"Regional co-operation and integration in Southern Africa owes its origin to historical, economic, political, social and cultural factors that have created strong bonds of solidarity and unity among the peoples of Southern Africa. These factors have contributed to the formation of a distinct Southern African personality and identity that underpins political and economic co-operation." This is according to the final version of SADC's Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP). The document is designed to provide a long-term plan for development in Southern Africa.

Member states of the East African Community have signed a protocol for establishing a customs union that is expected to boost growth in the region. The agreement was initialled Tuesday in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha by the Presidents of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. It will take effect in July this year. Negotiators had been locked in discussions until the last minute about how goods flowing between the three countries should be taxed - a delicate issue that has derailed previous efforts to establish the union.

The recent decision by Uganda's President Museveni's to turn to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigations of atrocities by the Lord's Resistance Army has generated a lot of excitement in international human rights circles. Unfortunately, as the February 21 massacre by Joseph Kony's rebels has demonstrated, international prosecution may not be the inspired choice required to stop the carnage.

Judicialisation of conflict is what states do as a substitute for effective action. As a strategic choice for ending conflict, it is also a guaranteed failure. It proved the wrong prescription to the 1990s conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. In 1993, the United Nations Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) ostensibly to stop the violence, but in reality to avoid doing anything about the conflict. Every single diplomat at the Security Council knew that what was required was a military solution or negotiated end to the inter-ethnic slaughter.

Rwanda, even more dramatically, demonstrated the timidity of the world in stopping conflicts. The UN had peace-keeping troops on the ground in Rwanda but when blood started to flow, the world decided to cut and run. General Romeo Dallaire, the commander of UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda then, has stated that he could have stopped the genocide with 5,000 good troops and a muscular UN mandate. Instead, he was ordered to leave. The creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was partly a gesture of contrition by states that had retreated to the safety of their borders and abandoned Rwanda to its fate. In both Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, resort to a judicial option was a way of appearing to do something without doing anything.

The lessons of these conflicts for Uganda are unfortunate but clear. The relevance of international law during conflict rests on the training, intentions and gun power of the fighters and their command. The individuals responsible for the February 21 massacres have as much knowledge of the Geneva Conventions as they do of brain surgery. President Museveni's invitation to the International Criminal Court therefore, while an important affirmation of individual criminal accountability for grave violations, it skirts the more immediate concern of stopping the atrocities.

The decision is flawed in both timing and effectiveness. Its timing elevates a downstream process of prosecutions to the upstream stage of regulation and cessation of conflict. Prosecutions are usually an after-the-conflict matter. They come after the fog of war has cleared. Commencing prosecution of 'enemies' during conflict imperils truce negotiations and is a disincentive to those who may be willing to surrender. It is why the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia refrained from indicting former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic before and during the Dayton Peace Process. In any event, it is one thing to draw a list of the rebels alleged to have committed atrocities, but a different reality to attempt to collect evidence amidst the war.

The 18-year-old war in northern Uganda has now turned into the classic African 'stale-mate wars', with neither side able to deliver a decisive victory. What Uganda needs at the moment is a strategy of militarily defeating the rebels or negotiating a ceasefire. Given Kony's modus operandi, a negotiated peace settlement may be elusive in the short run.

If the only viable option is military, President Museveni may have to collectivize the security dilemma facing Uganda. The trail of the military supplies to the Lord's Resistance Army needs to be examined to hold to sanction those complicit in the conflict. The African Union Protocol creating a Peace and Security Council has only recently come into effect. Part of its mandate is to stop the atrocities similar to those perpetrated by the Lord's Resistance Army. With the new African Union, African Court of Human Rights and the NEPAD mechanisms, African leaders have pledged to generate solutions to Africa's many problems. The African Union has vowed not to repeat the spectacular failures of its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). Uganda may be well advised to test this commitment by requesting for assistance in its war against the Kony rebels.

External assistance to Uganda is however bound to be complicated by the country's recent military entanglements in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The five reports by the UN Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo, have fingered the Ugandan military for its involvement in illegal exploitation of minerals in the DRC and escalation of the conflict in that country. The tense relations between Uganda and Rwanda following the clashes between their forces in the DRC complicates a regional approach to security.

For Kenya and Tanzania, the insecurity in Uganda is a threat to the anticipated economic recovery of economies already battered by terrorist attacks. It is these two countries, more than any other in the region that must work with Uganda for a solution to the Kony insurgency if an integrated East Africa is to become a reality. In the long term, East African security experts need to re-imagine borders as regional rather than national. Security solutions are however determined by the political policies and choices of leaders. An East African security mechanism is only possible in the context of consensus on values by East African leaders. Internally, the three East African countries are yet to clear their decks of key governance issues. Mobilizing national support for regional peace work in the absence of local security and vibrant structures of domestic accountability is an uphill task.

However, the victims of Kony's war in northern Uganda will not wait for democracy to flourish in East Africa or the International Criminal Court to conduct its investigations. They are not victims of a random robbery or murder. Kony's massacres are a full-blown insurgency devoid of any humanitarian pretensions. If amnesty is what it will take to save lives, it is a choice that Uganda may have to explore in spite of obvious moral qualms. A military victory is more likely to deliver judicial justice to Kony's victims. But it requires political will at different levels and possibly more than the Ugandan military to deliver.

* Recent Pambazuka News articles on Uganda:
- Confronting impunity through the ICC: Is Africa ready and waiting?

* Mutuma Ruteere is a Phd candidate in Political Science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA and a researcher on human rights and humanitarian law.

* Send comments on this editorial - and other events in Africa - to editor@pambazuka.org

* NOTE FOR EDITORS: Please note that this editorial was commissioned from the author for Pambazuka News. While we are pleased that several print publications have used our editorials, we ask editors to note that if they use this article, they do so on the understanding that they are expected to provide the following credit: "This article first appeared in Pambazuka News, an electronic newsletter for social justice in Africa, Editors are also encouraged to make a donation.

Time is out of joint in Zimbabwe. We have gone through the looking glass and live in a state of schizophrenia. We read one thing in the state media, and experience something quite different on the ground. The new farmers are said to be creating a revolution, but there is no farm produce in the shops, no agricultural goods to export. Our “enemies” who want to sabotage our economy are feeding us, while our own rulers destroy productive capacity, pillage our natural resources, and even make money illegally exporting the food on which the people depend for survival.

Time moves too fast. In a day lives are turned upside down. A government decree quadruples tariffs on virtually every imported good, destroying businesses, crippling industries relying on imported components, wiping out the means of survival for hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans who have been eking out a living through cross-border trade. In a week the only non-government daily newspaper is off the street, on the street and off the street again. In a month prices double in the shops, and 20,000 Zimbabweans die of AIDS. In a year inflation soars from 220% to 620% and your used car depreciates by doubling its Zimdollar value. And in a year the public mood changes from hope and expectation of relief from the madness to deep, debilitating despair.

On our side of the looking glass, the mounting catastrophe has political, economic, social and cultural components. Most objective observers would trace the economic problems back at least to the late 1980’s. Certainly the introduction of structural adjustment at the beginning of the 90’s can be seen as the process which eroded the living standards of Zimbabweans, and spawned the first broad-based opposition party. It also generated pressure from interest groups such as war veterans and ambitious black businessmen who felt they had waited too long to share in the country’s wealth. The government’s response to these developments sent the country into the downward spiral which today ensnares us. Instead of taking the criticism and the pressure and sitting back to plan a coherent strategy of how to deal with the inter-related issues, ZANU PF panicked, saw their ruling position threatened, and from 1997 on have responded piecemeal, reactively and irrationally, bringing us to the tragedy which unfolds before our eyes.

They gave in to pressures from those groups with which they had racial and historical affinities, that is the “indigenous businessmen” and the war veterans, while viciously attacking those in the political opposition and civil society who dared to demand policies that would serve the needs of the people at large. These were accused of wanting to sabotage the economy, acting as agents of foreign powers, fomenting discord and trying to reverse the gains of the liberation war. Because the government half believed their own fantasies, they became quite incapable of drawing appropriate strategies to handle the economic crisis, and became obsessed with simply retaining political power. Every economic policy became twisted to suit the immediate needs of ZANU PF, while the needs of the consumer, the producer, the employer and employee were disregarded. Basic economic sense was thrown to the winds, commonplace economic imperatives defied. ZANU PF returned to the militarist leadership and rhetoric of the liberation war.

The economic slide was precipitated by the 1997 surrender to the demands of war veterans, but it became a plunge from the beginning of the seizure of land from white commercial farmers in February 2000. Angered by the negative results of the referendum on a new constitution in that month, ZANU PF devised a malicious but brilliant strategy designed to recover domestic support, provide new sources of patronage, fulfill the promises of the liberation struggle and attract international support from traditional allies of the 1970’s. In their panic they rushed headlong to seize agricultural land from white farmers by violent means, afraid to wait for a legal process to unfold. They justified this by the philosophy of armed struggle and the injustices perpetrated by colonizers in the hundred years before Independence. Law was no longer necessary; the end justified any means.

It is exactly four years since the officially sanctioned land invasions began. During that time the economy has shrunk to less than half its previous size, while inflation has risen to 620%. Added to the pre-existing economic crisis, the destruction of a substantial portion of commercial agriculture has brought a sharp decline in foreign exchange earnings, and severe food shortages. Government’s attempts to manipulate prices, interest rates and foreign exchange rates have produced chaos – artificial shortages of price-controlled goods and a booming black market, illegal export of basic goods to neighbouring countries, closure of factories and other businesses, especially those related to agricultural production. The lack of foreign currency reduced ability to import essential consumer and capital goods and the general decline of the economy starved government of revenue. At the same time runaway inflation led to a need to print ever larger amounts of bank notes which government could not afford. The result was the crippling cash shortage in mid 2003. High inflation coupled with low interest rates impoverished pensioners and anyone else dependent on a fixed income, and initiated a flight of savings from banks into foreign currency. What could no longer be obtained in banks by any but the privileged few, was readily available on many street corners in the major cities at up to 8 times the official rate.

Those privileged few were having a heyday, amassing fortunes of gigantic proportions by accessing foreign currency from the banks at official rates and selling it on the black market. A new class of economic parasites was being created. We began to hear of 25 room mansions, stables of Mercedes Benz cars, cupboards full of designer suits. The owners did not hide; they boasted of their wealth in the face of the people whose situation was becoming daily more desperate.

The year 2003 was a dreadful one for most Zimbabweans. While the government tinkered at the edges of the economy and finally brought staple foodstuffs back to the shelves and solved the cash crisis by introducing bearer cheques as temporary legal tender, they failed to bring inflation under control. By the end of the year it had reached 600%. And the economy continues to shrink. The October beginning of the 2003-4 planting season heralded new disasters in the future as agricultural inputs were simply not available to most of those wanting to farm. But the failures on the economic front were compensated for in the political arena. In spite of the ability of the opposition still to win local government elections in most urban areas, ZANU PF could make use of its new draconian security and media legislation, the support of a loyal army and police and national service militia to block out the opposition from rural constituencies. And in the urban councils held by the MDC, ZANU PF has used its control of national resources to interfere and create havoc in local government, dividing and frustrating opposition controlled councils, particularly Harare, and making them lose public support. The mass action threatened by the opposition never got started in the face of government terror, and ZANU PF remains firmly in charge. The political tide running in favour of the opposition seems to have been halted. A combination of severe repression, patronage through allocation of land and positions that give access to public resources, and ever more strident racial and xenophobic rhetoric have kept the forces of opposition off balance and out of step.

Now, in March, 2004, four years on from the beginning of the plunge, where do we stand, and what is the outlook for the next twelve months?

Economically, we are still spiraling downwards. This year agriculture is expected to produce only 1/3 of the nation’s staple maize requirements. Exportable crops such as tobacco and paprika, are down to a small fraction of what was previously produced. Industrial capacity deteriorates and unemployment rises. While donor aid feeds those people in rural areas whose own crops fail through poor rains and lack of inputs, an ever greater percentage of the urban population fail to cope, enter the ranks of the destitute and are in need of food aid themselves even while food sits on the supermarket shelves.

Not only goods, but also services are either not available or unaffordable. Starved of government finance, social welfare has long ago collapsed as a point of last resort for the destitute. Hospitals have no equipment or medicines and few qualified staff. A patient with a fracture is told to bring plaster of paris before his bone can be set. Schools have poorly functioning infrastructure, broken desks and toilets, paint peeling from walls, no laboratory equipment or books. Yet they charge fees that have forced many, in both rural and urban areas to withdraw their children. The mission boarding schools, once the pride of Zimbabwean education and the training ground for the professional classes, are deteriorating rapidly, unable to sustain quality with the fees that the dwindling middle classes are able to afford. Both the major state universities have been crippled by repeated staff and student strikes, and at present neither is holding classes.

While high fee paying private schools manage to maintain reasonable standards, private health care is faltering on the brink of collapse. Doctors’ fees, hospitals and medicines are unaffordable except for the elite and many procedures are no longer provided in the country. Employees on medical aid are not better off as the doctors and medical aid societies quarrel over rates and payment procedures, leaving the patients to pay cash and claim later. When a simple consultation, laboratory test and prescription may cost half a month’s salary, or more, it will be rational for a worker to terminate medical aid subscriptions and it will not be surprising if all the medical aid societies collapse completely before this year is out, leaving health care accessible only to the very rich. Government’s response to the failures of service providers was predictable – punish headmasters who try to keep their schools running by allowing fee increases in line with inflation, criminalize doctors who charge cash. It is hardly surprising that many educational and medical professionals have left the country.

They are not alone. A recent survey showed that 3.4 million Zimbabweans – ¼ of the population – lives outside the country. Professionals have left with their families to find work where there is greater security and they can command a higher standard of living. Young people have left to escape the dejection and boredom of joblessness and to find tertiary education which does not require the completion of a “national service” which brutalizes and indoctrinates. Mothers have left their children behind while they live in squalor and do menial jobs to send home the precious “forex” which buys food, clothing and pays school fees. Pensioners go to do care work because they cannot survive on their pensions. Others have gone to earn the money to buy a house. They leave behind families broken, rudderless, a prey to the immorality which has gripped the country. Led by the orgy of violence and rape characterising the land seizures, national service training, and election “campaigning”, we – especially our younger generation – have lost the ability to distinguish right from wrong. Might is right; if you can exploit your fellow before he or she exploits you, fine. And then we have the example of our “businessmen” who amass wealth without any skills, any work, by manipulating a corrupt system. Dealing is the name of the game, and he who plays it well prospers. “Cry Beloved Zimbabwe”, was the lament of the WOZA women who were stopped by the police from distributing roses on Valentine’s Day. “Let love overcome hate” was their stifled message that few were allowed to hear.

The New Year produced a surprise as a new monetary policy announced by the Reserve Bank Governor began to take effect. Suddenly we found members of the corrupt elite, even a designer-suit, 25 room mansion ZANU PF M.P., behind bars on allegations of fraud and foreign currency dealing. Government announced a war on corruption. Was this an attempt to win favour among the people, with an eye to the 2005 elections? or simply the public manifestation of a power struggle within ZANU PF as the succession issue hots up, or even a desperate need to raise foreign currency at any cost? The population is sceptical, and waits to see. A real war on corruption would have to bring down far more known crooks and thieves from their high places. At the same time, there has been an attempt to bring some sanity to the foreign currency market by introducing a state-controlled auction. This effectively devalued the currency by 75%, bringing the official exchange rate up and the black market rate down, at least temporarily. But it has negatively affected exporters, importers and consumers and will certainly fuel inflation further. We are set for another round of catastrophic price rises. Where the problems are essentially political piecemeal policies cannot rescue us. A modern economy cannot thrive in the absence of political stability, without smooth linkages to the international players.

On the economic side then, 2004 is likely to bring us only misery. What of the political? It is encouraging that through all the intimidation and violence the opposition MDC has managed to survive, maintain its structures and has held together in spite of a wide internal divergence of ideological positions. It contains some individuals who have worked at great personal risk to bring change. Furthermore, they deserve credit for firmly adhering to principles of non-violence, restraining their youthful hotheads who would prefer to answer violence with violence. It is clear, however, that elections marked by state violence and terror will not bring change unless the electoral ground rules are completely rewritten, and that is certainly not going to occur in the present circumstances. What about the mass action route? Besides the opposition party, MDC, several civil society organisations have raised their voices against government policies. These include the labour federation, ZCTU, the National Constitutional Assembly, some of the churches which have country wide membership organisations, and several other NGO’s. All of them, including the MDC, are divided between the activists who want to take to the streets and the lobbyists, who want to push for some kind of “talks” with government.

Those in favour of street action are in a weak position. 2003 demonstrated that while people were prepared to protest by staying away from work, they were not ready to take to the streets and face the riot police and possibly the army. Activists watched events unfold in the Georgian capital Tbilisi with envy, but have been forced to admit that Zimbabweans are simply not yet willing to take the risk. Small demonstrations organized by the ZCTU, the NCA and WOZA, a group which organizes grassroots women, invariably resulted in arrests or police brutality or both. The masses have shied away from such action, and without the masses, this tactic cannot shift ZANU PF in any way. But the bravery of the few, especially when they are women, keeps the opposition visible and raises sprits and hope.

Dialogue between ZANU PF and the MDC has been held out as the solution by neighbouring African countries, particularly South Africa. The purpose of such inter-party talks would be to agree to end human rights abuses, re-establish the rule of law, and rewrite the electoral rules so that a new election could produce a government accepted as legitimate domestically and internationally. Then a start could be made to repair the economic damage. Such talks would have to be brokered by foreign mediators.

For the MDC, talks would be the best solution, but so far they have proved elusive. For obvious reasons ZANU PF is not interested and has deliberately held out the impression to the South Africans that they were committed while doing absolutely nothing. But it is now becoming clear that in the end this is the only way that a solution will be found.

ZANU PF appears to think that they have outwitted the opposition and can hang on to power until 2005, when they will conduct an even more violent and dishonest election which will see them clear for another five years. Even now they are making preparations. A new Presidential decree has introduced the power of detention without bail, on mere suspicion, where there is no evidence of wrong-doing. Youth militia training is being stepped up to provide a reserve of shock troops. The United Nations was asked to provide funding for the election, but the request was quickly withdrawn when they proposed to send a delegation to study the situation on the ground. The MDC, under severe constraint from forces of terror, unconstitutional laws, and a compliant judiciary, and the unwillingness of their members to engage in civil disobedience, is hobbled. It can not do much more than to hold its supporters together, plan policies to implement if they do gain power, and work hard, as they are now doing, to persuade African governments, particularly that of South Africa, to apply the pressure for internationally accepted elections.

Hence the deep despair of the population. Most Zimbabweans face the year with little hope for any early solution. But there are signs that the logic of economic failures may finally bring the whole edifice crashing down. Maybe enough Zimbabweans will decide that “enough is enough” and provide the critical mass in the streets to topple ZANU PF. The “war on corruption” has now exposed the rot at the core and could develop into an uncontrollable internecine struggle. The distortions in the Zimbabwean economy have impacted heavily on the region. President Mbeki, like Obasanjo in December, might finally decide that it is not worth the embarrassment of continuing to support Robert Mugabe, whose galloping paranoia occasionally turns on Mbeki himself. Or, a serious illness or even death of the 80-year-old Mugabe might open an opportunity for a South Africa assisted return to legitimacy, and an end to the madness. “An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped”.

The time for democratic change in Zimbabwe has not yet come. But time does move fast in Zimbabwe. The unexpected occurs on a daily basis. While today we may see little hope, tomorrow or next week will surely be different, for ultimately time is on our side.

* Send comments on this editorial - and other events in Africa - to

* Previous editorials from Mary Ndlovu
- Zimbabwe’s March: Pambazuka News 105, 2003

* NOTE FOR EDITORS: Please note that this editorial was commissioned from the author for Pambazuka News. While we are pleased that several print publications have used our editorials, we ask editors to note that if they use this article, they do so on the understanding that they are expected to provide the following credit: "This article first appeared in Pambazuka News, an electronic newsletter for social justice in Africa, Editors are also encouraged to make a donation.

Swazis are capable of formulating their own system of democratic governance, which does not have to be similar to the South African model, a senior government official told IRIN on Tuesday. Minister of Foreign Affairs Mabili Dlamini was responding to a reference made to governance issues in Swaziland in the election manifesto of the ruling South African party, the African National Congress (ANC). Swaziland was singled out by the ANC as a country where the party intended to help strengthen democracy and assist in "social normalisation and economic reconstruction".

The Angolan government on Tuesday pledged to take steps to slash the appalling child mortality rate by half within the next four years. Almost three decades of civil conflict have given Angola the world's third-worst rate of child death, with one in four likely to die before they reach their fifth birthday, according to figures from the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Guinean President Lansana Conte has sacked his prime minister, his powerful interior minister and his entire economic team in a two-stage cabinet reshuffle. The top-level changes follow Conte’s re-election for a further seven-year term in presidential elections on 21 December that were boycotted by all the country’s main opposition parties.

Your recent article “Confronting impunity through the ICC: is Africa ready and waiting?” Has triggered a number of considerations that I wish to submit here.

The issue that troubled me most is the suggestion that amnesty may be a way forward in a situation of peace negotiations! While one may have to accept a certain delay in carrying out justice for purely tactical reasons, such as the perpetrator has still such an enormous nuisance value - as was the case after the fall of both Pinochet and Videla in the case of Chilli and Argentina - that to indict them would lead to the conflict flaring up again. Of course this must be avoided! But does that imply that people such as Taylor and his like should be immune from justice? After the horrendous deeds they perpetrated? If such people are to walk about scot-free, then what is justice all about?

Justice is central to the functioning of all societies! No society condones murder and theft. Justice serves as a frame that tells everyone that not every thing is permitted, it is the limits within which human passions - the destructive ones - are contained. To do away with justice is opening a Pandora box that will require a strong and very wise man to close again, possibly thousands of deaths later!

It doesn't take a great deal of imagination I don't think to put oneself into the shoes of the victim of one of these atrocious conflicts and imagine that one is sitting in one's damaged house considering the devastation of one's life, the loss of one's kin with perhaps no known burial site, one's property stolen or destroyed and one's neighbour - the known perpetrator - going about his business, untroubled, having possibly gained from it all! I suggest that this is a case for taking the law into one's own hands which, all will agree, is conducive neither to peace nor to the rule of law!

Furthermore, the trial of the perpetrators is the time for the community as a whole to learn what has happened and for the victim to receive public recognition for what it endured which opens the way to support and help from the community. The court itself may grant compensation. The trial is also the time when the past is looked into the face no matter how painful it may be, a necessary and unavoidable step if it is ever to be put to rest, to become a thing of the past.

Reconciliation has an agenda and a timetable of its own! But what ever its pace it starts with justice which is to say, the culprit brought to books. Also, literature and psychiatrists alike have described what they call the "moral trauma", suffered by those who committed a terrible deed. Some will say "serves them right!". But this does not improve the society to which the perpetrator belongs and it is desirable that he too be given the chance to start afresh, having had the possibility to "redeem" himself through paying for his crimes. (The master minds and hardened criminals are likely to be immune to moral trauma).

Or course national justice is preferable to international justice whenever possible. In particular it would be best for the victims to have their case heard within their own community. But how often is it possible? The extraordinary undertaking of the Truth and Reconciliation commission in South Africa was "pulled off" by two outstanding fellows, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and president Mandela. How many post conflict situations are there where two such wise men with immense moral credibility could "pull off such a trick"?
The decision of whether justice should be carried out in an international or a national court of justice should be considered carefully on the ground that all too often one finds that the people holding key positions before the conflict and during the conflict are the same again in the post conflict situation.
I dare say that the people who most probably (it is for the court of justice to decide!) carry a heavy responsibility in the unfolding of the devastating events should not be entrusted with the carrying out of justice.

In some instances the judiciary ceased to exist as a result of the conflict, as was the case in Rwanda where the whole legal body had become so perverted that it could not be of any use after the genocide.

One thing seems obvious: kangaroo courts for the sake of exercising justice nationally rather then internationally does not serve the cause of justice nor does it satisfy the innate need for fairness that is common to all humans.
National or international, justice should be the concern of all. If one considers the sometimes huge international effort in bringing food and drugs to the victims of armed conflicts over long period to time, (not all of it useful) perhaps some of that effort could be diverted towards the training of the legal staff, the (re) establishing of a functioning, fair and independent judiciary, endowed with sufficient means to carry out this most important of tasks.

To conclude, I suggest that tactical postponement may have to be tolerated in order to prevent worse evil. But amnesty? NO! Amnesty is a dirty word that should be banned lest we allow a horrible past to intrude into the present and hijack the future! It must always be remembered that the operative word for a peaceful future, for a harmonious world, is Justice.

This guide:
- Points out common abuses of the election process that journalists should watch for;
- Offers a sample checklist of elements that make up a free and fair election, including issues related to the candidates, the voters, and the actual voting process;
- Provides suggestions for establishing and protecting credibility, for individual journalists and news organizations as a whole.

The Combined Harare Residents Association has condemned the arbitrary and authoritarian crackdown on homeless people in Harare last week. "We do not believe that this action was carried out on the instructions of the elected councillors but rather by the de facto mayor of Harare, Town Clerk Chideya. Again we call upon councillors to assert the power given to them by the citizens of Harare and to put the municipal employees to work for the benefit of all of us.”

The fourth round of negotiations between the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) and the United States took place this weekend in Walvis Bay, Namibia. This round of negotiations is meant to create the framework which will allow the US and SACU to conclude a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) by December this year. The current focus of talks is on industrialised goods, services and agricultural trade, very similar issues to those that stymied negotiators at the World Trade Organisation talks in Cancun, Mexico.

An Angolan opposition party on Tuesday said a demonstration to protest alleged government corruption went ahead "successfully" despite police "intimidation". According to the protest organisers, police had allegedly harassed protesters outside the United States embassy in the capital, Luanda, the venue of the protest.

A Namibian High Court will decide on Thursday whether the state can challenge the release of 13 men accused of treason for their alleged role in secessionist violence. The 13 were part of a group of 120 arrested for taking part in an attack by the Caprivi Liberation Army (CLA) on Katimo Mulilo, the largest town in the northeastern Caprivi region, which left 13 people dead in 1999. The 13, including John Samboma, the alleged commander of the CLA, were released last Monday following an order by Judge Elton Hoff at the High Court in Grootfontein, 500 km from the Namibian capital, Windhoek. Hoff ruled that his court did not have the jurisdiction to try them because the circumstances under which they had been held were "irregular".

President Robert Mugabe's government has set up secret camps across the country in which thousands of youths are taught how to torture and kill, the BBC has learned. The Zimbabwean government says the camps are job training centres, but those who have escaped say they are part of a brutal plan to keep Mugabe in power. Former recruits to the camps have spoken to the BBC's Panorama programme about a horrific training programme that breaks young teenagers down before encouraging them to commit atrocities.

Ingele Ifoto, minister of social affairs of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), spoke with IRIN on Thursday regarding the development of a national strategy for social protection, following a conference on the matter that was held from 20 - 22 February. The DRC, a vast central African country with some 60 million people, is in the midst of major transition: a government of national unity was inaugurated on 30 June 2003, ostensibly bringing an end to nearly five years of war and leading the country to national elections in 2005. According to Ifoto, the war caused at least three million deaths, and at least 1.7 million people remain displaced. Many other segments of the population also continue to suffer the war's effects, including child soldiers, orphans, raped women, war widows, war injured, and the unemployed, among others, he added.

It is an island of tranquillity in an ocean of squalor, poverty and the hustle and bustle of Africa’s largest open-air market. The small garden tucked away in the Merkato market in the capital, Addis Ababa, is a refuge for hundreds of children, many living on the streets or forced into prostitution by poverty. "This is a place where they can escape from it all and just be themselves," said Anania Admasu, who heads the local charity Children Aid Ethiopia (Chad-Et).

Olive (Organisation Development and Training) announces the following publications:
- Learning to Train - While this handbook is intended primarily as a resource for trainers working in the development sector, it will be of value to anyone seeking to work with adult learners in a respectful, facilitative and enabling manner.(R80 excl. P&P). To order call Olive Publications - telephone 031 2061534 or email evangeline@oliveodt.co.za.
- Project Planning in a development context - a set of 3 handbooks.
- Ideas for a Change - a series of user-friendly publications with practical ideas and information for people working with people, and with change and development organisations.

The department of home affairs will compile a business plan this week to address the widespread corruption in its ranks. Last Tuesday, the department's director-general, Barry Gilder, presented a report to the parliamentary portfolio committee on home affairs on the state of the department. Although Gilder confirmed that the current situation at the department was "precarious", he was also confident that measures introduced since he took the reins last year would ensure stability in the future.

Former Zambian president Frederick Chiluba on Monday appeared before two different courts on corruption and theft charges but both cases were adjourned due to disorganisation in the prosecution team. Chiluba, accompanied by his wife, Regina, first appeared before a magistrate's court on charges of stealing $4-million from the nation's Treasury together with his former director of intelligence Xavier Chungu, but the trial once again failed to take off.

The UN Security Council has agreed to send a peacekeeping force of more than 6,000 troops to Cote d'Ivoire to supervise the disarmament of rebel forces and presidential elections due in October 2005. The council voted unanimously in favour of creating the new peacekeeping force on Friday after the United States dropped its earlier opposition to the proposal.