Zimbabwe's prime minister has accused the country's president, Robert Mugabe, of violating terms of their power-sharing agreement. Morgan Tsvangirai told thousands of supporters marking his Movement for Democratic Change's (MDC) 10th anniversary on Sunday that despite guarantees of political freedoms in the unity deal, Mugabe's Zanu-PF party continued to persecute MDC supporters.

Researchers have been keen to assess the impact of emerging donors on the development paradigm. The particular aid policies of China, India, South Africa et al have been carefully considered to garner how emerging donor approaches differ from the ‘traditional’ OECD-DAC (Development Assistance Committee) funders. Yet little consideration has been given to the implications of the new aid actors’ activities for future OECD-DAC donor policy as a whole. This paper seeks to detail implications for donor policy.

Preparations for elections in Botswana, Namibia and Mozambique are now at an advanced stage with the respective electoral commissions announcing polling dates. Botswana and Mozambique will go to the polls on 16 and 28 October respectively, while Namibia will hold its elections on 27 and 28 November. Botswana is holding general elections to choose new parliamentarians. The Parliament will then act as an electoral college to choose the President.

A coalition of candidates who lost to Gabonese president-elect Ali Ben Bongo in last month's election lodged a complaint with the country's top court, the politicians said on Thursday. The group, which includes veteran opposition leader Pierre Mamboundou and former Interior Minister Andre Mba Obame, both of whom scored just over 25 percent, accuse Ben Bongo of rigging the poll to succeed his father as president.

The World Bank is spending billions of pounds subsidising new coal-fired power stations in developing countries despite claiming that burning fossil fuels exposes the poor to catastrophic climate change. The bank, which has a goal of reducing poverty and is funded by Britain and other developed countries, calls on all nations in a report today to “act differently on climate change”.

The International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has proposed a three-tier approach to deal with architects of the post-election violence. Mr Moreno-Ocampo, at a meeting with Lands minister James Orengo, proposed the creation of special courts in Kenya to try those who committed atrocities during the violence. The ICC will deal with those who bore the biggest responsibility for the chaos, he added.

The National Election Commission (NEC) of Cote d'Ivoire has postponed the publication of the temporary voters' list in the country, scheduled to take place on Tuesday. In a communique, made available to PANA here, NEC stated that the publication had been "moved forward a few days". It did not give further details but merely said that the display was postponed for reasons "beyond its control".

Niger's president Mamadou Tandja is ready to dialogue with the opposition following a crisis triggered by a controversial referendum which has approved an extra three years for him, the head of a delegation of the Pan African Parliament (PAP), Mr Alassane Sawadogo, has announced. "President Tandja presented himself to us as a man ready for dialogue, anxious for peace, stability and Niger's supreme interest," Mr Sawadogo, PAPMP for Burkina Faso, said at the end of an audience with the Niger president.

Kenya's civil society organisations have lauded Parliament's move to annul the unilateral re-appointment of Justice Aaron Ringera as Kenya's Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) Director. Executive Director Harun Ndubi of HAKI Focus, a civil society organisation, said Thursday the move signified a new era in Kenyan politics where all leaders were held accountable for their actions.

Nine solders serving in the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) were killed Thursday after militant group, the Al Shabaab, hit the main headquarters of the mission, killing peacekeepers and wounding senior force commanders. The African Union (AU) immediately condemned the attacks and asked all the neighbouring countries to impose sanctions against the terrorist elements fighting efforts to restore stability in Somalia.

‘The idea that every single African who in their post-teenage years have left Africa for a life in a land which offers them more opportunity must be sad and depressed, is one that I am unwilling to acknowledge,’ Anengiyefa Alagoa writes to Pambazuka News, in response to .

She belongs to
the corner
streets
whose whispers
never reveal
the secrets of
the owner,

streets
guard the shadow
of time
she
maiden-less
leaves her son
to the streets.

A time
so deformed,
words prostitute
themselves,
mothers
prostitute
a child's soul,

Thee Word is
silent
as necessity
bends
down
prostituting
itself.

Feminine divine
Losing her
eclipse
still night
suggesting, copulating
a pilgrim
of the night,

twisting her afro curls
accentuated
seductive moves
chases
nightly enchantment,
soul killer
empty delight.

Body traded
for the price
of kissing
her life,
reined in
the capricious horses
of passion

she lays
destiny down to
feel the slivers of pain
in dreams and when awake,
hidden pain
eyes reveal
what words conceal.

Pitiless life
making her stay
in a wild desert
smelling
black dust of body
desolated by floods
of mortal life

she heaps abet
in the abyss
of the night
living no more
survivor
of fate
alone.

In an open letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder, the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) sets out the organisation’s concerns about US military operation Africa Command (AFRICOM), and calls for it to be dismantled. While officials insist that it is ‘a force for peace’, says NCBL, AFRICOM is ‘perceived as a military command that is designed to facilitate warfare’. The US has a ‘history of using military advisors to guide and direct troops in other countries to no good end’, says NCBL, and AFRICOM’s agenda ‘makes it possible for more lawsuits to be filed in the future, challenging US involvement in Africa’s conflicts.’

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/448/58810_SA_Palestine_tmb.jpg… an open letter to President Jacob Zuma, Hadar Eid, expresses his deep ‘disagreement and dissatisfaction’ with South Africa’s Middle East policy, in particular Zuma’s support for a ‘two-state solution’ for Israel and Palestine. Drawing parallels between Israel’s relationship with Palestinians and apartheid-era South Africa, Eid argues ‘The two-state solution is a racist solution, comrade Jacob. If you did not accept it for yourselves in South Africa, why force it on Palestinians instead of supporting us as we demand the right to our homeland?’

To survive the devastating impact of the global financial crisis, William Gumede tells Pambazuka News, African countries must learn one simple lesson they appeared not to have heeded since the end of colonialisation and apartheid: Do not listen to the advice of global financial institutions and leading Western nations. For that matter, do exactly what these Western nations do.

Mainstream models for socio-economic development in Southern Africa focus on elites, Henning Melber tells Pambazuka News, but if the interests of the majority of the people are to be served, fundamental new approaches are needed.

Appalled by President Yoweri Museveni's order that the 'Bafuriki' in Bunyoro speak Runyoro, Vincent Nuwagaba chastises Uganda's premier for a grave 'human rights' violation. If such sharp ethnicisation is not to get out of hand, Nuwagaba stresses in this week's Pambazuka News, Uganda and the global community at large must guard against government restrictions on political and cultural participation along ethnic and cultural lines.

There are many African rulers that hang onto power, coming very close to the practices of a monarch, writes Okello Oculi in this week's Pambazuka News. This is a dynamic exacerbated by the involvement of the World Bank and NGOs in Africa, who supplement the income of these kleptocrats and who sustain themselves through refusing to condemn the practices of corrupt leaders. We must fight the creativity of leaders like Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville in hiding the sources of their wealth, Oculi urges, and support a common legal norm to bring those that are breaking the law against human dignity and development to justice.

Zambia cannot afford to increase the number of its MPs, Henry Kyambalesa writes in this week's Pambazuka News, when many constituencies remain unable to generate sufficient tax revenue to meet the cost of maintaining existing parliamentary representatives.

With the prospects for development across the African continent severely undermined by the effects of the global financial crisis, Africa has seen Western countries break promise after promise, writes Lee Wengraf in this week's Pambazuka News. While the US continues to be nowhere near fulfilling its commitment of 0.70 per cent of national income towards foreign aid, it has had no trouble finding funds for militarisation programmes, with some US$500 million available for AFRICOM alone. As imperial competition heightens in the spectre of a global financial crisis, Wengraf writes, it is ordinary Africans who will continue to suffer under a system based on profit.