet clear majorities called for constitutional reforms to limit the powers of the presidency and seemingly even for free elections in 2011 to return the country to legitimate rule. These are the major findings of an Afrobarometer survey conducted among a national crosssection of the Zimbabwean adults in late October 2010.

'People living with disability face all sorts of discrimination. We are discriminated against at job interviews in schools. Every day is a battle to remain positive in the face of a world that is too bent on dismissing those among us that do not meet the standard of what is normal,' explains Mishi Juma, a disabled community leader from the Coast region. In the past, Juma never had a safe space to raise these issues. But all this has now changed. Juma and many other disabled women can now raise their concerns with the newly established Ministry of gender and social development.

At least 20 people have been killed in clashes in the central Nigerian city of Jos following a protest against the killing of seven Muslims in a nearby village. The violence is believed to have begun after news spread that Muslims had been killed by Christian youths in an attack on a bus. Nigerian soldiers fired into the air to disperse youths burning vehicles and tyres in Jos in protest at the killings, villagers said on Saturday.

The South African National Editors' Forum (SANEF) has added its voice to those condemning police for arresting two journalists while they were carrying out normal reporting duties. Penwell Dlamini and Antonio Muchave were arrested by Hillbrow police on 29 December. They were detained while covering a story on the eviction of nine families from Regal Court flats in Johannesburg city centre.

An unusually deadly outbreak of poliomyelitis (polio) in Congo has scientists scratching their heads. Close to 500 people were left paralysed and almost 200 succumbed to polio since the outbreak began in October. The viral disease killed around 42 per cent of people infected, unlike typical outbreaks that kill 5–10 per cent. And although the disease usually attacks children under five years of age, most victims in this outbreak were men aged between 15 and 25 years.