The new Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) edged out the Istiqlal Party on Friday (June 12th) to win the greatest number of seats in Morocco's communal elections. The accomplishment may change the political landscape in Morocco. According to a Saturday announcement by Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa, Fouad Ali El Himma's PAM received roughly 18% of all votes cast and won 6,015 seats (21.7%) of the 27,795 contested.

African countries are set to adopt a ground-breaking convention providing rights to millions of people forced to flee their homes because of conflict. Africa has some 12 million internally displaced people (IDPs) who are uprooted within their own country. Unlike refugees -- people who have fled to another country -- IDPs benefit from little or no protection. The convention, the brainchild of the African Union, will for the first time provide them with similar rights to refugees, according to a draft seen by Reuters.

The process for a new Zimbabwean constitution kick started on Wednesday when the Parliamentary Select Committee began constitutional hearings across the country. Political commentator Professor John Makumbe said the meetings that took place began with the registration of various interested groups in the five provinces. The stakeholders were told go back to their provinces and nominate representatives to attend an All Stakeholders conference in July, which will elect thematic committees.

A state prosecutor on Thursday conceded that the way human rights campaigner Jestina Mukoko was abducted by state security agents, was illegal. The 53 year-old former news reader has taken her case to the Supreme Court, seeking a permanent stay of her prosecution. A full bench of the Supreme Court heard submissions from state prosecutor Fatima Maxwell that they did not dispute Mukoko’s evidence that she was abducted and held incommunicado against her will, which also violated her human rights.

Guinea-Bissau’s election on Sunday to replace its slain president will be a test for West Africa’s ability to stop the retreat of democracy as well as for a state destabilised by drug smugglers and army rivalries. The fact the vote is happening at all is something of an achievement within four months of President Joao Bernardo “Nino” Vieira being shot dead and after the killing of a top contender and another senior politician during the campaign.

This latest policy briefing from the International Crisis Group warns that the killings of General Tagme (the chief of defence staff) and President Vieira in March, as well as the recent assassinations of opposition leaders and former ministers, are an indication the democratic process cannot cope. The military’s use of force has overwhelmed state institutions. Both the political elites and the international community must send a strong message condemning the widespread abuses committed by the armed forces.

Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has been formally invited to attend this year's G-8 Summit of the world's industrial nations holding in Italy. Next month's meeting, holding from July 8 to 10, 2009 at L'Aquila will be the third since President Yar'Adua was sworn in on May 29, 2007 and the first he is being invited to attend.

Djibo Hamani

This is yet another good article from this guy. We need writers like him, who look at serious issues that affected our society, despite the euphoria that first came with the 'sainthood' of Mandela, the British conservativeness of the Mbeki era and now the Zunami, which is already promising to inflict more sufferings for the ordinary citizens. I suggest you give him a regular column.

Ethiopian Recycler wonder why no one is not suspicious that Meles may be part of the problem.

Kofi Ali Abdul campaigns for the 850 million citizens of the AU member states to be able to vote for representatives in the Pan African Parliament, arguing that AU leaders must be accountable to the people.

cc ‘A better life beckons for the people of Joe Slovo informal settlement,’ the South African government has said, following a decision by the Constitutional Court that the settlement’s 20,000 residents will be evicted to Delft make way for the N2 housing project. Describing the statement as ‘utter nonsense’, Kate Tissington writes a personal reaction to the judgement, which, she argues, ‘has effectively allowed government to get away with a national project that was misconceived from the start’. Relocation from the settlement would ‘severely disrupt the lives of residents’, increasing their commute to work and essential services and damaging the existing community and social networks upon which they rely, says Tissington, pointing to government's failure to understand people’s needs. While it is unlikely that the eviction will go ahead as envisioned, says Tissington, the court’s judgment is ‘technical, cowardly and naive in the face of the obvious’.

cc Efforts to increase domestic revenue and reduce dependency on foreign donors and the allocation of substantial resources to education and health are among the aspects of the new budget welcomed by the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme's (TGNP) budget analysis task team. Critical of plans to privatise water and the government's prioritisation of large-scale producers over peasant and small-holder farmers in its response to the economic crisis, TGNP has called for more measures to ensure that the budget 'adequately serves the majority of Tanzanians, especially poor and marginalised women, children, and the disabled'.

cc Traditionally African culture dictated that elderly citizens be treated with respect, writes Anushka Sehmi, but as economic constraints erode the extended family system and fuel rural-urban migration, many old people languish in villages with no-one to care for them. With a quarter of African women left widowed by mounting conflict, disease and poverty, Sehmi explores abuse of and discrimination against elderly women in the light of cultural practices such as widow-inheritance and land ownership. Noting that ‘there is almost no legal or policy framework’ that safeguards the rights of elderly women in Africa, Sehmi calls for states to ratify and implement treaties that protect them, such as the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa and for marginalised groups to ‘be engaged and educated regarding their civic and political rights’. It is up to us to lobby and push our governments to perform this task, says Sehmi, or ‘these forgotten women will forever be denied the right to a dignified life’.

cc Deeply dissatisfied with the South African government's current economic record and policies, Mphutlane wa Bofelo calls on the country's leaders to implement a model of socio-economic redistribution. Rather than pursuing the spending cuts and reduced public sector prescribed by classic neoliberal orthodoxy, the Zuma administration should instead work towards the real and lasting developmental benefits to be found in spreading wealth around, wa Bofelo argues. For if labour and economic disparities simply breed social unrest, wa Bofelo contends, promoting fairer policy will foster social cohesion and people's lasting participation in a genuinely egalitarian society.

Papa, you’re the apple of my eye
Clothed me in love like happiness:
Worked hard striving to nurture me
Papa, I’m honestly so proud of you.

I cherish him with child-like passion
Oh papa, papa you’re innately cool
So awesome, wonderful, cool to me
What a blessing, you raised no fool
Our bond is as solid as igneous rock.

Some kids wished they had my dada
Dada personifies my precious jewel
His love runs deep like Sewa River
Today, tears of joy saturate my life
Thank you God: for my caring papa.

From infancy, he loved and cared
Proudly, championed my fragile life
Without him life would be chaotic
A bond anchored as the baobab tree.

cc With this year's Caine Prize for African Writing shortlist now announced, Mildred Kiconco Barya interviews Segun Afolabi, the 2005 winner of the prize. The winner of the 2009 prize will be announced at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, on Monday 6 July.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been invited as a special guest to participate at the 13th ordinary session of the assembly of heads of State and government of the African Union (AU) themed ‘Investing in agriculture for economic growth and food security’ that is scheduled to take place in Sirte, Libya, from 1 to 3 July 2009. During this summit, African leaders are expected to adopt a framework and guidelines on land policies in Africa, a document that was produced by the AU in collaboration with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the African Development Bank. Relevant to the theme of the summit, the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development suggested, ahead of the three-day World Economic Forum meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, that investing in small-scale agricultural projects in developing countries would be a ‘safety net’ as the world struggles to limit the impact of the economic crisis.

Elsewhere, the chairperson of the AU Commission, Jean Ping, met with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and other government officials in Caracas to prepare for the Africa-South America summit scheduled to take place in Caracas, Venezuela. In addition, the AU Commission chairperson announced African countries’ interest in exploring possibilities and advantages of a closer cooperation between both regional organisations and that African Union intends on closely monitoring the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas to learn from its experiences in social and economic spheres.

The AU, expressing deep concern at the increased presence of armed groups in Somalia, condemned foreign jihadists who undermine the peace and reconciliation process in the country by helping local insurgents to fight President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s government and AU peacekeepers. The AU, considering the report of the mission undertaken by its peace and the security council to West Africa to evaluate the political and security situation there, has urged Guinea Bissau armed forces to refrain from any interference in political issues and to take the necessary measures to guarantee the security of the candidates and the electoral process. The Southern African Development Community has called on Madagascar’s political rivals to consider peaceful dialogue to end months of political crisis and has delegated Joaquim Chissano, former Mozambican president, to lead the country’s all-party dialogue. The chairperson of the AU, Libyan leader Mouammar Kadhafi, addressing prominent Italian women on his first visit to Italy since the Libyan revolution, called for ‘a ‘women’s revolution’ worldwide to correct the false notion of equality between men and women. On the day of the African child commemorating thousands of Black school children who were maimed and killed during the 1976 Soweto uprising, the UN Millennium Campaign called on African states, civil society organisations and the private sector to tackle child and maternal mortality and gender inequality in universal primary education among others.

In other news, finance ministers and governors of central banks of the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) approved a report of the inter-institutional working group on the ECOWAS single currency that articulates a strategy for realising a single currency for the region by 2020. The East African Community has started a series of public sessions to gage views from the private sector on issues of trade in services ahead of the signing of an Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union. More than half of the 14 Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa free trade area members opted out of the regional economic bloc’s ceremonial customs union stating that ‘they are either not ready for it, indifferent, or not convinced by the trade creation potential of the new arrangement’, which many feel was launched prematurely.

As some countries approach the second round of reviews, analysts examine the performance of the African Peer Review Mechanism underlining the slow pace of renewing the membership of the panel of eminent persons and of its secretariat as well as the lack of transparency of both processes. In a report recently launched by the Africa Progress Panel, the panel stresses that most of the problems that Africa faces such the current global crisis and climate change are creations of the North, but that it is Africa, which is worst affected and least able to cope. The report adds, however, that the main responsibility for tackling those challenges lies with Africa’s own leaders. Moreover, the Action Group of Africa gives a critical view of ‘malpractices going on at the Pan African Parliament’ and suggests using the principle of adult suffrage to make the process of electing African legislators more transparent and democratic.

Finally, AfriMAP invites submissions of papers with proposals of implementation of the African Youth Charter, which was adopted by the assembly of heads of State and government of the AU in July 2006.

The central questions addressed in this bulletin concern the fate of democracy, especially as seen by Africans themselves. Do they say they want democracy, a preference that we call the popular demand for democracy? And do they think they are getting it - do they perceive that their leaders are providing a supply of democracy? Moreover, if there is evidence of democratic development in Africa, to what extent are democratic regimes established, stable, or consolidated?

Pharmaceutical giant Tibotec and the non-profit Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance) have teamed up to expedite the development of TMC207, which could become the first TB drug with a new mechanism of action in 40 years. Interim data from an ongoing Phase II study of TMC207 was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine. In the placebo-controlled study of 47 patients with multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), it was found that 48 percent of patients receiving TMC207 in combination with standard treatment converted to negative sputum culture after eight weeks compared with 9 percent of those who received placebo and standard treatment.