Documents seized from State Security offices in Alexandria and Cairo prove it - Egyptians have been spied on and tortured by our own government for decades. We need a massive public outcry now to press the military urgently to abolish the SS and instruct the public prosecutor to try those suspected of crimes.

The spectre of 'bantu education' has risen to haunt the University of Cape Town (UCT) again.
Controversy is erupting as UCT's administration moves in on the university's renowned Centre for African Studies (CAS). What these moves should be called is itself contested - the 'closure' of CAS, as some outraged students and staff see it; its 'disestablishment' and 'merging', as the administration prefers.

Life expectancy is just 33.5 years for Zimbabwean women – the lowest in the world; at least 18 per cent of the population lives with HIV and AIDS and of the 1,6-million Zimbabweans with HIV, 55 per cent are women. This is according to activist group Sokwanele, although no source was provided with the information.

An attempt to organise a mass protest against the government in Angola’s capital Luanda may have fallen flat, but there is no doubt that a fuse has been lit among people who for so many years have not dared to challenge authority. In the days leading up to the protest, the planned action was the main topic of conversation across all tiers of society, from the top floors of skyscraper office blocks to the mud-level slums on the peripheries of the cities.

'It is true that the immediate trigger for Arab uprisings is failed internal governance, but sub-Saharan African regimes have also been spared the extra layer of Middle Eastern geopolitical complications which so discredited Arab regimes widely seen as repressive yet impotent,' argues this article in assessing the extent to which popular protests in North Africa will spread to the rest of Africa. 'More crucially, sub-Saharan states are more ethnically pluralist, lacking in the linguistic and relative ethnic homogeneity that have underpegged mass mobilisation of popular Arab action.'

More than 1,000 illegal immigrants escaping political turmoil in north Africa arrived on the southern Italian island Lampedusa in the Mediterraneanrecently. So far, none of the illegal immigrants were believed to have left from Libya, but Italian officials fear an exodus from its former colony if the situation worsens. The new arrivals on Lampedusa come on top of a previous wave of refugees who flooded the island five days ago, when around 350 migrants from Tunisia arrived by boat overnight.

Niger's presidential run-off election was free and fair and the two candidates should respect its verdict, regional observers said on Sunday. Nigeriens voted on Saturday, a year after soldiers ousted ex-president Mamadou Tandja for outstaying his term in office in the uranium-producing state. Provisional results from the poll, which pits opposition leader Mahamadou Issoufou against a Tandja party ally Seyni Oumarou, are due on Monday.

Professor Anyang Nyong'o might have guessed that a trip to the United States for treatment for prostate cancer would provoke a furore: he is the Minister for Medical Services. Health activists are outraged that high-profile politicians are able to access world class facilities, whilst ordinary Kenyans can only dream of accessing such health care. 'We are glad that the minister is back and is exuding good health. But what choices does the ordinary Kenyan have at accessing quality treatment?' asks Nairobi resident, Milka Ondiek.

The presence of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels has led to deteriorating security conditions for aid workers and civilians in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo’s two Uelé districts, where 31 attacks took place in January alone – as many as in the last three months of 2010. On 6 March, six World Food Programme (WFP) trucks were ambushed by a group of 30 men a few kilometers south of Banda, on the road to Ango, in Bas Uelé district. The vehicles were part of a 17-strong convoy. The attackers made off with sacks of flour and drivers’ personal effects.

At the top of a tarred road in this tense Abidjan district, forces loyal to internationally recognised president Alassane Ouattara man a roadblock. At the other end, troops backing strongman Laurent Gbagbo stand guard. In between lie two bodies, the latest casualties of a bloody stand-off between the rival camps.

Amidst the ongoing debate of the role of social media in revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa lies another question: to what degree does Internet access matter in determining the role of the Internet and social media in these revolts? In Egypt and Tunisia, many attribute an important role to online tools while others debate their worth; most observers fall somewhere in the middle, recognising the value of the Internet but remaining realistic about its limitations. This blog post assesses various aspects of the debate.

Italy, which did more than any other country to legitimise Libya and its mercurial leader, is going through a foreign policy nightmare as civil strife in its former colony threatens its energy supplies, international image and the stability of some of its blue chip companies. Italy imports about 80 per cent of its energy needs. About 32 per cent of Libya's oil output goes to Italy - making up about 25 per cent of Italy's imports - and about 12 per cent of Italy's gas comes from Libya.

The ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) has rapped Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel over the knuckles for his open letter criticising government spokesperson Jimmy Manyi for his remarks on coloureds.Manuel wrote an open letter to Manyi following comments the government spokesperson made in a TV interview a year ago that coloureds were 'over-concentrated' in the Western Cape.

On 10 March 2011, in the case of Kiyutin v Russia, the European Court of Human Rights held that refusing a residence permit to a foreign national solely on the basis of their HIV-positive status amounted to unlawful discrimination, says this Interights statement. 'This landmark case is a significant boost to the rights of persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV) in Europe, as the judgment contains two important "firsts": not only has it explicitly recognised that PLHIV are protected as a distinct group against discrimination in relation to their fundamental rights; but it has also recognised that PLHIV are a "vulnerable group" and any restriction of their rights attracts a higher degree of scrutiny on the part of the European Court.'

In this episode of Palestine Studies TV, Dr. Leila Farsakh discussed the implications of the protest movements in the Arab world on Palestinian politics and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Dr. Farsakh is a professor of political science at the University of Massachussetts, Boston, and a member of the editorial committee of the Journal of Palestine Studies.

The promotion, protection and realisation of human rights still do not regularly factor into the behaviour of Commonwealth members of the UN Human Rights Council, both domestically and at the Council, says a new report from the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative called 'Easier said than done'. The findings of the report said there was an alarming lack of adherence by Commonwealth countries to the domestic human rights commitments.

Up to one million foreign workers and others trapped in Libya are expected to need emergency aid because of fighting in the North African nation, aid officials said as they sought $160 million to deal with the crisis. UN officials say that amount is only for the next three months - and they expect the crisis to go on longer than that. The UN is also effectively frozen out of sections controlled by leader Moammar Gadhafi's forces and is only seeking humanitarian aid for opposition-controlled areas.

Djibouti has told the United States that an independent election observer mission is 'illegal' and suspended its partnership with the US-funded mission. Djibouti’s foreign ministry sent a diplomatic note to the US Embassy dated 2 March requesting the end of the partnership, alleging it had participated in and supported a violent 18 February opposition rally in which at least one person was killed, accusations the group denies.

Unidentified gunmen killed an Al-Jazeera cameraman and wounded his colleague near the eastern rebel-held city of Benghazi in an ambush on Saturday, according to the Qatar-based satellite station. This is the first confirmed death reported in the Libyan conflict, the Committee to Protect Journalists has said.

Under an overcast sky, nearly 200 members of the Djiboutian Army’s elite 1st Rapid Action Regiment honed their infantry skills, mentored by members of the US Army National Guard’s 2nd Combined Arms Battalion, 137th Infantry Regiment. The training included instruction on squad movements, convoy operations, contact drills, camp security and marksmanship.