Chinese-run copper mining companies in Zambia routinely flout labour laws and regulations designed to protect workers’ safety and the right to organise, Human Rights Watch says in a new report. The 122-page report, '"You’ll Be Fired If You Refuse"': Labor Abuses in Zambia’s Chinese State-owned Copper Mines,' details the persistent abuses in Chinese-run mines, including poor health and safety conditions, regular 12-hour and even 18-hour shifts involving arduous labour, and anti-union activities, all in violation of Zambia’s national laws or international labour standards.

Environmental activists on Monday began a protest at the site in Mpumalanga where the Kusile coal-fired power station is being constructed. Greenpeace spokesperson Fiona Musana said the protest started in the early hours of the morning with activists locking the gates of the construction site. Six activists unfurled a giant banner declaring 'Kusile: climate killer' from the top of a crane, then climbed pillars at the site, and planned to spend the night on the pillars, she said.

The Ugandan government and public officials are increasingly placing illegitimate restrictions on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly to silence critical voices, Amnesty International said in a new report. 'Stifling Dissent: Restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly in Uganda' describes how journalists, opposition politicians and activists face arbitrary arrest, intimidation, threats and politically motivated criminal charges for expressing views deemed critical of the authorities.

A bunch of the world’s leading impact investors have joined forces with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to invest $25m in a new growth fund to support African agriculture. Over the next five years, Pearl Capital Partners (PCP), a specialised African agricultural investment fund manager based in Kampala, Uganda, will invest the AACF’s $25 million in at least 20 agriculture-related businesses in East Africa. The fund is supported by $17 million in equity investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

The discovery of massive diamond deposits in Zimbabwe has led to hundreds of media reports exploring the abuse of human rights and grandscale corruption. It can be difficult to keep up to date with events as they unfold, or to tease out the key story as it unfolds. Activist group Sokwanele has produced a full report that aims to synthesise this glut information into a single report providing an accessible and wide ranging overview of events, meetings, human rights abuses, environmental degradation, and the network of the people involved in the story.

Prison Radio’s mission is to challenge unjust police and prosecutorial practices which result in mass incarceration, racism, and gender discrimination by airing the voices of men and women victimized by an unjust criminal justice system. Sign up for Prison Radio's email newsletter to receive regular updates including links to Mumia Abu-Jamal's latest essays, upcoming events, and breaking news about the case.

The international organisation that governs top-level Internet domain names is taking bids on the creation of '.africa'. Supporters say it will promote African businesses better than individual country names such as ‘dot-ke’ for Kenya or 'dot-za' for South Africa. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - or ICANN - is in a period of change following the announcement six months ago that Internet domains currently dominated by dot-coms will be opened up to dot-anything. That means there could soon be a continent-wide dot-africa domain.

'The announced withholding of US dues owed for 2011 will immediately affect our ability to deliver programmes in critical areas: achieving universal education, supporting new democracies and fighting extremism. So I call on the US administration, Congress and the American people to find a way forward and continue support for UNESCO in these turbulent times.'

The latest cover story of the New African examines the fight for reparations for the transatlantic slave trade, featuring old and rare official records of British parliamentary debates in June 1806 in which both Houses of Parliament accepted that the UK, as a nation, had sanctioned and encouraged the slave trade and therefore it had responsibility to not only abolish it, but also 'atone' for it.

The 2011 Human Development Report argues that the urgent global challenges of sustainability and equity must be addressed together - and identifies policies on the national and global level that could spur mutually reinforcing progress towards these interlinked goals. Past reports have shown that living standards in most countries have been rising - and converging - for several decades now. Yet the 2011 report projects a disturbing reversal of those trends if environmental deterioration and social inequalities continue to intensify, with the least developed countries diverging downwards from global patterns of progress by 2050.

The Department for Continuing Education and the Faculty of Law at Oxford University are very pleased to announce that admissions are now open for five scholarships for candidates from African Commonwealth countries to study for the part-time Masters in International Human Rights Law at the
University of Oxford, starting September 2012. The course website can be found at and details about the scholarships, including eligibility criteria and how to apply, can be found on the Fees and Funding pages at

Date: Saturday 5 November 2011
Venue: Café Ganesh, Observatory (corner Trill Road & Lower Main Road). Cape Town, South Africa.
Time: From 10am to 6pm
Free entry

Remember, remember, the fifth of November, as this is the date when South Africa will play host to its first ever Anarchist Book Fair, taking place in Observatory, Cape Town, at Café Ganesh (corner Trill Road and Lower Main Road).

Comrades, armchair anarchists, committed revolutionaries and book lovers are invited to come and learn about this exciting philosophy and its proud history of resistance. You can swing by any time between 10am and 6pm to check out a wide range of radical literature, music, movies, talks and more.

There will be over 12 stalls and collectives taking part including –The Missing Shelf, Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front, CrimethInc South Africa, Intsangu Clothes, Amandla! Magazine, Soundz of the South, Feminist Alternatives and Botsotso. The Sympony Way Pavement Dwellers will also be there showcasing their extraordinary book "No Land! No House! No Vote!"

On Wednesday 26 October 2011, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum’s Public Interest Unit (PIU) successfully applied for a default judgment on behalf of its client, Mr. Weston Katiyo. Mr. Katiyo is a victim of Organised Violence and Torture (OVT). He was awarded compensatory damages for shock, pain and suffering, loss of amenities of life, unlawful detention, loss of property and contumelia in the sum of US$12,168.00 by the High Court of Zimbabwe.

This gripping and highly readable story of the Asians’ last days in Uganda interweaves the stories of Mahmood Mamdani’s friends and family with an examination of Uganda’s colonial history and the subsequent evolution of post-independence politics. The British colonial policy of divide and rule ensured that race coincided with class, effectively politicising the category of race.

All nations, governments and people who ‘believe in the concepts of international law and morality’ should ‘forcibly register a strong and profound protest against the manner in which the operative principles of the United Nations and the fundamental precepts of international law were flouted and desecrated by the powerful nations of France, Britain and the United States of America (and their NATO allies) in their actions against the people, government and nation of Libya’ over the period of February to October 2011.

The aftermath of elections in Tunisia
Samir Amin
The people of Tunisia had a participatory and democratic election as they wanted. However, defining this achievement as ‘a revolution’ would be an error, according to Samir Amin. He argues that fundamental issues need to be addressed in order for sustainable democracy to reign in Tunisia. [=http://www.pambazuka.org/fr/category/features/77537
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Tunisia: What to say? What to do?
Freddy Mathieu
From five core observations made about the elections in Tunisia, Freddy Mathieu draws a conclusion. ‘The victory of Ennahdha marks the close of a chapter; however a lot remains to be desired. Its consolidation does not solve the important issues that led the Tunisian citizens through the revolutionary whirlwind. Instead, this consolidation makes the issues more pronounced. [=http://www.pambazuka.org/fr/category/features/77536
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Ennahda: The success story returns
Jeunesse du jasmin
The historical persecution of Muslims under Bourguiba’s regime has led to Islamists’ current establishment in Tunisia. This alone cannot explain their surprising breakthrough. Some pressing factors have led to the results. The obvious one is the deeply rooted inequalities in this country in which the social divisions have crossed over into religious rifts
[=http://www.pambazuka.org/fr/category/features/77534
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After the USA, China is doing its shopping in Europe
Jean- Paul Pougala
Europe is no longer that exemplary power that used to tower over other countries. This illusion has been maintained by baffled leaders who cannot get over it. The last Brussels summit showed once again the meaning of ‘When China awakens’.
Jean- Paul Pougala rejoices for Africans that, after 500 years, there is a new hunter on the international scene to contain the traditional predators’.
[=htttp://www.pambazuka.org/fr/category/features/77530
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Gaddafi: The glory of the defeated
Joseph Eroumé
Lumumba backtracked towards death, Sankara challenged it, Gaddafi did not flee from it. Faced with this trilogy of destiny, Joseph Enuma proclaims: ‘Better die than give up, when one defends a just and noble cause: His own people’. For him, the murder the Libyan leader, like what happened to Ivory Coast, puts Africans in the lead to face their responsibilities and build a defense against the West and its interests.
[=http://www.pambazuka.org/fr/category/features/77531
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Rwanda-France: Can we just forget?
Bertold du Ryon

After 17 years, France bore the burden of its responsibilities in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, despite the denials. And last September when President Kagame went on an official visit to Paris he made a declaration in very certain terms that time had come to look towards ‘the future’ and not to be ‘enslaved by the past’. Thus, according to Bertold du Ryon, there comes a point in time where political and economical interests start forsaking history.
[=http://www.pambazuka.org/fr/category/features/77533

The African Development Bank (ADB) has proposed Egypt with a loan valued at US$1.4 billion dollars. US$550 million of the US $1.4 billion loan has already been allocated to the Steam Power Station of the Suez for the purposes of an electrical production project. The project is one of 12 projects that will be discussed by Karebuka during his three-day visit with Egyptian officials. The loan offer comes at a time in which the post-revolutionary Egyptian economy is strife with turmoil.

The team drafting the constitution, the Constitution Select Committee (Copac) has said that the final phase of the drafting process will start next month. Copac co-chairperson Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana said that the document would be put to a referendum early next year, paving the way for harmonised elections.

A website has been launched to promote transparency in the Democratic Republic of Congo's mining sector, which is plagued by conflict and corruption. The Carter Center said it helped launch congomines.org to give people more information about the mining sector, including contracts and payments. Hundreds of mining documents and maps will be published on the site, it said.

At a recent conference on statelessness and gender discrimination organised by Refugees International (RI) at the US Institute of Peace (USIP), international human rights advocates urged countries around the world to take action on issues of statelessness, a legally invisible status that United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Antonia Guterres, said is 'probably the most forgotten global human rights problem in today's international agenda'. According to RI, about 12 million people worldwide lack effective citizenship, a status that deprives them of rights such as legal representation, identity documents, and access to public schools. And in many countries, discrimination against women in nationality laws aggravate or actively create statelessness.