Angola's electoral commission has rejected appeals from the country's main opposition party to challenge election results on grounds of "voting irregularities" at polling stations. "The claims of Unita are not accompanied by any proof," Adao de Almeida, a spokesman for the national electoral commission, said in the Luanda province on Monday.

The Kenya Railways Corporation was more than a national utility. It was a repository of Kenya’s history, beginning in the 19th century when indentured Indian labourers were brought to the East African region to build the Kenya-Uganda railway line.

Arrests and beatings continue in Zimbabwe barely three days before the ink has dried on the power sharing agreement between ZANU PF and the two MDC formations. 10 students from Bindura State University were arrested on Wednesday during protests calling for a conducive learning environment. Three student leaders Chiedza Gadzirayi (22), Laswet Savadye (24) and Respect Mbanga (21) were allegedly beaten up while in police custody.

Zimbabweans are once again having to wait for details of the new government, this time the cause of the delay is the composition of the new cabinet. The political leaders Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai met on Thursday morning to decide who controls which of the 31 ministries up for grabs, but MDC spokesperson Nelson Chamisa said the issue of the “key ministries is really becoming quite problematic.”

The Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) will use biometric data to identify those replacing their lost voter registration cards for the Oct. 30 presidential election. The election follows the Aug. 19 death of President Levy Mwanawasa at Percy Military Hospital in Paris. The ECZ has already established a permanent register, capturing biometric data from voters in the form of fingerprints, said ECZ deputy director of IT Brown Kasaro in an interview.

The launch of the identification and voter registration operations for upcoming presidential polls in Côte d’Ivoire confirms that the electoral process is irreversible, the top United Nations official to the West African country has said. Speaking in the capital, Yamoussoukro, at the launch of the operations, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative Y. J. Choi said the launch offered an historic opportunity for Ivorians to resolve the issue of identification once and for all.

Scientists at a Senegalese university are the first to benefit from a United Nations-backed project aimed at providing colleges in five African countries with the technology and tools needed to prevent the migration of graduates and reduce the continent’s “brain drain.” The installation of the first computing grid at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar is part of a joint initiative by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Hewlett-Packard and the Grid Computing Institute of France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

The situation on the Djibouti-Eritrean border remains volatile after a flaring of tensions on the border in June left over 35 dead and dozens wounded, a United Nations fact-finding mission has reported. The mission concluded that Djibouti is being drawn into a crippling and expensive military mobilization to deal with a situation that may threaten national, regional and international peace.

The ecological impact of natural resource exploitation on the lives of the poor in Africa and other regions is not being addressed sufficiently in aid effectiveness and development discussions, aid experts say. ”Africa is known as one of the richest parts of the world when it comes to natural resources, yet it is also the poorest region -- despite the natural wealth and the aid flow,” said Charles Mutasa, executive director of the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) û a Zimbabwe-based NGO working on Africa's debt problem.

Ministers of developing and donor countries responsible for promoting development and Heads of multilateral and bilateral development institutions endorsed the following statement in Accra, Ghana, on 4 September 2008 to accelerate and deepen implementation of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2 March 2005).

To celebrate this year's International Day of Democracy, International IDEA organised a series of activities that highlight the link between democracy, development and diversity. This included the launch of a joint action plan for democracy in collaboration with the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on the 12th September. The action plan is a first step in the implementation of the African Union Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance.

President Thabo Mbeki is expected next week to lead a high-level meeting with African leaders to review the continent's developmental needs as well as the implementation of its development goals. Addressing reporters at the Union Buildings on Thursday, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said the meeting, held on the sidelines if the 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), will seek to discuss the remaining challenges facing the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Angola’s parliamentary elections on September 5, 2008, reportedly won by the ruling MPLA party, were marred by numerous irregularities, Human Rights Watch has said. Preliminary results indicate that the MPLA won more than 80 percent of the vote, the first held in Angola since 1992.

Swaziland is holding its first parliamentary election under a new constitution, amid growing protests calling for more democracy. Political parties remain banned in the tiny African mountain kingdom, one of the world's last absolute monarchies. The government says it expects a good turnout at the polls, to be watched by foreign observers for the first time.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/396/cartoon160908_54131a_l.jpg… Congress of South African Trade Unions has noted the agreement signed by the leaders of the political parties in Zimbabwe on 15 September 2008. We stand by our view that it is only the people of Zimbabwe who must judge whether or not this deal is in their interests. We are therefore awaiting the comments of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and will be guided by them.

Meanwhile, while awaiting the ZCTU’s response, only insofar as the people accept it, we give the agreement our cautious support, but note that many of the demands raised by civil society and supported by COSATU have not been met, including:

- Civil society has been shut out of the negotiations and it has thus been an agreement between the political leaders;

- The agreement does not recognise the result of the 29 March elections. As a result the loser has become the winner and the winner the loser;

- MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai is effectively in charge of a cluster of ministries, while President Mugabe still has extensive powers;

- The agreement is not for an interim government until new elections have been held but for a normal full-term government;

- All Mugabe’s draconian laws remain in place, which give him, for example, the power to arrest political opponents.

The agreement marks a dangerous spread of the Kenyan virus that sends a signal to dictators that they can defy the will of the people by force and then retain power through negotiations, brokered by other African leaders.

It marks a retreat from the principles that the African Union and SADC are supposed to uphold and a return to the bad traditions of the Organisation of African Unity that sacrificed the interests of the people to protect dictators. Meanwhile COSATU waits to hear from the ZCTU, after which it will consider their advice as to whether to continue with the proposed programme of boycotts. If they ask us to proceed we shall do so.

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Dibussi Tande reviews this weeks blogs, including

Moses Paul Sserwanga
Thinking Aloud
Blackman Time
Abesha Bunna Bet
Scribbles from the Den

Violent clashes broke out between supporters of the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (Zanu PF) and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) outside the Rainbow Towers Hotel following the signing of a historic power sharing deal. Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe of Zanu PF, and MDC leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara signed an agreement Monday that will form an inclusive government involving their parties.

Freedom of information is a fundamental human right and the touchstone of all freedoms to which the United Nations is consecrated [1]. The right falls under freedom of expression (defined as the right to seek, receive and impart information). There can be no enjoyment of the right to freedom of expression if people do not have access to information.

This right imposes a duty on the government to facilitate public access to information. Freedom of information involves access to information held by public officials and by private bodies that carry out activities that affect the public in general.

The right to freedom of information is encapsulated in International Instruments. It is enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and protected in international human rights treaties including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

On average in South Africa over the last five years there are ten shack fires a day with someone dying in a shack fire every other day. Shack fires are not acts of God. They are the result of political choices, often at municipal level.

Shack settlements are a poor people’s solution to a lack of affordable housing, especially in cities. In eThekwini municipality, a third of the population, and around half of the African population live in shacks. This is around 920,000 people. 16.4 per cent or about one in six of all South African households live in shacks. The number of South African households living in shacks is increasing at more than double the rate of population growth and is now nearly two million.

People live in shacks for many reasons. People move to the cities from rural areas in search of work, tertiary education, and health care. People also leave formal housing to live in shacks when they can no longer afford that housing after a breadwinner dies or loses a job. They may also come to live in the shacks because they wish to escape family violence or to have their own home independently of their parents. Some people came to avoid political violence in the 1980s. However, it is hard to find work in the cities, and when people find it, they often don’t get paid enough to afford rent in formal housing. 60.7% of people in eThekwini live on less than R427 a month. Rent might be R500 a month plus bills.

Shack communities are often referred to as ‘informal’, as ‘temporary’ and as ‘camps’, but a survey in 2001 found that “over half of the household heads with informal dwellings have lived in their homes for between five and ten years and a quarter have lived in them for over eleven years”. Shack communities are not temporary. But because they are not in places that city officials call ‘suitable’, they are refused basic services and prevented from taking their proper place in the city. The lack of services is seen as a deliberate attempt to force people to leave their homes and accept relocation.

In a review of the current state of philanthropy on the African continent, Bhekinkosi Moyo argues that African organisations are becoming progressively more autonomous from northern donors and able to pursue their own agendas. With organisations such as TrustAfrica and the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) taking the lead on independent, local solutions, the challenge remains to take a conscious political step to build the sustainability, independence and autonomy of civil society across the continent.