In the wake of the ‘furore about the racist remarks attributed to Mr Jimmy Manyi’, Neville Alexander discusses the challenges around creating a ‘raceless society’ in post-apartheid South Africa.

This workshop will provide an opportunity for postgraduate students in the broad field of law and development to reflect on its themes, progress and future.

There is mud under your toenails, your feet camouflaged by dust…

Two senior opposition figures arrested in late April in Equatorial Guinea have been released, a senior party colleague said. Vicente Nze and Juan Manuel Nguema Esono of the main opposition Convergence for Social Democracy (CPDS) party had been released late Friday (29 April), CPDS secretary general Placido Mico Abogo told AFP. Esono was detained for having put up a poster calling for a demonstration against President Teodoro Obiang Nguema on Sunday, 1 May, said a CPDS statement.

Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, on one of the days on which opposition leader Dr Kizza Besigye was arrested, attacked academics and religious leaders at a conference that brought together key stakeholders, including senior religious and political leaders, academicians, media experts, heads of security agencies, development partners, civil society organisations and cultural leaders from around the country. Museveni was irked by what he described as lies spread by some academicians.

Judge Nathan Erasmus ruled recently that the DA-controlled Cape Town municipality had violated the human and constitutional rights of residents of Makhaza in Khayelitsha by installing unenclosed toilets. He also dismissed the city's and Western Cape premier Helen Zille's argument that residents were consulted and had agreed to enclose the toilets at their own cost.

Mozambique is one of the world's poorest countries, with over half of its 22 million people living below the poverty line. It pays the lowest salaries in southern Africa, according to a recent report by accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Last year, violent riots against price increases left at least 14 dead, prompting the government to subsidise food and fuel.

Several senior advisors to US President Barack Obama recently met a high powered delegation from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) in Washington, to discuss mounting violence and arrests in Zimbabwe. Although the focus of the meeting for the US seemed to be the mounting violence and arrests in Zimbabwe, the SADC delegates focused on the removal of targeted sanctions placed on companies and individuals aligned to the Mugabe regime.

A Nigerian human rights group says more than 500 people died after presidential elections earlier this month. Rioting broke out when it emerged that Goodluck Jonathan, a southern Christian - had defeated a Muslim candidate from the mostly Islamic north. Correspondents say Nigeria is braced for possible further unrest over governorship elections on Tuesday (26 April) in most of Nigeria's 36 states.

With regional wheels rolling to put in place the envisaged grand tripartite free trade area (FTA), questions have arisen about whether it would be viable and increase competitiveness. 'Free trade areas by themselves are not an engine for growth,' remarked SADC trade policy advisor Paul Kalenga at a public trade dialogue in Windhoek, Namibia, organised by the Agricultural Trade Forum and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. 'Trade between the region and China, for instance, shot up with 500 percent in the past few years, but intra-regional trade is still proportionally low, despite all the efforts around a Southern African Development Community (SADC) FTA,' he said. Experts from different countries in the envisaged tripartite FTA gathered on 20 April in the Namibian capital to discuss the readiness of smaller nations in the region to engage in the scheme.

Low- and middle-income earners across eastern and central Africa are reeling from the mounting cost of living brought on by a sharp increase in commodity prices in the past few months. Protests and demonstrations against the rising cost of food and fuel have swept across several towns in Kenya and Uganda; violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces have been reported on several occasions in Uganda. At least four Ugandans have been killed in countrywide demonstrations, while hundreds have been arrested and several hospitalized with gunshot wounds and the effects of teargas.

Anti-riot police Monday broke up a 'Day of Anger' rally by Mauritanian youths demanding the ouster of President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, detaining about 20 protesters. As the tide of Arab uprisings swept to the west of Africa, police used tear gas on hundreds of demonstrators who sought to enter a square in downtown Nouakchott that has been declared off-limits for protesters since rallies began in late February.

Mugabe has vowed that he would force elections to be held by June, without the consent of his partners in the country's shaky coalition government, stirring widespread fears that the vote would bring another wave of violent mayhem against his pro-democracy opponents. However, the latest development shows that Mugabe has been pushed further into a corner, Western diplomats say, after his Southern African neighbours, led by South Africa's president Jacob Zuma, last month ordered Mugabe to end the repeated cycles of violence and to carry out the democratic reforms he agreed to at the inception of the coalition government in February 2009.

Chad went to the polls on Monday in the first round of its presidential election with incumbent Idriss Déby Itno virtually assured of extending his 21-year rule after his main rivals boycotted the vote. Key opposition leaders have withdrawn from the vote after claiming that his Patriotic Salvation Movement (MPS) party stole February parliamentary elections and the start of Monday's vote was marred by hitches. Opposition leaders Saleh Kebzabo, Wadal Abdelkader Kamougue and Ngarlejy Yorongar say they will not recognise the poll amid demands for reforms including the issuing of new voters' cards.

This post contains two short articles by Peter Kenworthy from African Contact. One is on the charging of two Swazi youth leaders for allegedly possessing explosives that Swazi police claim were to be used for acts of terrorism during the recent mass demonstrations for democracy, rule of law and socio-economic justice in Swaziland. The other article is about the general environment of insecurity for pro-democracy activists protesting against the government.

In the wake of NATO’s imposition of the ‘no-fly zone’ over Libya on 31 March, there is serious scepticism around the United States Pentagon’s denial of the use of depleted uranium (DU), writes Farouk James. With the US, the UK and France now calling for a full-scale invasion, James writes, the veto powers of the UN Security Council’s permanent members should be called into question once again.

As Libya's leader struggles to keep his grip on power, one of his pet projects appears to be moving ahead at the African Union, which took initial steps Tuesday toward creating his grand plan: the United States of Africa. AU officials met Monday and Tuesday at the organisation's Ethiopia headquarters to discuss the formation of the African Union Authority, an institution that would replace the existing AU Commission with the aim of eventually bringing Africa's countries under a single unity government.

Commending a work which sets a ‘universal standard’ on assessing Rwanda’s gacaca courts – ‘the country’s remarkable experiment in transitional justice’ – Gerald Caplan reviews Phil Clark’s ‘The Gacaca Courts, Post-Genocide Justice and Reconciliation in Rwanda: Justice Without Lawyers’.

Joaquim Miranda Maloa

Following the ‘brutal killing’ of activist Andries Tatane ‘at a peaceful rally’ in South Africa, Emmie Chanika calls for solidarity with grassroots and civil society organisations.