This update includes: From a theory of revolution to the management of a fragile state by Saki Macozoma; From the freedom charter to the Washington Consensus by Dennis Davis; Parties, politics and the future of democracy by Vincent T. Maphai and Keith Gottschalk; and The politics of poverty by David Everatt.

This report by the Coordinating Assembly of Non-Governmental Organisations (Cango) is based on the proceedings of a workshop hosted to address the constitutional framework for poverty reduction in Swaziland. Its main objective was to raise awareness about the constitution in order to give the Swaziland State a clear framework for developing strategies to fight poverty.

For the first time since World War II, an international tribunal has found journalists guilty of crimes against humanity through the use of broadcast and print media. The UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda sentenced two men to life in prison and a third to 35 years for their roles in the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which extremist Hutus massacred between 500,000 and 800,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.

Your article on the commonwealth is spot on (Pambazuka 135: Commonwealth and Human Rights: Contradictions and Weaknesses). The organisation has lost most of its historical rights and today's relevance. It seems to be held together by the UK Queen and her desire (or not) to look important, which she is not. Certainly not in Africa. The North/South issues are far more important to Africa than the desire to keep the commonwealth together. Inconsistencies in its behaviour do help to dismantle this colonial relic.

Please note that during the regime of General Sani Abacha and the killing of Ken the Great of the Agoni people the whole Commonwealth was behind expelling Nigeria from the body. Now comes the great Mugabe who has tortured and is torturing the people of Zimbabwe and the African leaders are condoning the suffering of ordinary Zimbabwean men and women. Is this the type of leadership that we expect from our Presidents? For Gods sake wake up SADC and African Commonwealth. You are there to care for all the people not Mugabe alone.

The UN head of Emergency Relief Coordination, Jan Egeland, has expressed concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Darfur, western Sudan, and urged the warring sides to desist from deliberately attacking civilians. In a statement issued by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Egeland said insecurity in Darfur had now reached "unprecedented levels", due to fighting between forces loyal to the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM).

Côte d'Ivoire is a heavily indebted poor country (HIPC). How does this impact on government use of foreign aid? What is the relationship between aid and the debt burden? And what are the policy lessons in terms of making aid work more effectively in Côte d'Ivoire and other HIPCs?

Worldwide trading of greenhouse gas emissions more than doubled over the last year to about 71 million tonnes, with governments and multilateral agencies accounting for more than half of the purchases, according to a World Bank study released Thursday. That is a tiny amount of worldwide energy-related carbon emissions, which are expected to rise to a total 8.3 billion tons by 2010 from 6.6 billion tons in 1996, according to U.S. government data.

Hopes of Nigeria recovering looted funds totalling about three million pounds from Britain - where it has been stashed away by Nigerians - have arisen. The indications emerged from a meeting President Olusegun Obasanjo had with British Prime Minister Mr. Tony Blair, who was in Abuja to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).

Nigeria's labour minister was sacked last Thursday after being named as a suspect in the highest-profile corruption investigation so far undertaken by the country's three-year-old anti-graft agency. President Olusegun Obasanjo fired Hussaini Akwanga shortly after the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) said it was probing allegations that he and six others took bribes from French firm SAGEM (SAGM.PA).

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is pleased with Kenya's stand on corruption, especially in the judiciary. The visiting IMF first deputy managing director, Dr Anne Krueger, said that the measures the government had introduced had confounded sceptics on its commitment to reform. However, she warned that fighting corruption was a continuous process as "attitudes do not change overnight."

We are pleased to announce that Ford Foundation's Special Initiative for Africa has awarded Pambazuka News with a grant to assist in dissemination of information about the Special Initiative for Africa and its grantees.

An independent review, commissioned by the World Bank, has recommended that the Bank stop funding all coal and oil mining projects in the developing world, and increase investment in renewable energy.

A 1999 Bank report entitled Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't and Why, found that government agencies that actively sought to encourage involvement of beneficiaries achieved a 62 percent success rate in their projects, while those that did not achieved just 10 percent. A more recent discussion paper by the Bank's Civil Society Team said relations with Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) were "fragmented" and "lacking clarity". Engagement is described as "ad-hoc" and "disconnected from policy processes". High demands on staff time, ambiguous guidance and poor monitoring systems "fuel the tendency among task managers to 'tick the box' that they have involved CSOs. This is according to a briefing from the Bretton Woods Project on the World Bank's relations with civil society.

Despite the introduction of a series of measures to fight corruption in East Africa over the past 10 years, the war on graft is being lost, a new report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) says. "The key reason for failure is a simple lack of political will in the upper reaches of sub-Saharan governments," a paper commissioned by the audit firm last week says. "Governments have paid lip-service to the cause and established anti-corruption commissions, only to render them virtually impotent by creating difficult conditions for commission staffers - low salaries, inadequate support, insufficient funding and others."

President Sam Nujoma personally intervened earlier this year to halt an investigation into the Roads Authority, The Namibian has learnt. Well-placed Government officials said Nujoma had orally reprimanded then Minister of Finance Nangolo Mbumba, and followed that up with a letter, ordering him to discontinue a comprehensive audit of the Roads Authority's books by auditors the Road Fund Administration (RFA) had appointed.

About Shs 4.4 billion which Unicef paid out to local governments has not been accounted for. Mr Martin Emukulat, who led a team that did a performance audit of Unicef's country programme operations, said that the UN agency disbursed about Shs 20 billion to local governments in the last three years.

Nigeria is still waiting for a national debate on the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) after African leaders returned virtually empty-handed from a G8 summit in Canada where they were searching for the $64 billion needed to make NEPAD work. "The challenge really is what should the poor nations of Africa do when expectations turn into illusions in the global arena. Those saddled with the implementation of NEPAD in Nigeria should be conscious of this huge challenge," says this editorial from Nigeria's This Day newspaper.

The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, (CHOGM) billed to begin Friday in Abuja may discuss new benchmarks for democracy and development, the core of which are tackling corruption, ensuring democratic accountability of government revenue and expenditure and how to guarantee peace and security.

George Bizos - who was a junior member of the ANC defence team in the historic Rivonia trial - has taken up a controversial role in the Hefer Commission, which was set up to investigate allegations that Bulelani Ngcuka, National Director of Public Prosecutions, had been investigated for being an apartheid spy and that he abused his position as the country's chief prosecutor. In this interview, Bizos explains his position.
Related Links:
* Conspiracy theories flourish as the spy story subplot thickens
http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/2003/11/30/insight/in06.asp