Civil servants in Kenya have threatened to go on their first-ever strike at the end of March if government fails to award them a 600 percent pay rise. The Kenya Civil Servants Union, which has been in existence for a year, says it has been negotiating with government on behalf of about 250,000 workers - but that little progress has been made concerning wage increases.

For the first time in recent years, justices of the Supreme Court are facing a barrage of criticisms related to bribery, according to the latest newsletter of the Independence Advocacy Project. The Chief Justice of Nigeria Justice Muhammadu Lawal Uwais had to speak out openly in court in Abuja in February on the issue: "We have nothing to hide. Let the police step in and do their job. We are interested in getting to the root of the matter. Let me say and assure all who are here and who would hear of this matter that there is absolutely no truth in the several uncouth and insupportable allegations made against me and my brethren in this court."

Economic, political and civil pundits last Thursday frowned on a new 45-strong Cabinet announced by President Muluzi, saying its attribute was “a pain” and its size was “a rebuff of the aims of a loan the House approved only last week.” “The size of the new Cabinet defeats the purpose of a structural adjustment credit [of US58 million] which the National Assembly approved last week for fiscal reforms,” said Economics Association of Malawi (Ecama) spokesman Perks Ligoya.

The Narc Government is yet to root out grand corruption, several key speakers said last week. The launch of the Transparency International Bribery Index 2003 was turned into a Government-bashing forum with participants saying that grand corruption is still a reality in Kenya. They argued that the current administration only fought corruption in the first few months after it came to power.

Hopes that the growing humanitarian crisis in Southern Africa had been checked are "fading fast", say aid agencies. A mid-term review of the consolidated appeal for the region notes that the food security situation is "again being severely threatened", while aid for non-food items has not been forthcoming.

“The 1990s wave of globalisation which introduced a new concept of multi discipline participation in development, recognised the formation and involvement of NGO's in the development process. This, in some way, has led to a mis-conception that an NGO is another way of creating jobs and amassing wealth.” This was one of the responses to a BBC's Africa Live debate held on Wednesday, 25 February that put NGO's under scrutiny. Hundreds of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) operate in various African countries. Their aims range from providing relief services, conserving the environment, contributing to development projects or simply battling with governments over human rights issues.

President Olusegun Obasanjo has approved the dismissal of Justice Chris P.N. Senlong of the Federal High Court from the Federal Judicial Service. The dismissal of the Plateau State born judge followed the recommendation of the National Judicial Council (NJC), which found him guilty of corruption.

The National Council of Provinces (NCOP) passed the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Bill yesterday, intensifying the fight against corruption in the country. The National Assembly approved the Bill in November last year. The Bill seeks to replace the Corruption Act of 1992 and it also endeavours to reflect government's broad strategy to combat corruption at all levels of society.

Streams of stinking water run ceaselessly through the alleys that cut across the hillside of Margoso, Luanda. Generations of citizens have walked there and lived there, accustomed to the smell, and condemned to be forgotten.

It is on these alleys, in these slums on which politics has turned a blind eye, that a generation of young people, excluded and uprooted, have fomented a new political revolution through rap and through the repeated frustration that comes from having been robbed of their rights as citizens.

MCK, 22, has won notoriety. On 26 November 2003, José Eduardo dos Santos's presidential guard killed car-washer Arsénio Sebastião "Cherokee", 27, for singing MCK's rap "Technique, Causes and Consequences", a.k.a "I know what's up". Cherokee has in turn become a symbol of injustice in Angola.

Going down those alleys on the way to his house, MCK jokes about his social status, especially when, in the morning, he sets about fetching water in a drum which he carries on his back, on his shoulder or in his hands, whichever feels most convenient.

"I am the youngest in the family and I have to fetch water every day," he says.

His room is extremely cramped, even for one person. In the rainy season, prayer is the only thing that holds his house together – as well as his faith. Other rap activists cling to survival in the same way: Furacão and Keyta Mayanda, not to mention Brigadeiro 10 Pacotes, who was responsible for organising the thirtieth day memorial mass for Cherokee.

The outrage, evident on the faces and on the posters which line Marçal slum, where the deceased lived, is a sign of a mature understanding of the real relationship between the people and the regime.

The rappers managed, on their own initiative, to collect nearly one thousand dollars to give the victim's family: a sum that puts to shame the maize flour and beans the presidential guard left at the home of the deceased.

Moreover, MCK assumed responsibility for putting Cherokee's two children through school. He markets his CDs directly, and his meagre profits are put towards this cause. This is revolution.

"We have to promote a revolution of the mind in order to correct what happened in 1975. Colonialism ended, but the system remains the same. We count for nothing in our own country," argues Keyta Mayanda.

"You pressed 'play' and fell into a trench of ideas," goes the first track on MCK's CD: thirteen tracks with the suggestive name of "The trench of ideas".

This album, and others that are yet more radical in tone such as "Know the truth and the truth shall set you free" by Brigadeiro 10 Pacotes [Brigadier 10 packs], were recorded and produced in improvised studios.

The minibus taxi drivers who provide transport for the masses are willingly helping to arouse consciences, to politicise the masses. This controversial music, banned by the authorities, plays on the stereos in these overcrowded vehicles; music whose value lies in the content of its lyrics as well as in its beat.

"The government plays a different guitar" by Brigadeiro 10 Pacotes is the most controversial and also the most commonly heard song on this distribution circuit. It is a direct challenge to the Big Chief.

Frantz Fanon warned African politicians that the politicisation of the masses does not, and cannot, come through political speeches: "Politicisation means opening the spirit, awakening the spirit, enlightening the spirit."

In the slums, home to the masses - to an absolute majority - the silence of the people has become imprisoned by misery, paralysed by war and oppression. Track 11, "Echoes of rebellion," awakens a dormant spirit: balumuka. It looks at "a people suffering at the hands of the rulers". It examines the importing of western disguises by the political class, which has been looting the resources of the people and justifying it with "pretty speeches".

"Echoes of rebellion" calls on citizens to "be prepared / the people's silence speaks / the people's passivity is bursting the balloon". The verses take up the message about and for the people:

"We are politically tamed
Economically colonised
Culturally stagnated
Socially retarded … "

From where does this critical consciousness come? MCK says it comes from the life that he sees around himself. He has finished high school, but has neither access to the public university nor the funds to enter the private universities. Nevertheless, this consciousness is also the result of the gains made by press freedom. The singer keeps under his bed a large collection of press clippings, full of cases of corruption, misrule and whatever else. "We write our lyrics based on what we get from the press and from Rádio Ecclésia [the Angolan Catholic radio station]."

Despite its unimpressive circulation (on average 30 000 copies per week among Luanda's 3.5 million inhabitants), the independent press has been the driving force behind a growing democratic consciousness. And in a spontaneous reciprocal gesture, track six of "Trench of ideas", entitled "Topics for the article" is a tribute to the independent press which inspired it, as well as a parody of the dressed-up official version of events. With a forced, ironic optimism it explores what has changed and what remains the same: "The police beauty salon has new hairstyles … Parliament is just a sham / and whoever can do anything isn't part of it … the young are lost in a desert like camels."

And the chatter still continues at the scene of the crime, the Mussulo quayside, where the Dos Santo's guards tortured and killed Cherokee, by drowning him, in broad daylight in a public place. There where the elite go to relax and enjoy the kind of privileges which in Angola are reserved for a few. There, in truth's cemetery, where the people's silence is celebrated with mocking smiles. It is all part of the same process.

Music has no place in the grand scheme of politics in Angola. Especially not rap, invented in the 1970s by imaginative people living on the edge of society in the ghettos of New York's Bronx.

With neither change nor elections in sight, what consequences will this have for the abyss that separates the regime, the opposition, the city centres, the Luanda slums, the demobilized soldiers, the governors' palaces, and the rest of the country?

* Rafael Marques is a Angolan journalist

Informal talks are being held between the ruling ZANU-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), a senior Zimbabwean official told IRIN on Wednesday. "Talks are taking place with a section of the MDC, who believe in moving forward," said Simon Khaya Moyo, the country's ambassador to South Africa.

Prosecutors in Zimbabwe on Tuesday rejected evidence by the defence in the treason trial of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, saying it simply tried to cover up a plot to assassinate President Robert Mugabe and stage a coup. In his closing arguments before the Harare High Court, prosecutor and acting attorney general Bharat Patel described the evidence by defence witnesses as "not quite clear".

The police force remains the most corrupt institution in Kenya, an independent study has revealed. A survey conducted by Transparency International says it has found that police are still the most frequently bribed public officials. But the Kenya Bribery Index notes the number of corrupt incidents has dropped by 77% in the force compared to 2002.

Hundreds of non-governmental organisations operating in Ghana will be blacklisted at the end of March, if they cannot provide an adequate record of their activities. Kojo Amoakwe, Chief Director of the Ministry of Manpower Development and Employment, explained to BBC Africa Live! that there are 3,000 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the country and only 150 have submitted their annual reports and statements of accounts to the Social Welfare Department.

The European Union has announced that it was ready to remove contentious domestic subsidies as long as its American counterparts followed suit. Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said the European Union was ready to zero rate agricultural export subsidies for members of the G90 who include Africa upon request. The EU however declined to give a specific date for implementation, a key demand by African Trade ministers that led to the collapse of the Cancun talks. "We are reforming our systems to ensure less distortions and hope that Americans will do the same or else if they don't we shall be at a trade disadvantage," Mr Lamy said.

As African Heads of State converged in Syrte, Libya to begin their two-day meeting, Independent Advocacy Project (IAP), the good governance group, again called on the federal government to seize the opportunity presented by this meeting to ratify and begin putting in place structures that would allow for effective implementation of the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption which was adopted last July. In a statement released in Lagos, IAP says signing and ratifying the Convention will compliment Nigeria's efforts under the Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) which is part of the monitoring process of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). Nigeria has voluntarily submitted itself to be reviewed under the APRM.

Venue: Hilton Atlanta, Atlanta, GA, USA APRIL 7-10, 2004. Keynote speakers: Ambassador Andrew Young And President Jerry Rawlings, Former President of Ghana. Hosted by: J. Mack Robinson College of Business Georgia State University 35 Broad Street Atlanta, GA 30303 USA.

Help end global economic injustice driven by the policies, projects, and programs of the international financial institutions! Educate, Organize, Mobilize! Be the change you want to see in our world! Organize public events in 2004, help expose the continued use of power, veiled by rhetoric, to enrich corporations, banks, and investors at the expense of people and the planet.

United Nations health agencies have postponed plans to immunize children at the centre of the world's fastest growing polio outbreak, after a fourth Nigerian state announced a boycott over doubts about the vaccine's safety. The World Health Organisation and the UN Children's Fund had hoped Nigeria would release the results of new tests on the vaccine to disprove allegations by Islamic leaders that the immunization campaign is part of a U.S. plot to spread AIDS and make African girls infertile.

The Wife of the Vice President, Chief Amina Titi Atiku Abubakar, has said that there are about 16 million working children lured into labour through trafficking. Speaking at a five day workshop on "Measures to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings in Benin, Nigeria and Togo," Mrs. Abubakar said that these three countries remain as major links in the operational activities of human traffickers. She said that because of the enormous impact of trafficking in persons on the health, social, legal, political and economic life of a nation, concerted efforts should be made to stem the ugly tide before it goes out of control.

A six-year-old boy abducted by rebels was made to walk about 400 km barefoot in a forced march before escaping last week and being brought to a rehabilitation centre. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels seized Simon Atenon at the end of June after ambushing a bus he and his father were travelling on, killing most of the passengers.