"Women are getting killed in the Western Cape," says Ndumie Funda, who runs LulekiSizwe in her "cabin" in the township of Gugulethu near Cape Town. The project is named after her late fiancée, Nosizwe Nomsa Bizana, who was gang-raped by five men and subsequently succumbed to crypto meningitis, and Bizana's friend Luleka Makiwane, who contracted HIV when she was raped and later died of AIDS.

This report outlines how climate change is expected to have serious environmental, economic, and social impacts in South Africa. It states that rural farmers, whose livelihoods depend on the use of natural resources, are likely to bear the brunt of adverse impacts. The research uses a “bottom-up” approach to gain insights from the farmers themselves based on a farm household survey collected from 794 households in the Limpopo River Basin of South Africa for the farming season 2004–2005.

To prevent e-waste in Uganda non-profit organisations IICD and Close The Gap will dismantle and recycle outdated or broken computers in Ugandan schools. More than 2000 cost-efficient high-quality used computers from the Netherlands and other European countries will be sent to schools in Uganda.

Africa's neglected tropical diseases (NTD) burden is more than double the burden of tuberculosis and almost half that of malaria, a new analysis has found — raising questions about funding priorities. More than 500 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa suffer from seven key neglected infections, according to researchers writing in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases last week (25 August).

Four days of intense rains in Niger’s northern Air Mountains and desert towns at its base have affected 7,000 households, damaged 3,500 homes and caused widespread livestock and agriculture losses mostly in the commune of Agadez, according to local officials. Agadez commune is one of 15 communes in Agadez region.

Samba Thiam

The fourth World Summit on Arts and Culture, a project of the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA), will take place in Johannesburg from 22-25 September, hosted by the National Arts Council of South Africa. Mike van Graan, Programme Director for the Summit and Head of the Arterial Network’s Secretariat will write this weekly column in the build up to the Summit, raising some of the themes and provocative issues that will be debated at the event.

Debate on the nationalisation of the mining industry was revived in Parliament, with the chairman of the mineral resources portfolio committee saying the only way to avert it was to create a successful state- owned mining company.And a government official told the committee that such a company already existed, and had begun to build up an asset base.

The New York-based media rights group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed concern about the health of imprisoned editor Abdoulaye Tiemogo, after his transfer from a hospital in Niger's capital, Niamey, to a prison in a remote town. A CPJ statement obtained by PANA quoted Zeinabou , wife of Tiemogo, editor of the weekly Le Canard Déchaîné, as saying the husband is suffering from malaria and is no longer receiving adequate medical attention in a prison in Ouallam, 88 kilometres to the north of Niamey.

Still haven’t seen ? In this film, made by Jenny Morgan and distributed by Fahamu, members of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the grassroots shackdwellers' movement lay out their case – against forcible eviction and for decent services – with passion, eloquence, and sweet reason. is being screened at festivals in US and the UK in September and October.

Four journalists from Uganda's largest independent newspaper are facing criminal prosecutions, joining four others already charged since 2007, according to local journalists and news reports. Criminal prosecutions against the Monitor are on the rise against the backdrop of mounting national tensions in the lead-up to general elections in 2011. This month, President Yoweri Museveni, who is expected to seek re-election, warned private broadcasters against inciting public discontent with the government.

Former Ivorian Minister of Justice, Mrs. Jaqueline Lohoues-Oble, on Thursday announced her intention to run for the country's presidency, whose first round is scheduled for 29 November. Associate Professor of Law and Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Cocody, Oble, who was also a parliamentarian and senior adviser to Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny, is the first woman to run for a Presidential election in Cote d'Ivoire.

One of the two UNESCO 2009 prizes for Literacy Education awarded by King Sejong and financed by the Korean Republic has been awarded to Burkina's "Tin Tua", an NGO in literacy and non-formal education, a press release from the UN special agency has said. The "Tin Tua" programme (Let's develop ourselves, in gulimancema, a local language in Eastern Burkina), got very good results by using the participants' mother tongue, producing material for specific reading and laying emphasis on issues of gender and sustained development of communities.

Would you like to write a review for Pambazuka News? We are looking for people to write reviews for a number of books and academic papers. Interested? E-mail us at [email]info@fahamu.org to let us know which title/s you are interested in and we’ll get in touch with you.

the latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines the exploitation of oil revenues. Since 2003 they have contributed greatly to the deterioration of governance in Chad and to a succession of rebellions and political crises. The regime uses the revenues as a means to reward its cronies, co-opt members of the political class, and acquire the military means enabling it to reject genuine political negotiations. This has further limited space for the political opposition and civil society and helped keep the country in a state of political paralysis, stoking the antagonism between regime and opponents.

The Namibian government has expressed frustration with the slow pace of the land reform programme, saying at the current pace of land resettlement, government will not meet its 2020 target of addressing the skewed land ownership pattern. In a startling revelation, the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement said that the land reform programme in Namibia had been slow.

Benin's main opposition political parties will field a single candidate in the 2011presidential elections, according to a protocol signed in Cotonou. The protocol said the African Movement for Democracy and Progress (MADEP), the Party for the Democratic Renewal (PRD), the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the Party of Benin's Renaissance (RB) and Key Force (FC) had decided to select a candidate for the 20 11 presidential election and future polls.

“THE DRUM CAFE”, is an innovative network of creative and performing professionals with the Central aim of re-defining drum music as a powerful medium of social change in east Africa. The first drum cafe was first hosted by Alliance francaise de Nairobi in September 2006 and supported by various individuals, cultural and artistic institutions. The DRUM CAFÉ 2010 PEACE FESTIVAL will be a seven day celebration presented by and for the various Kenyan ethnic subgroups and communities living in Nairobi.

A world-renowned scholar of public policy, Yehezkel Dror, recently reemphasised the point that policy and politics “closely interact, often overlap, and in part cannot be separated even analytically”. This seemingly obvious point, with far-reaching implications, has also been made by various eminent scholars. On poverty, Martin Ravallion — a leading scholar on issues of poverty — made, a while back, a similar point: that (poverty) measurement and (public) policy issues are often inseparable. Without doubt, poverty and inequality remain the most pressing challenges confronting Africa specifically. This is not to say that other continents and/or regions do not have a poverty and inequality challenge.

In a move hailed by South Africa's victims and survivors of apartheid-era gross human rights violations, the South African government has written to the judge presiding over the South Africa Apartheid Litigation claims, Judge Shira Scheindlin, backing the stand that a New York Court is an appropriate forum for the claims. The claims, against General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co., IBM, Rheinmetall Group AG and Daimler AG, are based upon allegations that the corporations aided and abetted apartheid crimes, including, torture, extrajudicial killings and denationalization, all committed in violation of international law.