Exiled Somali journalists based in Nairobi, Kenya celebrated the world’s radio day on 13 February 2012 at hotel Madina in East-Leigh village of Nairobi. The gathering was organised by the Somali Exiled Journalists Association (SEJASS) as UNESCO requested all countries to celebrate this Day by undertaking activities with diverse partners, such as national, regional and international broadcasting associations and organisations, non-governmental organisations, media organisations, outlets as well as the public at large.

Following the cyclone and floods that ravaged Quelimane town and its outskirts, health officials have raised concern over the possibilities of cholera, malaria and diarrhoeal outbreak. Tropical Cyclone Funso swept across the coastal areas of Zambezia province leaving trail of destruction to property and crops. Thousands of people were left homeless among them elderly, child-headed families and the sick. For the local health authorities in Quelimane, it is the destruction of water and sanitation facilities and puddles of water scattered around the affected communities which are of major concern.

Small-scale farmers, family farmers, landless people, indigenous people, migrants - women and men - are now determined to mobilize to oppose any commodification of life.

Reacting to the announcement that Robert Zoellick is stepping down as World Bank President, a global coalition of campaigners has called for an open and merit-based process to elect the next World Bank leader, and for developing countries to determine the selection. The campaigners, including Oxfam, Eurodad and the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (Afrodad), have also asked the US to announce that it will no longer seek to monopolise the Presidential position.

‘Should Labour and the Left Propose a Global Green Jobs Alternative to Austerity and Climate Change?’

A Harare court on Wednesday 15 February dismissed an acquittal application by a group of activists arrested a year ago for watching footage of the people’s revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. The six, including former MDC-T MP Munyaradzi Gwisai, were among more than 40 people arrested last February after watching the video at an academic meeting, which was raided by police. After their initial arrest some in the group, including Gwisai, were tortured in police cells and kept in solitary confinement at Chikurubi maximum security prison in Harare for weeks.

Thousands of protesting miners burnt tyres and torched a police office near Impala Platinum's Rustenburg mine in South Africa on Thursday 16 February as a month-long strike at the world's second-largest producer of the precious metal turned violent. Police also said a miner who was beaten up during an overnight demonstration near the Rustenburg plant had died of his injuries.

A raft of women's rights organisations and individuals have taken the executive director of Human Rights Watch to task for his introduction to Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2012.

A post on the Free Gender blog explains how in a meeting between LGBTI activists and church leaders, their sexuality was referred to as 'a thing'. 'Some left the boardroom with so many unanswered questions as they felt that conversation had a lot to do with dictatorship instead of opening up a holy and safe space for proper discussion that will make LGBTI feel welcomed at churches regardless of one’s sexuality or gender expression.'

Zimbabwe has suspended 29 NGOs in what has been described as a renewed clampdown on aid workers ahead of elections President Robert Mugabe wants held this year. The veteran ruler’s Zanu-PF party, at its annual conference last December, tabled a report claiming that there were 2,500 NGOs operating in the country, and most of them were pushing a 'regime change agenda'.

At least 10 people have died after Cyclone Giovanna struck Madagascar but details of its impact on the regions which bore the brunt of the category-four tropical storm remain sketchy, as communications and electricity supplies have been cut. The cyclone made landfall in the early hours of 14 February south of the port town of Toamasina and then carved a path through heavily populated areas towards the capital, Antananarivo, reportedly uprooting trees, damaging infrastructure, causing landslides and flooding as it moved inland.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Eldoret North MP William Ruto exchanged angry words in Parliament recently over the implementation of the Constitution and the trial of the Ocampo Four at The Hague. Facing-off from opposite sides of the Chamber, the former political allies traded words on campaign propaganda and the reasons for the International Criminal Court taking two cases related to 2008 post election violence. Speaker Kenneth Marende was forced to intervene.

Armed militias operating across Libya commit widespread human rights abuses with impunity, fuelling insecurity and hindering the rebuilding of state institutions, warned Amnesty International in a new report released a year on from the start of the February 2011 uprising. The report 'Militias threaten hopes for new Libya', documents widespread and serious abuses, including war crimes, by a multitude of militias against suspected al-Gaddafi loyalists, with cases of people being unlawfully detained and tortured - sometimes to death.

A meeting to discuss the return of people to their lands after they were evicted during post-election violence led to the illegal arrest of 31 people on 26 February.

In this East African article, Charles Onyango-Obbo, writes about the old school information sharing approach of the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF). It has reduced the regular press briefings to a drip. And even when it brings the generals out to speak to the media, they give very little away. There are rarely any leaks. But a juicy leak about the KDF's approach to Kismayu did come through - revealing important implications for businessmen, tax collectors, Al Shabaab and the environment.

At least 600 Ugandan girls have been forced into Malaysia’s sex trade in what has become a human trafficking epidemic, a foreign diplomat has said. Hajah Noraihan, the Malaysian consul to Uganda, said despite an early warning to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2008 when the number of trafficked girls stood at 30, the constant flow of victims had not slowed.

Four months ago, Clemence Uzizo, 21, a welder living in Soweto, Johannesburg's most populous suburb, made the mistake of venturing out to a local shop without his asylum-seeker permit. Neither the police who arrested him, nor the immigration officials who detained him, verified Uzizo's legal status before deporting him to Zimbabwe, the country of his birth. 'My permit was at home but I didn't have a cell phone to call to ask someone to bring it,' he told IRIN not long after making a risky and expensive return to South Africa via the Limpopo River. 'Since my father brought me [to South Africa] in 1992 I've lived here, so I don't know anyone in Zimbabwe.'

Women, who are already compensating for rising food prices and energy costs with additional time and labour - are now further disadvantaged through land grabbing. Land grabs are land lease or sale agreements between parties with unequal bargaining power, often transacted through covert or illegal means. Although land grabs in the 21st century bear some resemblance to massive land grabs that characterized colonization and empire-building in Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries, grabs today are courted by African governments, endorsed through intentionally vague paperwork and lauded in official speeches espousing their trickle-down merits.

Was the ANC’s decision disciplining or silencing the ANC Youth League? asks Zama Ndlovu on the Mail and Guardian blog Thought Leader. 'Before Julius Malema entered the political scene, there was very little public discourse on the acute socio-economic issues faced by a growing number of young South Africans today. After 18 years of political freedom, more than half of South Africans under the age of 25 remain unemployed – among the highest jobless rates in the world.'

In parallel narratives Simon Bright tells the stories of Rhodesia’s transition to Zimbabwe and the personal journey of Robert Mugabe, using one to explain the other and finally suggesting why Mugabe chose the road he has.

As a biography it has everything - first-hand accounts of Mugabe’s early life with a desperately poor Catholic mother, what he was like at school, the effects of a Jesuit education and his rage against his absent father. As his star ascends commentators reflect on early landmarks, particularly his attendance of Ghana’s independence celebrations in 1957.

It’s clear the highly intellectual Young Turk was admired and respected through the 1960s and 70s: Bright traces the origins of the esteem through fascinating archival film interviews. The parallel story of the transition is equally well researched, as are later episodes of importance, notably Lancaster House, the Matabeleland genocide and the growing role of global business in Africa’s economies.

But it’s the behind-the-scenes jostling for power which Bright exposes that is the most riveting, and from it Mugabe emerges as unquestionably one of history’s most canny, devious leaders. It is a haunting film, the music an achievement in itself, a mix of liberation, folk and contemporary sounds. Simon Bright was co-producer of the pivotal 1996 Zimbabwe liberation film ‘Flame’.

* This brief is courtesy of the director and Spier Films.

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