The presidency has dismissed reports of the imminent suspension of police commissioner Bheki Cele. The Sunday Times reported that the president was about to send a final letter of suspension to Cele, seen as a once trusted political ally now fighting for his job, despite success in reducing crime rates. According to the newspaper he would be barred from office while a board of inquiry investigated his role in the police's R1.7 billion lease deals for new headquarters, which the public protector had deemed unlawful.

Leading local women activists have filed an urgent application with the High Court seeking the closure of police holdings cells at the Harare Central Police Station they deem inhuman and inhabitable. The Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), which has won several international human rights awards, want the court to order responsible authorities to ensure that the police holding cells at Harare Central Police Station have clean and salubrious flushing toilets with toilet paper and a washing bowl. The application was filed by WOZA leaders Jenny Williams, her deputy Magondonga Mahlangu, Clara Majengwa and Celina Madukani.

After losing its application challenging the admissibility of the post election violence cases at the International Criminal Court, Kenya must now submit itself fully to the jurisdiction of the court at The Hague, says this East African article. 'However, questions are arising on whether the ongoing confirmation hearings at The Hague are enough to stop election-related chaos that have been experienced intermittently since 1992.'

Already struggling with the realities of being displaced, Ivorian refugees in Ghana are now faced with another problem: That of ex-combatants living amongst them and said to be fomenting discontent, including through holding secret meetings. Two mysterious deaths have already been linked to the former fighters, although Ghanaian police say they are investigating the circumstances under which they died.

'Africa wants an outcome based on science that is fair and honours the promises all countries have made in the UN Climate Convention and its Kyoto Protocol. We need to agree to global reductions for 2050 that limit warming to well below the predicted 1.5 degrees Celsius in Africa.' This is according to Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, who will lead the negotiations on behalf of the African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change (AGN) at the United Nations climate change conference later this year. He was interviewed by IPS.

Please join Amnesty International and War on Want to hear about the remarkable work of Abahlali baseMjondolo (‘people of the shacks’), a movement campaigning for the rights of many thousands of South Africans living without access to adequate housing and at risk of forced evictions.

The evening includes a a screening of the 20 minute short version of the film, Dear Mandela, the story of the emergence of Abahlali, its courageous response to the numerous challenges it has faced and its campaign against forced evictions, which led to the constitutional court victory in 2009.

VENUE: Human Rights Action Centre, 17 - 25 New Inn Yard, EC2A 3EA
DATE AND TIME: Friday 7 October 2011 at 6:30 p.m.
CONTACT: Caroline Elliot, War on Want
Attn Africa Programme, Amnesty International, amnestyis[at]amnesty.org
PRICE: FREE
BOOKING: book your space

A general hospital in a port city in Ghana has driven away patients, including pregnant women, due to a shortage of doctors since last Sunday. A notice posted on the walls of the general hospital in Tema asked clients seeking medical attention to visit other hospitals for their own safety as a result of the shortage of doctors in the hospital, especially at the maternity ward.

Google has updated its maps to include the newly independent nation of South Sudan. The move follows a campaign by a South Sudanese journalist, who posted an online petition calling for the new nation to be marked on web maps. He said his country was still missing from websites including Microsoft, Yahoo! and National Geographic.

Battles between backyarders and informal settlement residents over the allocation of houses at Makhaza’s Ithemba Labantu housing project in Cape Town flared up again last week, resulting in shots fired by a backyarder believed to be defending himself against attackers. According to residents of Khayelitsha K-Section informal settlement, which is in Makhaza and where the 163-unit project is being built, backyarder Thembalani Mpambaniso was attacked by residents of the informal settlement while he was visiting his girlfriend, who lives in the settlement.

Four ZANU PF youths were convicted and sentenced to 18 years in jail over the 2009 murder of MDC-T activist Moses Chokuda. Farai Machaya, the son of Midlands Provincial Governor Jason Machaya, together with his co-accused Abel Maphosa and brothers Edmore and Bothwell Gana, were all found guilty during a week-long trial at the High Court. Tawengwa Chokuda, the victims father said: 'The way he (Moses) was killed was ruthless. He was beaten to death, tied with ropes and dragged like an animal.'

Heavily armed anti-Gaddafi fighters tightened their siege of the ousted Libyan leader's hometown of Sirte on Monday as hundreds of terrified civilians poured out of the Mediterranean coastal city. Fleeing residents spoke of dwindling supplies of food and water and said Gaddafi forces had attempted to stop people leaving, while doctors warned of a growing humanitarian crisis.

Desmond Tutu has accused the government of dragging its feet over the visa application of the Dalai Lama, who has been invited to attend the former archbishop's 80th birthday party. Tutu invited the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader and fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate to give a lecture as part of his 80th birthday celebrations next month but officials have so far failed to react to the visa application. In 2009, Tutu criticised a decision to bar the Dalai Lama from attending a peace conference in Johannesburg, with the government saying that it did not want to jeopardise relations with key trade partner China.

Defence minister Emmerson Mnangagwa has vowed to crush any possible revolt against President Robert Mugabe’s continued rule. He dismissed as wishful thinking suggestions that Zimbabweans could stage an uprising similar to those that rocked North Africa recently. He said Zimbabwe’s all-weather friends, China and Russia, stood ready to aid the ZDF to crush its enemies.

Blog Africa is a Country explores how the debate about Karl Marx's economic theories is entering the mainstream. 'The mainstream (media, experts, free market boosters, etcetera) and rightwingers who usually operate in delusional essentialisms (capitalism eventually works for all of us; if you’re poor, or fail, it’s your own fault; the world’s resources will never run out; trade unions hold people back, etcetera), are second-guessing themselves. In a strange twist, they've taken to reading Karl Marx’s critiques of capitalism to make sense of the global economic meltdown.'

The Opposition Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) has condemned a police ban on political activities in the country, threatening to paralyse operations of the parliament if the police fail to withdraw it. The opposition argues that the police have no legal authority to take such decisions.

Sometime in the next two months, activists and survivors of horrific violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo will find out if Callixte Mbarushimana will stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Mbarushimana is the executive secretary of the FDLR - the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda – a rebel movement which has operated in the eastern part of the DRC since 2005. The prosecution alleges that he directed FDLR fighters to murder, torture and rape civilians in the provinces of North and South Kivu in 2009, as a strategy to strengthen the rebel movement's hand in negotiations with the Rwandan government. Judges will confirm or reject each of eleven charges before the end of November.

Across Africa, citizenship is being manipulated and restricted to deny rights to those whom a state wishes to marginalise or exclude, begins the abstract to this article, in reference to Ethiopia and Eritrea. 'While much was made of the expulsions at the time, the wider issues raised by these actions – in particular the continued vulnerability of the deportees to further abuses and the failure of the courts to address their situation – has not been examined. This article begins by looking at events in the Horn before examining evidence regarding the inability of those who were expelled to obtain asylum.'

During the Gender Festival Week in Dar es Salaam recently, activists expressed their concern about the impact of selling or leasing large arable land to foreign multinational companies and governments will derail efforts to empower women and promote gender equality, reports Tanzania Daily News. 'As the country strives to empower women, it's obvious that the issue of land grabbing will impact heavily on women's well-being particularly girl child as usually at the end there will be winners and losers. In this case, women and their girl children are likely to lose.'

Côte d'Ivoire is due to swear in its Truth, Reconciliation and Dialogue Commission, aimed at forging unity after deadly violence that followed last year's disputed elections. About 3,000 people were killed and 500,000 displaced in the unrest. The commission is headed by former Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny.

New research accuses the World Bank Group's policies of facilitating land grabs in Africa and favouring the interests of financial markets over food security and environmental protection. Agriculture and the food crisis were a high-profile agenda topic at the recent World Bank annual meetings, and critical voices are growing on the Bank's approach to food price volatility. Recent in-depth research by the US-based Oakland Institute raises further difficult questions on agriculture policy for Bank officials.