South African President Jacob Zuma reportedly got into a verbal confrontation with Robert Mugabe, after the ZANU PF leader challenged him over the ‘inaccuracy’ of the Livingstone Troika resolutions. The Johannesburg Summit went on and ‘noted’ the decision of the Organ Troika in Livingstone, dealing a major blow to ZANU PF who had wanted the resolutions thrown out altogether. But the regional leaders also appeared to soften their language towards Mugabe.

Police in Bulawayo are still camped at a house used for meetings by Women and Men of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), following a raid on the premises, the organisation has said. It’s understood the police are after WOZA leaders Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu, as well as the owner of the house, who is not a WOZA member and is understood to be out of the country. 'Since the beginning of the year, 38 WOZA members have been arbitrarily arrested and 24 detained and charged under the Criminal Law Codification and Reform Act. Threats were made that upon the eventual arrest of Williams and Mahlangu, they would be denied bail and imprisoned in the male prison,' a WOZA statement said.

Botswana’s government deployed heavy security in the capital Gaborone for the second day on Friday 10 June as despairing union leaders announced a suspension of a seven-week civil service strike that has driven the peaceful nation to the brink of full-scale violence. Armed police backed by the paramilitary Special Support Group (SSG) and a helicopter were out in force on Thursday 9 June to prevent the striking workers from engaging in acts of violence and destruction that have accompanied the strike.

In an open field 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of Angola's chaotic capital, a $3.5-billion city seems to rise from nothing, a showpiece in government's drive to build one million new homes. Dubbed the 'new city of Kilamba Kiaxi', it's the antithesis of overcrowded Luanda's traffic-choked streets and is being built - like so much else in Angola - by Chinese contractors.

The planned creation of a 26-nation African Tripartite Free Trade Area (FTA) will draw industrial investment to South Africa by making it a springboard for low-duty access to other parts of the continent, trade and industry director general Lionel October said. The proposed free trade zone will merge the three regional blocs covering southern, central and eastern Africa. These are the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa), and the East African Community (EAC), which have a combined population of 580-million people.

Southern African leaders on Sunday pressured Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe to make democratic reforms ahead of new elections, hoping to set a new timetable for polls. Leaders of the 15-nation Southern African Development Community had discussed Zimbabwe late on Saturday on the eve of a free trade summit. After failing to reach a decision, they resumed talks after Sunday's trade meeting.
The full summit is expected to sign off on a roadmap that will lay out a new timetable for the constitution and later elections.

In an enigmatic U-turn, Algeria's political parties now support presidential term limits, just three years after they fought tooth and nail to defend the idea of an indefinite term for the chief executive. 'Algeria cannot stand aloof from globalisation and the systems applied in most countries, namely limitation of terms of office,' the National Liberation Front (FLN) said during a meeting of its Central Committee on Sunday (5 June) in Algiers. The majority of Algeria's political organisations, whether among the opposition or close to the government – Islamist, republican and secular – now advocate a return to the principle of limited terms of office as enshrined in previous Algerian constitutions.

Although members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) are reluctant to label the Doha development round of multilateral trade negotiations ‘dead’, Trade and Industry Minister Dr Rob Davies says that there is no hope of concluding the round in 2011, and it is time to pursue ‘plan B’. He explains that ‘plan B’ is to decide what part of the work programme of Doha could be delivered this year. 'The fundamental focus should be to deliver something for the least-developed countries (LDCs),' says Davies. This will likely include a duty-free quota-free access agreement - an aid-for-trade package opening markets to LDCs - which could facilitate the elimination of non-tariff barriers in LDCs, and a resolution of the ‘cotton dossier’, which would put a stop to subsidies for cotton farmers in the US.

Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaoré has sacked all of the 14 governors of the country’s regions and promised to name replacements in due course. A statement on the State radio said the move followed a Cabinet meeting which was chaired by the President in the capital, Ouagadougou. Even though no reasons were given for the sackings, it is believed the action was in connection with the riots and military mutinies that have rocked the country for three months now.

South Africans mourned the loss of a woman celebrated for her role in the fight against apartheid, and for her nurturing of a new generation of leaders. Crowds singing hymns and songs from the anti-apartheid era gathered hours before Albertina Sisulu's funeral on Saturday, eventually filling about a quarter of a 40,000-seat soccer stadium in Soweto. The service followed a week of national mourning during which flags were flown at half-mast across South Africa and at its foreign missions. Albertina collapsed and died at her Johannesburg home 2 June at the age of 92.

South African President Jacob Zuma on Sunday launched Africa's biggest free trade bloc aimed at enhancing cooperation between 26 nations to boost economies in the world's poorest and underdeveloped continent. The Southern African Development Community (SADC), East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) will now work as a joint bloc.

President of the Swaziland National Union of Students, Maxwell Dlamini, has been detained, tortured, and forced by Swaziland’s regime to sign a confession that says he was in possession of explosives during the April 12 Swazi Uprising - a movement inspired by similar uprisings in North Africa and The Middle East. The Free Maxwell Dlamini Campaign, together with the people and organisations that support the campaign - are demanding that Maxwell Dlamini, and his fellow accused Musa Ngubeni, is released unconditionally and that any and all wrongdoings committed by Swaziland’s police forces and security forces towards Maxwell Dlamini and other members of Swaziland’s democratic movement are investigated, and that any perpetrators are brought before a court of law.

COSATU general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi warns in a report prepared for the federation's central committee meeting this month that South Africa could become a 'banana republic', and threatens to repudiate President Jacob Zuma's leadership. Cosatu's central committee meeting is a mid-term review since the federation's last congress in 2009. In its analysis, the report compares the ANC's attitude towards the federation to the bad treatment it received during the era of former president Thabo Mbeki. The report confirms that Cosatu believes the ANC Youth League is on a campaign to remove Mantashe and Zuma.

Cameron Duodu reflects on the exciting and challenging times he had in the Congo in the 1960s.

On the ground in Tripoli and western Libya, Cynthia McKinney reports that the current NATO-led war looks nothing like the mainstream media would have us believe: ‘The situation on the ground in Tripoli … could not more different from what is being portrayed by Western news networks and newspapers.’

‘There appears to be very little difference in what is being advocated [by the IMF] to Arab democrats today and what was advocated to Arab dictators yesterday,’ writes Patrick Bond.

The Unga Revolution, a group of young people who gather daily at 1pm in Nairobi’s Harambee Avenue to campaign for the right to food and housing, reminds Kenyans that they need to exercise our civic duty more often, observes Patita Tingoi. ‘We need not give up just because we can survive on what we have today, tomorrow might be a different ball game all together.’

Despite all the news and analysis on Libya, we still don’t know very much about who the rebels are and where their support comes from, writes Sokari Ekine.

'When I was pregnant with my son I drank a lot – mostly on weekends,' says Marion Williams, a 45-year-old mother who lost two of her five children in childbirth. Williams lives in one of South Africa’s famous wine-growing areas in the Western Cape. She started drinking as a teenager and was taken out of school, she suspects, to work to buy wine for her parents. 'It is estimated that at least one million people in this country have fetal alcohol syndrome and approximately five million have partial fetal alcohol syndrome and [other] fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. It’s tragic because it’s completely preventable,' says researcher and human geneticist Denis Viljoen in Cape Town, the provincial capital of South Africa’s Western Cape.

The majority of Tunisia's political parties have approved the postponement of the election date for the country's Constituent Assembly to 23 October, the official TAP press agency has reported. The new date was announced by Tunisian caretaker Prime Minister Beji Caid Essebsi, after the head of the independent election committee had suggested 16 October, ruling out the initial date of 24 July for logistic reasons.