Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale’s support for African National Congress (ANC) Youth League president Julius Malema may see his presidential ambitions collapse as he is frozen out of the camps of both President Jacob Zuma and those seeking to oust him. Mr Malema, who faces suspension of five years from the ANC, is likely to sink Mr Sexwale’s aspirations and those of many senior politicians if he fails in his desperate campaign to retain his membership. Mr Malema’s known backers include ANC treasurer-general Mathews Phosa, Sport Minister Fikile Mbalula, former MP Tony Yengeni, veteran Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Mr Sexwale, Northern Cape chairman John Block, and Limpopo Premier Cassel Mathale.

Climate change is likely to lead to increased average rainfall in the world's major river basins but weather patterns will be fickle and the timing of wet seasons may change, threatening farming and foodstocks, experts say. Furthermore, some river systems in Africa - southern Africa's Limpopo, north Africa's Nile and West Africa's Volta - are set to receive less rain than they do at the moment, hitting food production and fuelling international tensions.

This durbanclimatejustice.wordpress.com website is designed to provide logistical support for climate justice activists attending the COP17. With information on events, venues, actions, and essential activist advice on a cheap curry and decent beer after a long days changing the world.

Access to basic education in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remains poor, with up to seven million children across the vast country out of school - despite a 2010 government decision to make primary education free. DRC is still struggling to overcome the effects of wars that raged between 1996 and 2003, compounded by continuing violence in the east of the country and decades of corruption and poor governance. The seven million figure was contained in the preliminary findings – reported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - of a study conducted by the DRC government with the UK Department for International Development and the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF.

Nevanji Madanhire, the editor of the weekly Zimbabwe Standard newspaper, and reporter Nqaba Matshazi, were arrested in Harare on Tuesday 15 November and charged with theft, unlawful entry and criminal defamation. It is believed the journalists were taken to the Harare Central Police station. The duo’s arrest is over a story Matshazi wrote on 6 November that claimed a new health insurance firm, Green Card Medical Society, was reportedly on the brink of collapse. The story claimed that the company’s expenditure outstripped its income.

Heavy rains and an outbreak of cholera in Kenya’s Dadaab complex is exacerbating the situation in the overcrowded refugee camp, where aid efforts were already hampered by insecurity, the United Nations reported. There are now 60 cases of cholera in the camps, including 10 laboratory-confirmed cases and one refugee death, according to Andrej Mahecic, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Nigeria has evacuated from Mali 104 of its citizens, mostly women, either made to work as 'sexual slaves' or suspected of involvement in human trafficking, officials said. The National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP) evacuated 93 alleged victims of human trafficking, nine suspected traffickers and two babies, the agency's head, Beatrice Jedy-Agba, told reporters.

Annette Groth, spokeswoman on human rights for the Left Party in Germany, relates her experience of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, which took place from 5 to 7 November in Cape Town, South Africa.

South African exports to Europe - a major trading partner - had been hit hard not only by the slump in demand associated with the euro-zone debt crisis, but also by the volatility of the rand, which undermined the competitiveness of local enterprises, Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies has said. The shaky outlook for exports to Europe could contribute to lower economic growth in the coming year, torpedoing the government’s ambitious plans to boost job creation and reduce poverty. The Treasury cut the economic growth forecast for this year to 3,1 per cent in the medium term budget policy statement last month, and its expectations of it rising to 3,4 per cent next year could prove too optimistic if Europe’s debt crisis pulls that continent into a recession.

Partly inspired by the Arab Spring, partly by their own experiences of living abroad, but mostly by what they say is utter frustration about the huge inequalities that divide Angola, an emerging youth protest group has no fixed political affiliations and no formal leadership, says this IPS article. Starting off with just a dozen people, their support base has grown rapidly, thanks to social networking sites like Facebook, and in October they mobilised some 700 people to walk down a main street in Luanda carrying placards saying 'Down with the dictator' and '32 years is too long'. Pedro Seabra, a researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations and Security in Lisbon said: 'Angola is still a very long way off from any sort of Arab Spring but these protests are very new for Angola and very significant. Things are definitely staring to change.'

At double the size of China's Three Gorges Dam, the 40 GW Grand Inga hydropower project, to be built on the Congo River under an agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa, will be the world's largest by a wide margin. It will increase Africa's electricity generating capacity by one-third. But as IPS News reports, as is unfortunately typical with many big-push style projects in the developing world, the local people will likely get little of the electricity produced by the Grand Inga. Instead, the power transmission lines are expected to go towards mining and industrial facilities, towards the big cities in South Africa and Egypt, as well as possibly being exported to Europe.

Human Rights Watch has urged the new government in Egypt against deporting Eritrean asylum seekers who are currently being detained in the North African country. The international advocacy group said Egyptian authorities are preparing to forcibly return a group of 118 Eritreans including recent deserters from the Eritrean Army; accusing Cairo of renewing the trend of mass deportations it exercised in 2008 and 2009. In most cases Eritrean refugees and asylum-seekers upon return are immediately thrown to secret detention centers where they are subjected to severe torture and other in-human treatments, the human rights group says.

Thousands of migrants traverse the road between Djibouti’s capital, Djiboutiville, and the coastal town of Obock carrying little more than a bottle of water and the hope that they are heading towards a better life. They pass through an arid landscape strewn with volcanic rock that sustains little life besides the occasional pastoralist and his goats. Temperatures average around 34 degrees Celsius in winter and in summer can reach 52 degrees. It is just one leg of a journey that, for most, started in Ethiopia or Somalia and for the fortunate ones will end with a well-paid job in Saudi Arabia.

After 23 October elections to the Tunisian Constituent Assembly, strikes have broken out in numerous sectors, including airport, postal and oil workers, against poor wages and working conditions. These strikes underscore popular opposition to the entire political establishment, which has still not succeeded in assembling a government based on the elections, says The 23 October poll gave the right-wing Islamist party Ennahda the most seats in the 217-member Constituent Assembly. The Constituent Assembly is tasked with drafting a new constitution and appoint an interim government.

A spokesperson for the Somali militant group al-Shabaab said that Kenya's prime minister recently visited Israel to seek assistance in 'destroying Muslim people and their religion'. The office of Kenya's prime minister said on Monday 14 November that Kenya received the backing of Israeli leaders to help Kenya fight what it called 'fundamentalist elements'. Kenyan Prime Minster Raila Odinga visited Israel on and sought help building the capacity of his country's security forces.

Kenya's newly-constituted Supreme Court on Tuesday 15 November refused to rule on a date for next year's elections, stoking voter unease over moves by the government to amend a polling timeline already endorsed by a referendum. Under the constitution adopted last year, Kenya was due to hold presidential and parliamentary elections on 14 August 2012, the first polls since a disputed vote in 2007 after which more than 1,220 people were killed and 350,000 displaced. The post-election violence is being investigated by the International Criminal Court.

This map shows where UN Peacekeeping is currently assisting with elections and where they have recently assisted.

The Maputo Protocol is a ground-breaking women’s rights legal instrument that expands and reinforces the rights provided in other human rights instruments. The Protocol provides a broad range of economic and social welfare rights for women. Importantly it was produced by Africans and pays attention to the concerns of African women. AWID interviewed Faiza Jama Mohamed, director of Equality Now about the Solidarity for African Women's Rights (SOAWR) campaign for the ratification and implementation of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women also known as the Maputo Protocol or the African Women’s Protocol.

Take Back The Tech! is a collaborative campaign that takes place during the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence (25 Nov - 10 Dec). It is a call to everyone - especially women and girls - to take control of technology to end violence against women. Visit the Take Back The Tech! website to find out more.

The John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture, part of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, announces the availability of travel grants for research travel to our collections. The John Hope Franklin Research Center seeks to collect, preserve, and promote the use of printed and manuscript materials bearing on the history of Africa and people of African descent. Research grants are available to any faculty member, graduate or undergraduate student, or independent scholar with a research project requiring the use of materials held by the Franklin Research Center.