Pambazuka News brings you a poem by Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961), one of the first generation of African nationalists who were both militant and strong pan-Africanists. Patrice Lumumba was elected the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Assassinated by Belgian colonialists and the CIA, Lumumba was a founder member of the Movement National Congolais (MNC), which led the Congo to independence. The image of Patrice Lumumba continues to serve as an inspiration in contemporary Congolese and African politics.

Tensions over the future of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) and trade relations with the EU are rising, as reflected in the plethora of recent media reports. Unfortunately they are so complex that they defy simple categorisation. The most difficult problem concerns the future of revenue distribution within SACU. South Africa substantially subsidises the smaller members - particularly Lesotho and Swaziland - and the South African Treasury is uncomfortable with the subsidy’s extent, given competing domestic fiscal demands.

The African Studies Association of India is proud to announce a seminar; South Africa under Globalization: Issues in Foreign Policy and Development, to be held at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, on 11 to 12 November 2009.he proposed seminar seeks to address the issues related to foreign policy and development in South Africa under globalisation.

In trade, investment and development assistance news this week, China signs a construction contract with the Tanzanian government to build a cardiac surgery treatment and training center in Dar es Salaam, and funds a car plant in Angola.

The President of Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina has reportedly boycotted the consultative meeting with SADC mediators. The meeting convened by the Special envoys from SADC), the United Nations and the African Union amongst others, is to seek a lasting solution in the Madagascar political crisis.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) could further raise its growth forecast for Africa next year to reflect an elevation in demand in China and some industrialised nations where signs of recovery are beginning to show. According to Antoinette Sayeh, Director of the IMF’s African Department, the end of the global recession is still some way off and African economies are feeling the dramatic decline in demand, investment, and commodity prices.

The Moroccan government reshuffled its cabinet on Wednesday (July 29th) to restore its parliamentary majority. King Mohammed VI appointed one minister of state and three junior ministers.

ITU’s African Region Preparatory Meeting for the World Telecommunication Development Conference 2010 (WTDC) concluded last week in Kampala, Uganda with delegates reaching consensus on regional strategies to foster the development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) throughout Africa. The agreed strategies and priorities will serve as inputs to next year’s WTDC.

Guinea-Bissau's electoral body has declared Malam Bacai Sanha as winner of Sunday's presidential run-off vote. Sanha, former head of state (1999-2000) and candidate of ruling party PAIGC, scored 224, 259 votes (63%) defeating rival Kumba Yala, another ex-head of state, who got 129,973 votes.

Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has attended the first national security council meeting to be held since he and President Robert Mugabe formed a unity government in February. Tsvangirai, who had not pushed for an earlier meeting to avoid alienating a military crucial to Mugabe's hold on power, sat with generals who had previously vowed not to work with him at the meeting chaired by Mugabe.

The Kenyan cabinet has rejected prosecution of post-election violence perpetrators by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and instead opted for the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) as a means of national healing. After a day-long meeting at State House Nairobi, President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga addressed a rare press conference where they said the TJRC Act would be amended to make it more effective.

East African leaders have emphasized the need to push further the regional integration to prepare the five-member East African Community (EAC) for opportunities to attract larger portions of the foreign direct investments. The leaders, attending an investment conference which ended here Thursday, called for more focus on financial stability, political unity and Africa’s exclusion from the global economy in order to rectify the region’s failure to attract investments.

One of the underlying principles of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the European Union (EU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is that it should complement and support regional integration initiatives. However, the signing of the Interim EPA (I-EPA) by some member states, and not by others, has generated uncertainty within the region.

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) claims that its "stress breeding", high-yield seed program and its emphasis on grassroots farmer input will boost agricultural production among poor, small scale farmers. But NGOs and environmentalists say AGRA’s Programme for Africa’s Seed System (PASS) is essentially a top-down, corporate driven approach that further threatens food security on the continent.

Sanou Mbaye

Mutsa Murenje doesn't want Mugabe to die, he just wants him to retire peacefully and let Zimbabweans get on with their lives.

The appointment of the Justice, Peace and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) is a welcome development, writes Bill Rutto, but what will happen with critical violations that existed before and at independence and which remain outstanding to this day?

The highway,
tarmac crumbling, potholes yawning,
snakes it way
between the village and the township.
Here by this roadside,
I take my rest.

In the city,
grim with the broken dreams of many hearts,
buildings stand,
a coat of grey clay dust
upon each forlorn facet,
the rank air,
surfeit with the sweat of struggling millions.

There thugs lie in wait for me
some want my body
others want my soul
And I have not double of both.
So I sit to pray
And in praying
Wake.

They who led us thus far have absconded,
having hurled reason into the river
that snaked its way to far away oceans
And we have none more to replace it

So I sit to cry
And in crying
Wake.

The village- they have torn down,
The township gapes, an unfinished hole.
Like old clothes with one too many patches,
the old ways are discarded,
The new ones are long in arriving.

I dream long and dream often
But visions flee when dawn arrives.
I sit to cry
And in crying
Wake.

With each awakening the nightmare lengthens,
Do I truly dream or do I live,
And can this a living be?
Where exists the glorious promise of which I dream?
Do I dream or do I die?

Thus stranded between village and township,
lost between today and tomorrow
caught between past and present,
called by dreams of glorious promises
and tied by a present that ever grows ever more
deprived
I sit to find
and in finding
Wake.

Following proclamations by the Gauteng premier on national television in support of legalising prostitution, Thelma Tafadzwa Madondo talks to Pambazuka News about the negative impacts such a move might have on child prostitutes.

On 8 June, the oil giant Shell reached a settlement of US$15.5 million in a case brought against it in the US by 10 Ogoni plaintiffs, who accused the Anglo-Dutch company of complicity in the deaths of Ken Saro-Wiwa and 8 other Ogoni activists in 1995. In this week’s Pambazuka News, Khadija Sharife reports on a case that, as Ken Saro-Wiwa Jnr has said, ‘very clearly sets a precedent that corporations have to be very careful when they operate in places like Africa’ and that ‘you can be brought to trial in America for violations in Africa.’