Egypt's former Tourism Minister Zuhair Garranah has been jailed for five years on charges of corruption, an Egyptian judicial source has said. Garranah had handed out tourism licences illegally, the source said. Last week, ex-Interior Minister Habib al-Adly was jailed for 12 years for money-laundering and profiteering.

The 4th Forum on the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) was held between 18 and 20 March 2011 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As is customary, the Forum was organised ahead of the 17th Ordinary Session of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) also taking place in Ethiopia. Ninety-seven activists from 23 countries (of which 19 were in Africa) attended the Forum, which is a framework for strategic partnership to improve child rights in Africa. The document available through the link provided gives a summary of the meeting.

Amadou Yoro Sy et Dialo Diop

Famara Diédhiou

Farouk James

Bernard Dodji Bokodjin

The launch of an Africa Carbon Exchange is unlikely to meet the goals of curbing carbon emissions and financing adaptation needs, writes Shefali Sharma.

Salim Vally makes the case for the University of Johannesburg to severe ties with Ben Gurion University of Israel. ‘In the case of violent occupation, apartheid, genocide and gross human rights abuse, academic freedom must surely bear some reference to these very conditions for the criteria of its determination,’ he argues.

Escalating fuel prices, climate change and the impact of the global financial crisis are the challenges currently compromising development in Malawi. The Southern African country wants to see a bold plan of action addressing these problems agreed upon at the Fourth U.N. Conference on Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) currently taking place in Istanbul, Turkey. In recent months, Malawi has been experiencing a fuel crisis so severe fuel has been rationed at the pump. People have taken to parking their vehicles at service stations overnight to get a place near the head of the queue. The country is facing severe shortages of foreign exchange, leading to strict controls on the export of hard currency and causing problems for businesses that need forex to pay for imports.

Ramnik Shah reflects on the life of Justice Madan, a ‘homegrown Kenyan jurist of the highest order’, and his ‘immense contribution to the political and legal history of Kenya’.

Amidst widespread rumour that the Kenyan government is buying up land in Lamu District to resettle people displaced by the 2008 post-election violence, Abdalla Bujra calls on the government to issue an ‘urgent statement’ on the matter, or risk increasing tensions in Lamu, whose people are afraid that they will lose their land and livelihoods.

This special issue of Pambazuka News, published in association with AwaaZ, chronicles ‘justice’ as its main theme. This is particularly in the context of the enactment of the new constitution and by extension to seek justice for the people of Kenya. The issue covers a range of articles related to the struggle for justice in the overall context today: In the judiciary, in the courts of the people under public litigation cases and the eviction of the poor from their homes; in the environment – in this case Lamu; for sexual minorities – in this case the LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex) movement in Kenya today; the relationship between the Kenyan Somali and the Kenyan state; the rights of women; and in the press. We have also examined the constitutional community justice systems in Kenya in comparison to the formal legal systems today.

In addition there is an article on the historical perspective on the Politics of Law in Kenya. We have also chronicled the life of the late Chief Justice of Kenya Hon, Mr Justice C B Madan. We hope that this story will have an impact on the current process of appointing a new Chief Justice in Kenya under the new constitution. The late Justice Madan was a ‘Champion for the supremacy of the rule of Law’, which we so badly lack today in Kenya.

The relationship between Kenyan Somalis and the Kenyan state is ‘tumultuous at the best of times, and indifferent at the worst of times’, writes Abdinasir Amin. Although little has changed for the better since Amin’s grandfather’s time, Kenya’s new constitution brings hope for genuine acceptance in the future.

Tax authorities in five African countries are to investigate giant brewer SAB Miller following an ActionAid report which found that the multinational avoided millions of pounds of taxes in Africa every year. The African Tax Administration Forum will coordinate the groundbreaking investigation of the company's transfer pricing strategies in South Africa, Ghana, Zambia, Tanzania and Mauritius. Martin Hearson, one of the report's authors, said: 'This unprecedented initiative marks a new era in which rampant tax avoidance by multinationals in developing countries will come under much closer scrutiny, both from tax authorities and from campaigners. Tax avoidance by multinationals costs billions in lost revenues, which could transform healthcare and education services for millions of people.'

An indefinite strike by public-sector workers in diamond-rich Botswana is threatening the ruling party’s 45-year grip on power and denting its image as the steward of one of Africa’s success stories. The main public employees’ union said more than 90,000 workers have joined the strike, which has ground public services to a near halt and forced schools, clinics and government offices to operate on skeleton staff. The country’s three largest opposition parties have moved to capitalise on the unrest.
Duma Boko, head of the opposition Botswana National Front, called on Botswana to replicate the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.

André Mba Obame, Gabon's main opposition leader, has been stripped of parliamentary immunity as government prepares a treason case against him. The Gabonese opposition leader in January created international headlines as he declared himself winner of the elections held 17 months earlier. The failed attempt to gain power and upcoming treason trial against Obame represent a major setback for Gabon's opposition, which has been denied access to power ever since independence.

Beatings, assaults, torture, manipulation of the party structures, tribalism, nepotism, cooked up voters’ rolls, intolerance, vote buying, elections taking place under the cover of darkness, the use of long incumbency to remain in power and the imposition of candidates by the party’s top leadership. The above describes how the leadership of the MDC led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T) is managing its provincial congresses ahead of the party’s national congress in Bulawayo at the end of April, says the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition.

Malawi continues to have the highest number of child labourers in Southern Africa, with more than 78,000 children working on tobacco farms, according to child rights NGO Plan. The health risks are high. The handling of the leaves is done largely without protective clothing and the children absorb up to 54mg of dissolved nicotine through their skin - which is equal to smoking 50 cigarettes. As a result, many suffer from green tobacco sickness (GTS). The symptoms including severe headaches, abdominal pain, muscle weakness, coughing and breathlessness.

Zimbabwe has adopted a two-pronged approach to tackling the country’s foreign debt that will see the African country use its rich natural resources while also embracing the HIPC debt relief initiative to pay back the more than US$7 billion owed to foreigners. The move to adopt a hybrid solution to the debt crisis comes after more than a year of strong disagreements within the Harare unity government over how to handle a burgeoning debt that Finance Minister Tendai Biti has said is the biggest obstacle to efforts to resuscitate the country’s economy ravaged by a decade-long recession.

Cash strapped government will find itself failing to pay salaries in June if its coffers fail to get immediate injection. It also states it will be difficult for May. What had been feared and allayed for months seemingly looms. Since openly acknowledging that it is faced with a fiscal crisis, government has, for months, said civil servants’ salaries are a priority and would be guaranteed. Now it has conceded that beyond this month there will be no money to pay them.

The Tanzanian government has denied that it is broke even, as analysts view the current situation as giving hints that the country is going through a financial crisis. Finance and economic affairs minister Mustafa Mkulo was refuting claims by Kigoma North MP Mr Zitto Kabwe who is also Finance shadow minister, who was quoted in the media at the weekend as saying the government was in 'dire financial straits' that has forced it to resort to borrowing to pay salaries. Kabwe had said the government delayed the April salaries to most of its workers. The Citizen established that a number of state employees had their April salaries delayed.

Tension between the ruling MPLA party and the main opposition UNITA party and questions over policy-making are worrying investors in the major African oil-producing nation of Angola, states this risk assessment article from Reuters. Campaigning for 2012 elections got off to a shaky start, with UNITA saying food price riots in Mozambique in September could lead poverty-stricken Angolans to do the same.

The ANC 'didn't know' about 1,600 toilets in a Free State municipality which have been left without enclosures for the past eight years, secretary general Gwede Mantashe said on Monday (09 May). 'We didn't know about open toilets,' he told journalists at as press briefing at Luthuli House in Johannesburg. Earlier, the Human Rights Commission spokesperson, Vincent Moaga, said the body's legal committee would discuss the issue after a complaint had been laid with the commission on the issue.