Refugees from Kakuma and Daadab refuge camps are being registered as voters contrary to the law, Parliament has been told.

West African heads of state, and the leader of the African Union (AU), have begun preliminary talks, Wednesday, aimed at ending a five week rebellion, which has left hundreds of people dead and tens of thousands displaced. The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) has been spearheading mediation efforts and brokered a ceasefire last week.

Judges are being surveyed for corruption and the report could be out this week, says The Monitor newspaper. The survey, recommended by the Commonwealth Group of Jurists, is funded by Britain's Department for International Development (DfID), and conducted by Kampala's Centre for Basic Research (CBR).

The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives has accused developed nations of encouraging multinational corporations operating in Africa and other third world countries to offer bribes to win contracts in strategic sectors of the economy.

The World Bank has committed $1 billion to fight HIV/Aids in Africa and much of the support will be in the form of grants, the bank's Vice-President for Africa Callisto Madavo said on Sunday.

The Malawi Union of Savings and Credit Co-operative (MUSCO) has blamed Government for the stunted economic growth in the country.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has warned that a severe funding crisis could force the agency to halt a number of its operations unless donor governments provide immediate funding.

As the cotton industry limps back to life in Kenya, experts are warning that only a concerted effort by all stakeholders would see farmers reap benefits once again and help sustain the industry. Ever since the industry hit the ground and many ginneries closed shop in the western Kenyan cotton belt of Nyanza, farmers who had lost hope are slowly streaming back.

Allan Kaplan presents a radically new approach to the understanding of organisations and communities, and to the practice of social development. His approach eschews the conventional instrumental or technicist way in favour of a methodology which embraces the full complexity and ambiguity of social transformation.

Madagascar dissolved its parliament last Wednesday ahead of parliamentary elections set for 15 December, almost exactly a year after a disputed presidential election which plunged the country into a violent power struggle.

The Community Development Resource Association is a non-governmental African organisation, based in Cape Town, South Africa, advancing conscious and continuous learning about development processes and the art of intervention. We aim to help bring about and support authentic and coherent development practice amongst people, organisations and institutions working towards those forms of social transformation that most benefit the poor and marginalised. The centre will be offering a variety of courses in Cape Town over 2003/2004.

The Office of the Prime Minister has finally charged a senior government official with corruption after he allegedly tried to influence the award of a multi-million tender of state pensions in favour of his private firm and business associates.

An internal report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has found that nearly $1bn disappeared from Angolan Government finances last year. The sum is far greater than the value of humanitarian assistance sent to the country this year and the report adds that over the past five years a total of over $4bn are unaccounted for.

Has anyone tried to convince South African Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma that there cannot be any objective or balanced reporting in the present circumstances in Zimbabwe? Does not her continued stay in Mbeki's cabinet reflect badly on him, despite his more serious approach to the problem of Zimbabwe?

Ethiopia has reacted strongly to United Nations assertions that the security of peacekeepers stationed in the region has been seriously threatened by Ethiopian villagers and militia. Officials were angry about reports earlier this month that UN troops overseeing the ceasefire that ended a 30-month territorial war were threatened by armed villagers and militia along the disputed border with Eritrea.

Aid has become big business, and many International Donors are so removed from the daily lives of the poor that they consider the overheads of many NGOs quite reasonable when compared to their own. AID is about power and many of the officials exert that power with a dangerous certitude with no knowledge of cultures or beliefs.

One of the ruling coalition parties in Ethiopia - the Southern Ethiopian People's Democratic Front (SEPDF) - has replaced its chairman and purged more than 30 members in a bid to wipe out corruption.

There has been an intellectual row over the New Partnership for African Development (Nepad) by African NGOs participating at the NGO Forum preceding the 32nd Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and People's Rights at the Kairaba Beach Hotel. NGOs from all over the continent participating at the forum have strongly expressed mixed feelings over the way the new African development initiative was being driven by African heads of states. Many believed that the initiative had not involved the participation of ordinary Africans.

South African President Thabo Mbeki, his top government ministers and a grouping of international corporate heads dubbed the International Investment Council gathered last weekend at a luxury game lodge to discuss the country’s economic growth path. The situation in Zimbabwe and its impact on regional investor confidence featured prominently in their discussions. In a briefing, Mbeki, previously criticised for his softly-softly approach, defended his stance towards South Africa’s troubled neighbour in the north. Mbeki said he was committed to working with the Zimbabwean government on an “urgent” basis to resolve problems of land reform, famine and a collapsing economy. Echoing Mbeki’s quiet diplomacy, Niall Fitzgerald, chairperson of multi-national Unilever, said he believed the situation in Zimbabwe had to be dealt with “privately and urgently” and that there was no point in “shouting”. “The more things are done quietly and urgently, the more encouraged I will become that we will achieve some progress,” he said.

Far to the north of Johannesburg in Harare, it’s unlikely that Raymond Majongwe, leader of a striking Zimbabwean teachers’ union, would have had much faith in Mbeki and Fitzgerald’s foreign policy on Zimbabwe. About the same time that South African Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma arrived in Zimbabwe last Thursday for a meeting with Robert Mugabe, Majongwe’s lawyer was alleging how his client had been “seriously injured” in policy custody. “He has been beaten up and when I saw him yesterday (Wednesday) night he couldn’t sit on his own. I think he has broken ribs and internal bleeding,” said lawyer Tererayi Gunje. Zuma landed back in South Africa on Saturday to hand out a pasting to the South African media for presenting Zimbabwe in a bad light. Dlamini-Zuma said the South African media was “very negative” and had “failed to paint a balanced picture of events both in Zimbabwe and South Africa”.

Also at the time of Dlamini-Zuma’s visit to Zimbabwe was the emergence of two reports compiled by the Zimbabwean Human Rights NGO Forum, one documenting political violence for September and the other reporting on intimidation of Zimbabwean teachers. Combined the reports run to nearly 50 pages and most of these pages are filled with the harrowing stories of people whose lives have been destroyed by a vicious cycle of beatings, burnings, torture, stonings, harassment and threats. Both reports convey the impression of a society at ransom to mob rule in an atmosphere of violence and intimidation where the police are unlikely to rush to the rescue. These are two random examples drawn from the report:

· OM, a youth secretary for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was taken to Chitungwiza police station and interrogated on the wherabouts of an MDC activist being sought in connection with a murder. He was then taken to Harare Central Police Station. On professing ignorance, he was assaulted under the feet whilst in leg irons. He was ordered to undress and taken underground where more assaults were perpetrated. He was blindfolded, had a gun poked into his mouth and was taken to Goromonzi Police Station where he was forced to confess to the whereabouts of Kitsiyatota under the application of electric shocks.

· AK, a pregnant teacher, was assaulted by Zanu-PF youths because her husband was the District Secretary for the MDC. The baby was born on June 29 but passed away on July 5. Medical reports attributed the death of the baby to the assault.

Nor can these accounts be dismissed as isolated incidents. Although political violence peaked around the March general election and September local election, according to the Human Rights Forum, between the beginning of the year and the end of September there have been 1057 cases of torture, or 117 per month. In the same time period, there have been 358 cases of political violence and intimidation, 223 abductions, 170 unlawful arrests, 110 unlawful detentions, 62 death threats, 58 murders, 29 assaults and seven rapes.

The report dealing with the attack on teachers says the violence has been ongoing since June 2 000 in the context of a campaign against civil servants by ruling party supporters, war veterans and the youth militia. “Violence against teachers has been concentrated in the rural communities where teachers are rightfully considered to be a group that has considerable influence on the communities in which they live. The reported attacks on teachers who support or are suspected of supporting the MDC seems to be a way of limiting their political influence on the rural populace,” says the report. “This report documents 238 individual cases of human rights abuses against teachers for the 18 month period between January 2001 and June 2002. The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum believes the documented evidence that it has collected is merely the tip of a much bigger iceberg, and would wish to draw attention to the many previous cases reported in earlier reports.”

The assault on all sectors of society is in line with what is seen as the intent by the government of Zimbabwe to close down all social and political spaces available to the opposition in their attempt to hold on to power. This is implemented not only through a system of centralised control, but also through a situation of organised chaos that allows groups to operate that destroy the opposition and are increasingly likely to target groups such as churches, NGO’s and journalists.

Legislation has previously been used by the Zimbabwean government to control sectors of society that may be opposed to it. Most recently, civil society has expressed concern about an instruction from the government for all NGOs to register under the controversial Private Voluntary Organisations (PVO) Act. Last month the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare published an advertisement instructing all NGOs not registered to do so in terms of Section 9 of the PVO Act. Section 6 of the Act does not allow such a “body, institution or association to operate without being registered”, the notice said. Section 25 of the same Act makes it a criminal offence to operate without being registered. This is seen as an attempt by government to crack down on the activities of NGOs and civil society in the same way that the government has cracked down on other critical sectors like students, workers, the judiciary, the media and political parties.

At the same time as a deteriorating human rights situation, hunger is stalking the countryside, with reports indicating that up to six million people could be at risk from starvation. Recent SADC Food Early Warning system and World Food Programme reports confirm this picture of hunger. An August/September report of the National NGO Food Security Network (FOSENET), consisting of 24 organisations covering all districts of Zimbabwe, said that almost all area reports indicated that whole communities were now becoming vulnerable. “This is attributed to collapse of the harvests, the breakdown of supply through the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), the absence of meaningful levels of relief, the scarcity of commercial supplies and political interference and corruption in distribution of scarce supplies.” Almost all areas were reported to have had food stocks for only one month, with some provinces like Matabeleland North and South having totally run out, and others like Masvingo, Midlands and Manicaland approaching the same situation.

What does the future hold for Zimbabwe? Just after the disputed March elections, analysts warned that the prospect of serious internal conflict in Zimbabwe was imminent, with grave consequences for the entire southern African region. At the time Zanu-PF had just withdrawn from talks with the MDC, whose leader Morgan Tsvangarai was talking about mass action as a way to pressure the government into new elections. Since then the crisis has deepened and those inside Zimbabwe speculate that there may be a number of small scale and spontaneous “explosions” as a result of frustration at the current crisis. This would manifest itself through food riots, lootings, increased criminality and a resultant clamp down by the army and the police.

Increasingly, there are calls for greater international awareness of the urgency of the situation in Zimbabwe and for the international community to move away from seeing the crisis only through the eyes of white farmers and the land crisis. Geoffrey Nyarota, the editor of the Zimbabwe Daily News, said in a recent interview: “Their (the white farmers) rights are important, but the situation is not limited to the plight of those farmers. This is a much bigger situation: the rural population is totally without food. The plight of the opposition parties, the journalists, the judiciary - these are all groups who have been targeted …”

Meanwhile, Mugabe has shown a determination to cling to power and a corresponding unwillingness to compromise, leaving the MDC unable to engage meaningfully on a political level. The political gamble that the opposition would disappear and that things would ‘normalise’ in Zimbabwe has not paid off. Escalating violence by state agencies signals an escalating need to suppress the unwillingness of Zimbabweans to accept or normalise the current political situation. The violence and state control that has now penetrated areas of industrial relations, food security, civic life, residential areas and workplaces is not a sign of a system that fears only a few white farmers or foreign forces- it is a sign of fear of the people. Violently stopping opposition candidates from registering through violence in 700 local government election wards is not a sign of a leadership that is confident of its popularity with the people. The question for South African political leaders must therefore be whether they remain loyal to and enable President Mbeki’s statement - ‘Let the people of Zimbabwe decide their future’. And the test of their conduct will not be what they did and did not do towards supporting not one party or another. It will be in what they did and did not do to support the opportunities for ordinary Zimbabweans to have the political space and the basic rights to solve their own problems.

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With efforts to end years of civil conflict continuing, the Government of Burundi is undertaking a national good governance programme in partnership with UNDP. UNDP is providing US$7 million to support the initiative, covering three areas: political institutions and human rights, government administration, and the economy and public finance.