National planning commission chairperson Trevor Manuel has handed over a development plan to President Jacob Zuma that deals with nine national issues that the commission has identified as the country's top priorities. The nine challenges are: Too few people work; The standard of education for most black learners if of poor quality; Infrastructure is poorly located, under-maintained and insufficient to foster higher growth; Special patterns exclude the poor from the fruits of development; The economy is overly and unsustainably resource intensive; A widespread diseased burden is compounded by a failing public health system; Public services are uneven and often of poor quality, Corruption is widespread, South Africa remains a divided society. Visit this Mail and Guardian plan to download the full 430-page plan.

Regional leaders meeting for the Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Angola cornered President Robert Mugabe and told him Zimbabwe could not hold elections without reforms that would guarantee free and fair elections. He was also told last week the region would not accept violent elections. Mugabe suffered a double blow at the summit after his plan to have South African president Jacob Zuma toppled as facilitator to the Zimbabwe crisis was thrown out by SADC leaders, who felt Zuma had done well in trying to resolve the Zimbabwe crisis.

Mauritanian forces killed a top official of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) during an air raid into Malian territory, a Mauritanian security source said. Mauritanian national Teyeb Ould Sidi Aly allegedly headed operations carried out with explosives-filled vehicles against Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz and the French embassy in Nouakchott.

Britain is being urged to help close down a legal loophole that lets financiers known as 'vulture funds' use courts in Jersey to claim hundreds of millions of pounds from the world's poorest countries. The call came from international poverty campaigners as one of the vulture funds was poised to be awarded a $100m (£62m) debt payout against the Democratic Republic of the Congo after taking action in the Jersey courts. Vulture funds legally buy up worthless debt when countries are at war or suffering from a natural disaster and defaulting on their sovereign debt. Once the country has begun to stabilise, vulture funds cash in their cheap debt deeds, at massively inflated cost to the countries.

Rights groups in Nigeria fear a same-sex marriage bill being discussed in parliament could boost already prevalent discrimination against homosexuals. The bill goes much further than banning same-sex marriage; it threatens to ban the formation of groups supporting homosexuality, with imprisonment for anyone who 'witnesses, abet[s] or aids' same-gender relationships, and could lead to any discussion or activities related to gay rights being banned.

Damietta locals have vowed to continue their sit-in against MOPCO petrochemicals company despite a decree by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to shut down the plant. One protester was killed in a military crackdown on the sit-in, according to eyewitnesses. Protesters are demanding that governorate officials finally heed their calls to shut down the factory, which they say is 'deadly and hazardous' to residents, marine life, as well as agricultural.

Malawi is experiencing a drug shortage as the country’s international donors remain reluctant to release aid meant for the health sector. About 60 million dollars in funding has been withheld amid allegations of pilfering and corruption in the procurement of drugs at government’s Central Medical Stores. The Central Medical Stores procures and distributes drugs to government health facilities.

Thousands of pro-democracy activists demonstrated in Morocco's largest city calling for a boycott of parliamentary elections less than two weeks away. The demonstrations comes as a parliamentary delegation from the Council of Europe noted there was little enthusiasm in the country just two weeks before the election and said there was worry about the level of participation.

The United States ambassador to Mozambique has saluted an anti-piracy agreement signed between South Africa and Mozambique last week which presages an accord with Tanzania. South Africa's defence minister Lindiwe Sisulu signed a memorandum of understanding with her Mozambican counterpart Filipe Jacinto Nyusi. The two countries applauded successful patrolling activities off the central Mozambican coast and decided to involve Tanzania - north of Mozambique - in their activities.

Zambia’s recently elected government is to double royalties on copper mines, it announced as it unveiled its 2012 budget, which aims to back its election pledge of distributing more equitably the southern African state’s mineral wealth. Alexander Chikwanda, finance minister, said he proposed to increase the mineral royalty rate to 6 per cent from 3 per cent for base metals, including copper, and from 5 per cent for precious metals.

A pre-conference on men who have sex with men (MSM) in Africa and HIV is planned to take place in Ethiopia ahead of the 16th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA). The full-day event will feature presentations from more than 15 of the continent’s top experts on the health and human rights of sexual minorities. The pre-conference will offer a opportunity for experts as well as developing practitioners to cultivate new partnerships, network, build skills, share best practices and conduct hands-on learning.

In this video interview, renowned Indian writer and global justice activist Arundhati Roy joined in the studio to talk about the Occupy movement. 'What they are doing becomes so important because it is in the heart of empire, or what used to be empire,' Roy said. 'And to criticize and to protest against the model that the rest of the world is aspiring to is a very important and a very serious business.' She also discussed her new book, 'Walking with the Comrades', a chronicle of her time in the forests of India alongside rebel guerrillas who are resisting a brutal military campaign by the Indian government.

Humanitarian activities in the world’s largest refugee complex have been restricted to essential services amid worsening security exemplified by the 13 October abduction of two Spanish aid workers and the earlier abduction of a Kenyan NGO driver in the eastern Kenyan facility. All but critical food, water, health and nutrition and some child protection services are suspended, as is the registration of new arrivals in the Dadaab complex.

Health authorities say 207 cases of typhoid are being treated in Zimbabwe’s capital after a prolonged spell of unusually hot weather amid acute water shortages. Harare city council health director Dr. Prosper Chonzi says no deaths have occurred so far in the monthlong outbreak. He said the disease will be difficult to contain in impoverished townships relying on water from shallow, makeshift wells and marshlands.

They are men who have lost all pride and self-confidence and who have been left severely traumatised by their experience. At the medical centre in Uganda where they are being treated, they talked candidly about the crimes carried out against them. 'In the past, I thought that it was only females who were raped but not men. I cannot understand myself today. I feel pain all the time in my anus and bladder. I feel like my bladder is full of water. I do not feel like a man. I do not know whether I will ever have children,' said John (not his real name), a 27-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo who is just one of possibly thousands of victims of male rape as civil wars and tribal conflicts continue unabated across Africa.

As DRC prepares for its third presidential election on 28 November, Antoine Roger Lokongo cautions that external interests in the country’s vast mineral wealth mean that a genuine democracy owned by the Congolese people is likely to remain elusive.

Muammar Gaddafi's son Saadi has been granted asylum in Niger on humanitarian grounds, the country's president confirmed. Mahamadou Issoufou insisted he knew nothing of the whereabouts of another of the slain Libyan leader's sons, Saif al-Islam, who is wanted by the international criminal court (ICC). 'We have agreed on granting asylum to Saadi Gaddafi for humanitarian reasons,' Issoufou said during a visit to Pretoria in South Africa.

2008 US Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney was offered 'victim witness' special protection by the FBI after the indictment of four men in northern Georgia for plotting to kill McKinney, Attorney General Eric Holder, and, according to FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Brian Lamkin of the bureau's Atlanta office, President Barack Obama.

This report discusses supranational governance and public authority in five issue areas: financial systems, security/ small arms, migration, extractive industries and obnoxious goods. Public control in all five is weak, although a few initiatives in supranational governance are showing promise. For each issue area, the report outlines existing international rule and enforcement systems or regimes; the interests steering or blocking them; and the resulting deficits in democratic supervision, coherence and compliance. The report concludes by suggesting ways in which supranational public authority may be better developed in order to promote state resilience and peacebuilding.

In this interview, Africa Today's Walter Turner speaks with Gerald Horne on his life's work, his writings, and African Americans in the contemporary period.