Trade unions are gearing up to advance their fight against the Swaziland regime and the greed of the politicians who voted themselves payoffs and perks worth millions of US dollars. Protestors want the Finance Circular No 1 2010 that authorised the payments scrapped. Swaziland, ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, is broke and the government is struggling to pay its bills, including wages of public servants. Seven in 10 of the one million population live in abject poverty, earning less than US$2 per day.

Corporate Watch has announced the publication of a clear and concise, 24-page 'Nuts & Bolts' Guide to the ins and outs of the financial sector. From hedge funds to the money markets and derivatives, all of the major players and products are broken down from a critical perspective.

There are fears of a looming food shortage in Burundi after heavy rains damaged two successive harvests, say officials. 'More than half of the expected harvest was lost in flooding and siltation,' Methode Niyongendako, a consultant with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said. The rains peaked in mid-September and November, exceeding forecasts in terms of volume and frequency, and were the heaviest since October 1961, according to households questioned, added Niyongendako.

Ethiopia is forcibly relocating 70,000 people from Gambella to make fertile land available for foreign investment in agriculture - aggravating current hunger while laying the groundwork for future famine in Ethiopia, as people are losing their livelihoods and being moved to areas where they cannot readily feed themselves. This snapshot video from the Oakland Institute shows the land being cleared and the people that have been evicted.

Gunmen in Somalia have shot dead the director of a major radio station in front of his home in Mogadishu, colleagues and witnesses said. Hassan Osman Abdi, who headed Radio Shabelle, was stopped by two men as he was entering his gate on Saturday. He was shot several times, according to Mohamed Moalim, a relative who stayed in the area.

Here's a video from a group called Tidal Waves entitled Rapolitiki (The politician ate the money).

Senegalese police have arrested close to a dozen opposition protestors including an outspoken civil society leader as they struggled to get a grip on street protests that have rocked the country following a controversial court ruling. Mr Alioune Tine, the vocal secretary-general of the African Assembly for Human Rights Defence was arrested after he turned himself in to the authorities. The other protestors arrested are being held in Dakar and in several regional headquarters including Thies, 70 kilometres and Kaolack, some 150 kilometres outside Dakar.

The African Union (AU) Commission has tabled a US$274 million budget proposal for 2012, which African leaders are expected to debate and later adopt. However, questions have been raised that the money is mainly sourced from donor partners, with some African members failing to pay their annual subscriptions. The AU is owed millions of dollars in arrears, forcing the continental body to always extend the begging bowl for its activities.

A recent edition of the AfricaFocus Bulletin contain the December speech by Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, and the executive summary and key recommendations on US policy from a policy brief from the Friends Committee on National Legislation on the context for Kenya's next elections. Another AfricaFocus Bulletin contains an overview from an International Crisis Group briefing on the ICC and Kenya and the executive summary of the most recent monitoring report from the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation (KNDR) Monitoring Project.

President of the Swaziland National Union of Students (SNUS), Maxwell Dlamini, has been nominated for the 2012 Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk. The award is presented by Front Line, an Irish-based human rights organisation founded by former director of the Irish Section of Amnesty International, Mary Lawlor. Maxwell Dlamini was detained, tortured and forced to sign a confession by members of Swaziland’s police and security forces during the so-called April 12 Swazi Uprising, a peaceful protest inspired by the Arab Spring that was brutally clamped down upon by Swazi police and security forces.

Even as the Occupy movement recedes in size, if not in activism, in the global North, it has, to its own surprise, opened up a new front in Africa's most populous country, Nigeria - where tens of thousands have occupied and paralysed the economy in a protest against the lifting of oil subsidies. The Arab Spring is moving south, thanks to #OccupyNigeria. If nothing else, this movement dramatises the global nature of the new wave of Occupy protests.

The African Union's new chairman faced tough challenges Sunday as UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned that a furious row between Sudan and South Sudan threatened regional security. Thomas Boni Yayi, the president of Benin, vowed to work for peace in his one-year tenure as the 54-member bloc's rotating head, as sideline talks at the two-day summit tried to tackle several hotspots across the continent.

The UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay has raised concerns about Libya’s armed brigades and the treatment of more than 8,500 detainees, majority of whom are from sub-Saharan Africa. Addressing the UN Security Council on the situation in Libya, Pillay warned that, 'lack of oversight by the central authorities creates an environment conducive to torture and ill treatment'. She urged the Libyan ministry of justice and the prosecutor’s office to take over the detention centres.

Senegal's opposition has called for more resistance to the court approval of President Abdoulaye Wade's bid to seek a highly disputed third term, after a night of riots in the capital, Dakar. Opposition leaders vowed on Saturday to force the president out of office, threatening to march on the palace in a city reeling from violent riots that left at least one policeman dead, according to local media. The ruling sparked fury in the capital, where protesters clashed with police. Anti-Wade protesters threw stones at police who responded with batons and tear gas after the much-anticipated ruling.

Scores of people were bundled into police vans on Friday when police forcibly prevented organisations from setting up a planned three-day summit on Jobs, Land and Housing on Rondebosch Common as a means of highlighting inequality in South African society. Organisations included Passop, Proudly Mannenberg, Gugulethu Anti-Eviction Campaign, the South African NGO Coalition and the South African Council of Churches. Determination to reclaim the common as a public area nonetheless led to clashes with police who sprayed water cannons loaded with blue dye at the demonstrators, a move reminiscent of apartheid police spraying purple dye on protestors marching to Parliament on September 2, 1989. Rihanna Marthinus, 57, a participant from Mannenberg, said the city had been promising to improve services in Mannenberg for years but nothing was being done.

Advocates for Haitian peasants said a US-based company’s donation of up to 475 tons of hybrid vegetable seeds to aid Haitian farmers will harm the island-nation’s agriculture. The advocates contend the donation is being made in an effort to shift farmer dependence from local seed to more expensive hybrid varieties shipped from overseas. Haitian farmers and small growers traditionally save seed from season to season or buy the seed they desire from traditional seed markets.

OSISA, in conjucnction with the Africa Foundations of the Open Society network of Foundations (OSF) is hosting a gathering in Cape Town, 22-24 May 2012, entitled the 'OpenForum: Money, Power & Sex: The Paradox of Unequal Growth'. Under the theme, the OpenForum will provide a space to talk about the economic, social and political implications of the emerging world order. It will also provide space for a range of actors - prominent and well known, as well as younger and newer voices - to take a critical look at the factors that will influence the African democracy and governance agenda over the next decade. Bring your ideas, let’s turn them into action!
The Call for Proposals is available at the following link:

With the 18th African Union Summit taking place in Addis Ababa, civil society organizations from across Africa are concerned that the summit’s central theme, 'Boosting Intra- African Trade,' risks being overshadowed and will not get the focus needed to tackle this urgent issue. The organizations said that intra-African trade remains weak, making up only 11 per cent of total trade in Africa. Comparatively, in Asia intra-trade represents 52 per cent and in Europe 82 per cent. Failure to invest more in intra-African trade is likely to harm the continent’s development, the groups said.

This article takes economist Jeffrey Sachs to task for an op-ed article in the New York Times in which he argued that despite continuing demonstrations against the government’s surprise decision on New Year’s Day to halt state subsidies of oil for millions of Nigerians, things aren’t as bad as they seem. 'Sachs had no idea what he was talking about, his knee-jerk response to the crisis celebrated policies of austerity and economic shock, and the Grey Lady gave none of it a second thought. Neoliberalism, it would seem, is alive and well.'

The latest edition of TradeMark Southern Africa is dominated by news reports, speeches and commentaries from the African Union summit in Addis Ababa. It includes the full text of two speeches by Jacob Zuma (at a NEPAD meeting and at an ANC centenary function) and a Goodluck Jonathan speech to the AU plenary where he cautioned against moving too quickly on a continental free trade area. Visit to subscribe to their newsletter.