Billionaire businessman Natie Kirsh has endorsed the rule of King Mswati III of Swaziland and criticised efforts to democratise sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarchy. In reports published in the Times of Swaziland and the Swazi Observer, Kirsh denied that King Mswati 'is an absolute monarch', and ignored the unrest in the country that gave him his start in business in the 1960s. 'I even lacked enough tissue to wipe my wife’s tears as she saw how the country has developed,' he said. Even as Kirsh spoke, Swaziland’s Minister of Finance, Majozi Sithole, reported that the cash-strapped government might not have enough money to pay civil servants this month. Swaziland Solidarity Network member Mumsi Thwala said Kirsh’s remarks at the royal village left her 'stunned, speechless and depressed. Kirsh owes his fortune to a cozy relationship with a dictatorial regime'.

Botswana President Ian Khama, an arch-critic of President Robert Mugabe, could be working on normalising relations with the octogenarian leader after he sent a delegation from his party to 'offer solidarity support' to Zanu PF at the just ended annual conference. Khama, who has openly clashed with Mugabe in the past, sent a delegation from his Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) to attend the Zanu PF conference. BDP secretary-general Thabo Fanu Masalila heaped praise on Mugabe urging Zanu PF members to back the ageing leader.

Malawi will review a series of controversial laws, including a ban on homosexual acts, Justice Minister Ephraim Chiume has said. Chiume said the review was in response to 'public opinion'. Western governments criticised Malawi last year for jailing a gay couple on sodomy charges.
On Tuesday last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US would use foreign aid to encourage countries to decriminalise homosexuality.

The dramatic changes to weather patterns as a result of climate change will have dire consequences for agriculture, the major source of food and income for Africa’s small-scale farmers, most of them women. Millions of people will be forced to migrate, seeking better environments to sustain themselves and their families as the land becomes unproductive. Not enough is being done in national adaptation strategies to acknowledge the different gender dimensions of climate change and migration.

Food prices, which increased by just 1 per cent last year, have increased by a whopping 10.6 per cent so far this year. Lower-income South Africans, who spend much more of their total earnings on food, are the biggest victims of this sharp increase in food-price inflation. According to the South African quarterly 'Food Price Monitor' report, produced by the National Agricultural Marketing Council, the cost of the standard Statistics South Africa food basket, expressed as a share of the average monthly income of the wealthiest 30 per cent of the population, is only 2.9 per cent. By contrast, this cost for the poorest 30 per cent of the population was a heavy 36.4 per cent in October.

US 'occupy' protesters claimed victory Monday 12 December in blockading ports along the West Coast and shutting down a major trade cargo hub in a new front on the anti-capitalist campaign. At least one port was fully closed down, while freight traffic was disrupted at several others including in Oakland, where thousands of demonstrators rallied after a day of action from California to Alaska.

Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) and the Refugee Rights Centre at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, on behalf of the Somali Association of South Africa (SASA) and the Project for Conflict Resolution and Development (PCRD) was granted an order 13 December 2011 in the Eastern Cape High Court in Port Elizabeth regarding the closure of the Port Elizabeth Refugee Reception Office. In terms of the order, an interim office at the regional immigration office must continue to provide asylum services to all holders of asylum seeker and refugee permits issued under the Refugees Act. The order also stipulates that no one whose permit expired between the period of 30 November 2011 and 14 December 2011 when the refugee office was non-functional will be subjected to a fine or any criminal sanction for the expiry of that permit.

Members of the campaign group, Nigerians in Diaspora Against Anti Same-Sex Laws held a protest in front of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in New York on Monday, 5 December. A Nigerian representative in New York met with the protestors to receive the petition letter to the Nigerian President with 53,000 supporters.

On Monday 5 December MediaClimate held a seminar titled 'Media meets climate: A problem or a solution for social movements' at the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard campus. MediaClimate is an international research group that looks at media coverage of the annual UN climate summits. The aim of the seminar was to explore the relationships between COP17, the media and the different angles of the stories. One of the issues raised was that COP and climate change terms are often difficult to understand.

The Food Sovereignty Campaign believes the time has come for land occupations. This movement of emerging farmers and farm dwellers is based in the Western and Northern Cape provinces. ‘Land occupations are the new way of doing land reform,’ says Johan Jantjies, the convenor of the Food Sovereignty campaign. ‘Recently the government brought out a Green Paper on Land Reform. They made it clear they have no plan of how to get the land from the capitalist owners. Without such a plan how can you even talk about land reform? We have a plan and that is for the landless to occupy the land.’

Ethiopia lost $11.7 billion to outflows of ill-gotten gains between 2000 and 2009, according to a coming report by Global Financial Integrity. According to GFI economist Sarah Freitas, who co-authored the report, corruption, kickbacks and bribery accounted for the vast majority of the increase in illicit outflows. 'The scope of Ethiopia’s capital flight is so severe that our conservative US$3.26 billion estimate greatly exceeds the US$2 billion value of Ethiopia’s total exports in 2009,' Freitas wrote in a blog post on the website of the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development.

Mozambique is the most corrupt country in southern Africa, with 68 per cent of people having paid a bribe in the past year, according to a survey by Transparency International and Gallup. More than a third of those using health services or education had to pay a bribe.

This CTV programme followed Blikkiesdorp resident, Jerome Daniels, as he took us through his journey from living on the pavements of Symphony Way; Delft; to being one of the 45 people who wrote and published their own collection of stories in the book titled NO Land! NO House! NO Vote!

In solidarity with the millions of people already feeling the impacts of climate change, hundreds of people protested in the halls of the UN Climate Talks last week to demand that nations not sign a 'death sentence' in Durban. The march filled the hall outside of the main negotiating room in Durban just as the afternoon round of talks were scheduled to begin. Standing side-by-side with delegates from some of the world’s most vulnerable countries, civil society representatives sang traditional South African freedom songs and chanted slogans like, 'Listen to the People, Not the Polluters'.

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s election standoff intensified on Sunday after a team of international observers reported that incumbent Joseph Kabila’s win was so flawed it lacked credibility. Kabila, in power since 2001, was on Friday named the winner of the November 28 poll, but runner-up Etienne Tshisekedi immediately rejected the result and declared himself president.

Fresh fighting broke out in South Sudan on Sunday following a rebel assault on civilian and police bases in Pigi County in the troubled Jonglei state, officials said, four days after an earlier attack in Jale Payam in the same state. Militiamen loyal to rebel leader and former army renegade General George Athor Deng attacked Atar village from four directions, killing scores and wounding others, deputy governor Hussein Maar Nyuot said.

The US-based AgriSol Company has landed another lucrative land deal involving 10,000 hectres amid growing public outcry about the recent land deals sealed by the company in Rukwa region. The company, mid this year, came under attack from land rights activists and politicians, especially Members of Parliament for acquiring over 300,000 hectres located at Mishamo and Katumba areas in Mpanda district for agricultural development.

Amnesty International called for enforcing an effective global Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) in light of Egyptian security forces’ use of foreign-made teargas and other ammunition. The United States’ supply of ammunition to Egypt’s security forces prompted Amnesty’s call for munitions use to be included among the conventional arms regulated by the treaty. 'An effective Arms Trade Treaty, which includes a comprehensive scope and robust national licensing controls, would help ensure that arms exports of the USA and other major arms-transferring countries, do not fuel serious human rights abuses,' said Brian Wood, Arms Control Manager of Amnesty International.

More than 1,500 people took part in a march of Durban streets on 5 December to voice their concerns about climate change and agro-ecology. Banners and posters in hand conveyed messages like 'We are for cooling down the earth' as people from countries as far as Mali, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Germany, Brazil and The Philippines took part. The event was also to bring awareness to the food sovereignty campaign, which promotes principals such as equal participation, fights against greedy farm or agriculture owners, and a fair rewarding system for farm workers.

Alternatives Cameroon, an LGBTI organisation, reports that government policy makers last week convened to endorse a preliminary draft of a law that imposes harsher penalties for homosexual acts. The organisation revealed that the government convened a validation meeting on Friday 2 December during which a revision of the current law regarding homosexuality was discussed.