The community of Motala Heights, set on the edge of Pinetown between the factories and the hill that runs up to Kloof, dates back to the early years of the last century and has a rich history. For the last three years it has been under sustained and violent attack from a local gangster businessman who seems to be able to direct the local state, including the police and the Municipality's Housing Department, at will.

The media’s role in supporting democracy and development has long debated. Increasingly, this debate has extended to how activists use media to advance their own agendas. Objectivity is one of the core principles of journalism. Yet, everyone comes from a certain historical, ideological, and experiential background. Journalists, like anyone else can be passionate about certain causes, and have opinions. On the other hand, activists who effectively use media can advance their own issues and causes, to advocate for change.

Melia Alanyo, 46, left northern Uganda for the capital city, Kampala, in the late 1980s when the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) started abducting, attacking and killing people in her village. She has spent the last 20 years in Kireka, a low-income suburb on the city's outskirts, collecting and breaking rocks into chips at a local quarry. For every 20-litre jerry can she fills, she earns 100 Ugandan shillings (US$0.06). On a good day, when she is feeling strong and can take the sun beating down on her back as she chips away at the rocks, she takes home about 1,000 Ugandan shillings (US$0.60).

Hundreds remain in detention following a nationwide protest Apr. 6 against rising food prices and political stagnation. But this has not deterred activists from calling for a second general strike on May 4, timed to coincide with President Hosni Mubarak's birthday.

On the 7th anniversary of the pledge by African Union member states to allocate 15% of national budgets to health, Nobel Prize Winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Africa Public Health Alliance 15% Now Campaign of which he is Honorary Chair have urged African Heads of State and Government not to in any way revise, drop or further delay implementing the Abuja April 2001 commitment.

It has been discovered that the law and practice in Mauritius is in breach of the International Labour Organisation's core labour conventions ratified by the country. This revealation was contained in a new report released by the International Trade Union Confederation [ITUC]. The report's publication coincides with Mauritius' trade policy review at the World Trade Organisation.

We are citizens drawn from different groupings of grassroot Kenyans meeting under the umbrella of Bunge La Mwananchi. We want to state that the ongoing celebration of the grand coalition is wholly a political class affair that the ordinary Kenyan has no part in. The grand coalition government has concentrated on rewarding regional balance among the political elite without any social balance amongst Kenyans.

The global effort to prevent weapons from reaching Zimbabwe during the current crisis is led by Southern African trade unions, NGOs, and church organisations, with support from global civil society--including Avaaz, Oxfam, Amnesty International, and IANSA.

A United Nations-backed campaign to stamp out rape in Liberia, the highest reported crime in the West African country as it recovers from a devastating civil war, has been extended to the north with a senior UN official calling for full implementation of the law.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites entries from scholars based in universities and centers of research in Africa in respect of the annual development research essay competition it has endowed in memory of the late Professor Guy Mhone. Mhone, who died on 01 March, 2005 was, during his life time, one of the leading development thinkers on Africa.

The undersigned organizations, physicians, healthcare workers, and advocates are writing regarding our collective support for the pre-service training, support and retention of 140,000 new health professionals plus additional paraprofessional and community health workers in the U.S. Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008 (S. 2731). Provided adequate training and supervision within functioning referral systems, lay or community health workers and paraprofessionals are an important part of delivering high-quality standards of care.

Kuwe nakaThabo, Siyakubulisa ngesihle samakhosikazi ngolimi lwethu! Siloba lincwadi singabomama besizwe seZimbabwe esibhekane lokuhlukuluzeka sidinga uncedo kubomakhelwane. Ngomgqibelo mhlaka 12 April umntanakho uThabo wezakuleli eleZimbabwe ezoxoxisana loRobert Mugabe.

Over the past month, the Delft-Symphony Pavement Dwellers and their elected Anti-Eviction Campaign leadership have been working hand-in-hand to improve the lives of residents. While it may be an exaggeration to assume (as was reported recently in the Cape Argus) that we live here on the pavement in harmony all the time, there does exist a strong sense of camaraderie among residents and a common vision of the type of world we are fighting for.

On March 29 the people of Zimbabwe cast their votes for President, Parliament, and local representatives. To date, the results of the Presidential election have not been announced, leading to widespread accusations of vote manipulation. Charges of intimidation and the threat of violence grow daily, while the population suffers from spiraling inflation, commodity shortages, and joblessness. Ultimately, the people of Zimbabwe will determine their leaders, but as concerned citizens we can send a message to the Government of Zimbabwe, the African Union and to the nations of Southern Africa that we stand in solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe and that we support their struggle for human rights and justice.

The following Message of Solidarity includes the points outlined in such popular documents as The Zimbabwe We Want, the People’s Convention (February 2008), as well as the platforms of human rights and justice groups in Zimbabwe. We invite you to add your name to the following message.

MESSAGE OF SOLIDARITY HUMAN RIGHTS AND JUSTICE FOR ZIMBABWE

The people of Zimbabwe have been betrayed, both by the government that represents them and by Western governments that claim to support their desires for economic development and democracy. Internally, corruption, government mis-management, military excesses, and poor economic decisions have deepened the country’s multiple social and economic crises. At the same time, the post-independence promises made by the international community were not kept and the imposition of World Bank/IMF economic structural adjustment policies further entrenched inequality and reversed the initial gains made by the country. We, the undersigned, support the people of Zimbabwe in their calls for a peaceful resolution to the current crisis. We urge the Government of Zimbabwe to work towards: 1. A new constitution, a people-driven document that ensures that any elected government runs the country to benefit its people, not the elite.

2. Economic justice, specifically:

- An audit of Zimbabwe’s 4.2 billion dollar debt - Repatriation of stolen assets, particularly funds diverted from public coffers to individual accounts in international banks. - National investments in social development, job creation, and regional economic integration efforts.

3. A national “Truth and Reconciliation” process to begin the healing process. We urge the international community to:

- End the “undeclared economic sanctions.”

- Cancel the colonial debt, including apartheid-related debt, along with debts related to failed structural adjustment policies, following an audit of the country’s national debt.

- Work with the Zimbabwean people to identify and repatriate public funds that have been diverted to private accounts in international banks.

To add your name to this Message of Solidarity, please send an email TransAfrica Forum at [email][email protected]

*Imani Countess serves as TransAfrica Forum’s Senior Director of Public Affairs. TransAfrica Forum is the leading advocacy organization for Africa and the African Diaspora in U.S. foreign policy. TransAfrica Forum helped lead the world protest against apartheid in South Africa and colonial rule in southern Africa. Today, the organization works for human and economic justice for African people on the continent of Africa, in Latin America and in the Caribbean.

I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to the Kenyan civil society for their solidarity [Kenyans call and solidarity with Zimbabwe, Indeed Zimbabwe is too big to be left to Zimbabweans alone and all people world over have the duty to at least denounce the evil and ensure the good triumphs.Your words of solidarity and encouragement is a source of hope and strength to most activists in Zimbabwe.

This is the quarterly update on campaigns towards popularization, ratification, domestication and implementation of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. It reports on work done during January to March 2008 and includes information on the status of ratification and upcoming events that could offer opportunities for further action towards the objectives of the campaign.

SOAWR also takes this opportunity to extend a warm welcome to our two new members; Fórum Mulher (Mozambique) and Girl Child Network (Zimbabwe).

Workers from the public and private sectors throughout the country launched a two-day strike on 8 April to protest high living costs and demand salary increases. In Ouagadougou, the capital, few shops were open. In Bobo-Dioulasso, the second largest city in the west of the country, the central market was closed.

The latest round of negotiations between trade unions and the Moroccan government failed to yield a comprehensive solution. The talks will continue in the coming weeks, in hopes the two sides will agree on increases in wages and benefits for Moroccan workers.

Kenya's Centre for Training and Integrated Research for Development (CETRAD) and NETWAS Uganda are among the four winners in the inaugural nGomobile competition. The winning projects were selected from a pool of over seventy entries that came from Kenya, Uganda, Mexico and Azerbaijan.

In mid-March hundreds of Congolese women, men and girls raised banners that read, Together, let us say No to the silence, for the dignity of the Congolese and Enough sexual violence!. With faces of determination, the women, men and girls waved these slogans high above their heads. More than 1,000 Congolese authorities and civilians, UN leaders, NGOs and civil society groups’ were gathered in Kinkole, a suburb of Kinshasa, to kick off a nationwide public awareness campaign aimed to eradicate an epidemic of sexual violence.