Fahamu has a vision of a world where people organize to emancipate themselves from all forms of oppression, recognize their social responsibility, respect each other’s differences and realize their full
potential. Fahamu is looking for a qualified and passionate Intern to work with us for a period of three
months July?September 2011. The intern will be responsible for promoting Pambazuka books including coordinating sale of Pambazuka books; distribution of publicity materials and coordinating the participation of Fahamu/ Pambazuka in book fairs and related events.

Ian Khama, Botswana's president since 2008, has interests in a premium tourism company that benefited from the controversial relocation of Botswana's Bushmen from their ancestral land to resettlement camps in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Khama is a shareholder in Linyanti Investments, a subsidiary of Wilderness Holdings, a company criticised by the Bushmen and international pressure group Survival International for illegally occupying their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

Health experts say the drug misoprostol is saving women's lives around the world. It's also controversial. Originally developed to prevent gastric ulcers, it's also been shown to prevent excessive bleeding after childbirth. That's the leading cause of maternal death in the developing world. It's estimated that one woman dies from postpartum hemorrhage every seven minutes. The controversy comes because misoprostol, or miso, can also be used to induce abortion.

Little attention is being paid to African women and children in Europe, who are faced with new forms of slavery and colonialism which they experience day in and day out in democratic states of the 'North', which are otherwise mindful of human rights. Eurostat estimates that there were some 90,000 African migrant women in Europe in 2007, but countries like Italy, France, Ireland and Portugal had not given any data. In 2009, very few countries provided the numbers. Italy, however, reported about 30,000 African migrant women.

Five detained journalists were on 26 June 2011 charged with conspiracy to undermine the state as part of probe into the political crisis following the defeat of former President Laurent Gbagbo in the second round of the November, 2010 elections. The five men including journalists and other media executives are part of 15 close associates of ex-President Gbagbo who have been charged with 'offences against the authority of the state'.

Opposition MPs and Parliament guests were shocked as the chairwoman of the parliamentary oversight committee on home affairs, Maggie Maunye, implied that foreigners flocking to the country were soaking up resources and preventing South Africans from enjoying their freedom. Maunye made the remarks on Wednesday at the conclusion of a briefing of her committee by Home Affairs officials. The delegation included deputy home affairs minister Fatima Chohan, and had dealt with the issue of refugee reception centres.

Protests have broken out in the Senegalese capital Dakar and in the southern city of Mbour over continuing power shortages. In Dakar, several government buildings were set on fire including the offices of the state electricity firm, Senelec. Security forces in Mbour fired tear gas to disperse thousands of demonstrators. The trouble over power cuts, which have lasted 48 hours in some areas, come just a week after rioting against the president.

Two years after the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) promulgated the Law on Child Protection, an estimated 3,000 children remain in prisons across the country. The law, which came into effect in January 2009, replaced a 1950 colonial law on juvenile delinquency that set the age of criminal responsibility at 16, leading to a number of severe penalties against children, including life imprisonment and the death sentence. The current law has provisions for judicial, penal and social protection of children under 18 and states that a judge can send child law-breakers to 'a public or private institution of a social character, but only as a measure of last resort', and not to a prison.

Somali Journalists Association Network has learned that a Puntland court in Bosaso, the capital of Bari region, sentenced a local reporter to one year in jail. The verdict of the court was announced Saturday by judge Sheikh Adan Aw-Ahmed after it was alleged the journalist supplied false information on the Puntland administration.

'Smouldering Evidence', AfriCOG’s latest report, examines the Charterhouse Bank Scandal which has received much attention in the media recently and dates back several years. The report documents the scandal and analyses violations of law and criminal acts including money laundering and the curious flip-flopping of public officials, including the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, on the issue of whether the Bank should remain closed. This report is part of a series of studies explaining major corruption cases in order to raise public awareness and knowledge of corruption cases and the measures that can be taken to avoid them and seek accountability for their perpetration.

Thousands of Haitian peasants marched in the city of Hinche in the Central Plateau region on 21 June to demand that the government promote food sovereignty, the restoration of the environment and the development of an agriculture 'adapted to the reality of our country'. 'There needs to be a real agricultural policy,' protesters said, in distinction to current policies that encourage the importation of food, seeds and other agricultural commodities. 'Every day we see our neighbours giving up farming in the absence of any decent income,' said a longtime planter who gave his name as Jérôme. 'Young peasants are very often discouraged by the lack of economic prospects [and] the prohibitive cost of land.'

Some 3,000 Ugandan soldiers from the African Union (AU) mission have arrived in Somalia to help government forces battle al-Shabab, a group trying to overthrow Somalia's weak Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and impose Islamic law. This comes after the mandate of the AU mission was expanded from peacekeeping to enforcement of peace last month, meaning that AU soldiers can now lead the onslaught against al-Shabab.

The temperature climbed a few degrees in the arms deal kitchen this week as the Swedish prosecutorial authority directed a seemingly low-key missive to South African counterparts inquiring whether investigations into the defence procurement scandal had been reopened. The letter, under the signature of Gunnar Stetler, the director of the Swedish National Anti-Corruption Unit, notes that details have come to light of what he describes as an alleged 'bribery scheme towards South Africa', and asks whether in response to the new information, the South African judicial authorities have seen fit to open preliminary investigations.

Zimbabwe and South Africa could be headed for another diplomatic furore after Zanu PF strategist and serial political turncoat Jonathan Moyo suggested that facilitator to the Zimbabwe political crisis, President Jacob Zuma could be aiding the 'regime change agenda' in the country. But Zuma’s international relations advisor, Lindiwe Zulu immediately dismissed Moyo’s astonishing claims, saying they will not be distracted from continuing their facilitation role for the sake of Zimbabweans.

Thousands of demonstrators rallied in Tahrir Square on Friday, 1 July. Sharp clashes between youth on the one hand and police and regime thugs on the other on Tuesday and Wednesday 28 June and 29 June were the immediate impetus for the demonstration, says this article on the Jadaliyya website. 'But in addition to outrage about police brutality, which most Egyptians had hoped was a thing of the past, there is growing dissatisfaction with the limited changes since the fall of former president Hosni Mubarak,' says the article.

The thesis of this new book is that the violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly. Using the innovative concept of 'slow violence' to describe these threats, Rob Nixon focuses on the inattention we have paid to the attritional lethality of many environmental crises, in contrast with the sensational, spectacle-driven messaging that impels public activism today. 'Slow violence, because it is so readily ignored by a hard-charging capitalism, exacerbates the vulnerability of ecosystems and of people who are poor, disempowered, and often involuntarily displaced, while fueling social conflicts that arise from desperation as life-sustaining conditions erode.'

An epidemic of Chikungunya, a mosquito-borne viral disease, which began in early June in Congo’s capital Brazzaville, has spread to the neighbouring Pool region, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Between 1 and 23 June, there were 7,014 cases in Brazzaville and 460 in Pool, but no deaths, according to WHO. In Pool, which endured a series of civil wars between 1998 and 2003, damaging the local health infrastructure, only the towns of Goma Tse Tse and Kinkala, the regional capital, are affected.

Poorly-regulated, privately-run training schools in Senegal are churning out midwives who do not have a solid grasp of birthing or ante- and post-natal care, causing women and babies to die needlessly, according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Other basic competencies, as defined by the World Health Organisation, include referral in high-risk pregnancies or births; addressing miscarriages; and family planning. Most women who die during labour in Senegal do so because of post-partum haemorrhaging, according to UNFPA’s joint Senegal director, Edwige Adekambi.

Pan-Africanism: A Viable Ideology to Address Africa’s Rape Redux/Euro-American 21st Century Neo-Colonial Re-Conquest & Scramble for Africa

When: 3:45 PM, Saturday, 16 July 2011

Where: Hilton Hotel, 1750 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852, (Across from the Twinbrook Metro station (Red Line) Rockville, MD)

Who: Molefi Asante, Ph.D., (Keynote speaker) Professor and author, Samar-Al-Bulushi, activist and journalist,Maurice Carney, Director of Friends of the Congo and human rights activist, and Peter Bailey, Activist and journalist.

On the anniversary of the Coalition Forces’ invasion of Iraq, Africa witnessed overt imperialist aggression by former European colonial oppressors and the US. Civil unrest in nations across Africa is partially caused by hegemonic Western influence, which few mainstream media outlets address as an important factor. In Egypt and Tunisia, popular movements have appeared to have extinguished their Western-backed dictatorial regimes. However, oil and resource rich nations including Ivory Coast and Libya face imperialistic machinations of a cabal of Western nations and Arab monarchial states fomenting illegal neo-colonial wars to drive nationalist governments from power. A third category of African nations in crisis is comprised of countries, such as Burkina Faso, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Uganda, where proxy resource conflicts or unpopular geopolitical Western-backed regimes struggle to hold state power.

While some applaud the progress of democracy on the continent, others denounce the re-conquest of Africa. The US supported military intervention of NATO, France, and the UN in Africa ‘in the name of democracy’ demonstrates the desire of Western powers to reassert their hegemony by nullifying independent nationalistic leaders and replacing them with subservient proxies willing to perpetuate super-exploitative and neo-liberal policies set forth by the Washington Consensus. The West hegemonic project over Africa is also a reaction to China’s meteoric 21st Century rise and grand entrance into the African scene, and an attempt to deny it and other rising powers such as India, Brazil the right to commerce with Africa and alter Africa’s intra-trade and self-determination. The US and Europe’s plans to make Africa terra nostrum is best demonstrated by the perfidious actions of the French forces, the planned imposition of AFRICOM, and the militarisation of the UN.

The speakers will discuss the US, NATO, UN, and France-led illegal and naked aggression in Africa, particularly in Libya and Ivory Coast, and the current trends in the African scene, highlighted by the regime change, in Tunisia, Egypt, and Ivory Coast with the capture of Gbagbo by the French troops, the overlooked movement of Burkinabe to remove the Compaore regime, the emergence of Southern Sudan and the ongoing crises in the Democratic Republic in Congo, Uganda, and Somalia.

Renowned Pan-Africanist activist and philosophical founder of concept of Afrocentricity, Dr. Molefi Asante is the keynote speaker to discuss the Anglo-European agenda to re-colonise Africa.

About Us: The Revival of Pan-Africanism Forum’s purpose is to rekindle the spirit of the African collective consciousness consolidated by an awakening of the African masses in the face of current forceful Western engagement in Africa.

Contacts:

Dr. Randy Short (731) 394-7217; Delmas Irigale (240) 550-4349; Makhaya Sibongile (225) 361-5417; Coti Chapo (240) 476-1791; or send an email to [email]panafrica.now@gmail.com

The Ethiopian government has publicly accused an editor and a columnist of involvement in a terrorism plot, according to news reports and local journalists. Woubshet Taye, deputy editor of the leading Awramba Times newspaper and Reeyot Alemu, columnist for the weekly Feteh, have been held incommunicado under Ethiopia's far-reaching anti-terrorism law since last week. The anti-terrorism law criminalises writing the government deems favorable to groups and causes it labels as 'terrorists', including banned political opposition party Ginbot 7. This is the first use of the law against journalists.