The Johannesburg High Court on Wednesday ordered the immediate release of a family of eight asylum seekers who fled the Taliban in Afghanistan, after more than four months in detention and numerous attempts by Home Affairs to illegally return them to Afghanistan. The two parents, their five minor children, and the oldest daughter’s fiancé, also a minor, were arrested separately at the OR Tambo Airport following attempts to join family members in France who were also refugees.

Eight-year-old Nana Yaw, who is being treated at Central Region’s Winneba Government Hospital for a severe respiratory infection, was sold by his mother for US$50 in 2008. For nearly two years his owners forced him to dive for several hours a day to collect fishing nets in Lake Volta.

Communities across Southern Africa are fighting an uphill battle against gender violence. Among other challenges, economic inequalities, cultural attitudes, and media stereotypes all hamper turning the tide. However, looking at the approximately 200 participants from ten countries who took part in the first Southern Africa Local Government and Gender Justice Summit and Awards held in Johannesburg 22-24 March, it’s clear that making a difference is more than possible when individuals, communities, and governments put their heads and hands together.

The Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) a network of 30 nongovernmental organizations promoting democratic elections in Zimbabwe has noted pronouncements by senior politicians on the holding of elections in 2011. These calls for elections come amid the constitutional reform process which has the potential to alter Zimbabwe’s political landscape.

Innocent Rokundo, 42, is a Rwandan who has lived in a refugee camp in western Uganda for the past 15 years. He fled his country during the 1994 genocide with his wife. She returned to Rwanda in 1996, but he has had no contact with her since.

International sporting events have become fertile ground for human trafficking. The documented patterns of flagrant trafficking of children and women for sexual and labor exploitation at these events create a dire picture. “More than 500,000 international visitors are expected in South Africa for the 2010 World Cup, and more than 500 criminal gangs are estimated to be involved in human trafficking for the sex trade in South Africa.”

Nkrumah Hall – University of Dar es Salaam

- A week of reflections on the 1967 Arusha Declaration
- Hon. Ms Samia Nkrumah will be the guest of honour. She will deliver a lecture on 'Reflections on Osagyefo: Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-African vision'
- Distinguished 2010 Nyerere lecturer Professor Samir Amin will deliver lectures on 'Crisis of capitalism and imperialism' and 'Exiting from capitalism in crisis: Initiatives in the global South'
- Interactive dialogues on 'The Arusha declaration and socialism and rural development'
- Professor Utsa Patnaik will speak on 'The agrarian question in the neoliberal era'
- Marcelino Dos Santos, Mozambiquan poet, revolutionary and founder of FRELIMO will launch

The latest in a series of brutal, forced evictions in Angola took place earlier this month when riot police swept through a provincial capital, Lubango, killing seven people, including four children between four and twelve years old.

Pambazuka Press is planning to publish a Pan-African activists' diary for 2011. The diary will be a handbook of key information about Pan-African history, quotations from thinkers and activists (women and men) in Africa and the diaspora, pictures of critical events in our past, information about key events during 2011, and lots more.

EVENTS

If you would like us to include events – meetings, conferences, festivals, actions, courses, publications etc - that your organisation is planning to hold in 2011, please send details to panafdiary [at] pambazuka [dot] org.

QUOTATIONS

If you would like to suggest quotations for publication in the diary, please send them to panafdiary [at] pambazuka [dot]org. Make sure you include the source of each quote so that those who want to read more will know where to find it.

SUGGESTIONS

If you have suggestions about information you would like to see in the diary, please send them to panafdiary[at] pambazuka [dot] org.

Help make this diary the essential handbook for all activists in Africa and the diaspora. Make sure you get your recommendations in to us by 14 April 2010. Don’t be left out – let us know what events you are planning for 2011.

We can’t guarantee that we will include everything you suggest, but we’ll do our best!

The 2011 Pan-African Diary: the essential tool for freedom and justice!

Luis Araújo

Edson Santos

Algérie Focus

Bertrand Gueu

Poverty is on the rise in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and various forms of corruption threaten to undermine the impact of investments made to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the continent, said the World Bank in a report released Monday on Africa's development.

The final verdict in the case of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga of Malawi, detained for performing a same-sex engagement ceremony, is expected to be on Monday 22 March 2010 and Amnesty International has urged people to send appeal letters of protest to the Malawian government opposing arrest and trial of the two men.

Trade and economic relations between Zimbabwe-China are expected to grow this year following the full implementation of the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation, a senior Chinese official has said.

International World Water Day, held every 22 March, focuses public attention on the importance of fresh water and promotes sustainable management of freshwater resources. This year’s theme, ‘Clean Water for a Healthy World’, reflects the importance of water quality in natural resource management.

As coal power stations are demolished, due to environmental damages, in many countries, they are being offered as a "cheap energy supply" for Africa. But specialists warn this will be expensive in the long run, especially as fresh funds are available for renewable energies.

Ethembeni Enrichment Centre, a school in a run-down part of Port Elizabeth, the largest city in Eastern Cape, South Africa's poorest province, has achieved a remarkable 100 percent pass rate for a dozen years. But officials from the education department, sent on a fact-finding mission to learn from the school's success, are running more than two hours late.

Government troops - the FARDC - in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are to blame for much of the epidemic of sexual violence in the east of the country, according to US and UN reports detailing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity by various groups there.

Ismail Conteh has been teaching for the past year-and-a-half at a primary school in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown – without receiving a single cent. He is one of hundreds of teachers recruited by schools to match the ever-growing number of pupils. Since the country’s government started to aim for universal primary education in 2003, classes have continuously become larger, with an average of about 50 pupils per teacher. Yet, the national department of education has employed only few additional teachers so far.

He gives computer advice to his fellow-teachers and fixes broken printers. He also uses digital material to enrich his classes and by using a school blog he helped to set up a partnership with a French school. Through IICD-supported trainings, teacher Christophe Hien of Bogodogo College in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso is now an ICT expert at his scho