Mpumalanga's police commissioner has ordered a top-level investigation into allegations of torture, bribery and corruption within the province's serious and violent crimes unit. The investigation started last week amid allegations of apartheid-era torture methods used by members of the unit against detainees at police cells in Witbank and Middelburg. Police officers are also alleged to be running an extortion racket, arbitrarily detaining people with the intention of extracting ransoms.

The Commonwealth Secretariat has written to the former President of Zambia, Frederick Chiluba, informing him that his request for foreign observers to monitor his trial has been turned down as it does not have such a mandate. Chiluba, who is standing trial for a raft of corruption charges, including the theft of $41 million from the state during his presidency, has also requested observers from SADC and the AU but neither have yet replied.

Campaigners around the world, from Washington to Jakarta, mark the 60th Anniversary of the World Bank on Thursday 22nd July with an international non-violent 'day of action', protesting at six decades of the Bank's failed policies, misguided loans, increasing debt, and investment in dubious development projects. The anniversary falls in the run up to a crucial August 3 decision by the World Bank on the implementation of the Extractive Industries Review. The review, carried out at the request of World Bank President James Wolfensohn, demands an end to the Bank's support for unsustainable investments in oil exploitation and coal mining.

The Sudanese government is increasingly bringing pressure to bear on internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Darfur region to return to their homes, despite the fact that it has not fulfilled its commitment to improve security, according to UN agencies. Small-scale forcible relocation of IDPs had already started with the movement of about 4,000 people from al-Meshtel camp to Abu Shawk camp outside Al-Fashir, the capital of Northern Darfur State, just hours before UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan visited on 2 July. A second incident involved the movement of 7,000 people from Nyala, the capital of Southern Darfur, to Kalma camp, the UN reported.

A recently launched UN human development report argues that respecting cultural diversity could prevent conflict and enhance development. It urges states to adopt policies allowing people to choose their own identities without fear of discrimination.

France has decried the rate at which public funds are being embezzled in Uganda and that the corrupt officials are left to get away with it. Speaking during the Bastille Day celebrations, the French Ambassador, Jean-Bernard Thiant, stated that: “Everyone knows that there is corruption...there are very many reports but nothing has been done...the Government should force these people to give back what they steal.”

Hundreds of thousands of Eritrean children are living in extreme poverty due to prolonged drought, the aftermath of border conflict with neighbouring Ethiopia and its impact on the country's economy, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported. UNICEF said in a humanitarian update that an estimated 425,000 children under 14 years of age were affected, mostly in families that were largely dependent on and headed by women.

Further evidence of urban vulnerability in Zimbabwe has emerged with the release of a report indicating that the capital, Harare, has seen an increase in the number of kwashiorkor cases. In his health report for 2003, the city's director of health services, Dr Lovemore Mbengeranwa, noted that instances of diagnosed kwashiorkor had risen by 11.1 percent. A total of 621 cases were treated at council-run clinics, of which 97 percent were children under the age of five.

Somalia's proposed transitional federal parliament will be inaugurated on 30 July in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, mediators announced, saying that all clans must complete the process of nominating their representatives by Tuesday. The foreign ministers of member states of the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Drought and Development (IGAD), who met in Nairobi last Thursday and Friday, called for transparency in the process of distributing seats and selecting members of the proposed Somali Transitional Federal Assembly.

Ongoing coverage of the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok is bewildering to those who are familiar with the current political battles in the HIV/AIDS arena, and no doubt disheartening or annoying to those reading from a distance. The AIDS industry is in full swing: government forces delivering glittering generalities; actors and ex-presidents discussing their "outrage" while eating five-course dinners in Bangkok hotel penthouses.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) provide some context and much confusion. Some, like Doctors Without Borders or Partners In Health, push a consistent line that demonstrates their commitment and closeness to the poor who suffer from HIV and its related social pathologies [1, 2]. Others seem to care more about winning New York Times headlines than about the implication of what those newspaper stories will have for the poor. The American Foundation for AIDS Research in Manhattan, for example, produced a report that should have provided an evaluation of Thailand's generic production facilities within the context of technical suggestions and cross-border comparisons with other nations' production centers; instead the report was publicized in a manner divorced from its technical minutiae and left the impression that generic medicines from Thailand would kill millions [3]. This, in a context where the US AIDS Czar Randall Tobias is looking for any means to undermine generic manufacturing and return to an oligopoly system in the pharmaceutical industry [4].

The heavy focus on drug access at the conference does, however, serve as one piece of good news, in spite of the fact that many believe it is "distracting" from other matters (an issue I will deal with later in this article). The fact that the discussion is not about whether antiretrovirals can be used in poor countries, but about how to get them there, is a marked shift from previous years. But that is not to say that efforts like the WHO's "3-by-5" Initiative (three million people gaining access to antiretrovirals by 2005) are not being undermined [4]. The battles will continue over this and related initiatives, but what are the rest of us to do as we watch the actors and ex-presidents deliver glittering generalities? What positive outcomes can come for the poor when the wealthy of Manhattan produce statements of "outrage" while consuming pad thai in the security-fenced sector of Bangkok?

* Please click on the link below to read the full article. Comments can be sent to

* Editorial: Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa – Update on progress
* Comment and Analysis: The AU and CSO’s: Learning to live in the same house?
* Conflicts and Emergencies: Core d’ Ivoire: No peace in sight
* Human Rights: Ghana: Powerful persuasion
* Refugees and Forced Migration: Nigeria: Displaced need sustained support to return and rebuild their lives
* Women and Gender: Peacewomen launches women, peace and security news source index
* HIV/AIDS: International Aids Conference news
* Land and Land Rights: Land reform in Southern Africa
* Media and Freedom of Expression: Sudan: Web site blocked from access
* Books and Art: Ayi Kwei Armah’s KMT: In the House of Life reviewed by Jacques Depelchin

A top UN envoy is to hold talks with Sudanese leaders on progress made since Khartoum and the UN signed a joint communiqué under which Sudan's government pledged to improve security and facilitate access by aid workers to people affected by conflict in the western region of Darfur. Secretary-General Kofi Annan dispatched his Special Representative to Sudan, Jan Pronk, to participate in the first meeting of the Joint Implementation Mechanism, which was set up on 3 July. His visit comes against a background of continuing insecurity in Darfur, with UN humanitarian agencies reporting violent clashes between government forces and two rebel groups, as well as inter-ethnic fighting, UN News reported.

The United Nations mission in Cote d'Ivoire (ONUCI) has said it is investigating reports of human rights violations in the northern town of Korhogo following bloody clashes between rival rebel factions there last month. Supporters of rebel leader Guillaume Soro clashed with a rival faction in Korhogo and Bouake, the main town in the rebel-held north of Cote d'Ivoire, over a period of two days.

The African Union has lambasted President Robert Mugabe's government for flagrant human rights abuses. It is Africa's most damning condemnation of Zimbabwe yet, says Zvakwana in its latest bulletin. A report adopted by the AU executive council on Saturday slams the government for the arrests and torture of opposition members of parliament and human rights lawyers, the arrests of journalists, the stifling of freedom of expression and clampdowns on other civil liberties. This is the harshest criticism Mugabe has had to bear from his continental peers. The report was adopted by the AU's executive council, which comprises foreign ministers of the 53 member states, despite strong opposition from Zimbabwe. Email your support and ask for a copy of the report to [email protected] or [email protected].

The U.S. and British subsidiaries of ABB Ltd., a Swiss equipment-maker, pleaded guilty to paying more than $1 million in illegal bribes to win oil contracts in Nigeria, the Justice Department said Tuesday. ABB Vetco Gray Inc. of Houston and ABB Vetco Gray U.K. Ltd. of Aberdeen, Scotland, disclosed the suspicious payments to the government last year and formally pleaded guilty in federal court in Houston. As part of the deal, each company agreed to pay a fine of $5.25 million.

“Democracy is an ideal that I would like to live for, it is an ideal that if necessary I am prepared to die for”-Nelson Mandela.

It is an intriguing and powerful message that has sunk into the African Union that there is now a growing understanding that the political leadership alone cannot determine the continent’s destiny. People need to be masters of their own destiny. Top-down approaches emanating from the razzmatazz of summits without the people will not change the face of Africa. Today there is rich body of literature emphasizing the rights based approach to development grounded in ownership and effective participation by the intended beneficiaries. The African Union cannot afford to remain an exception to the norm.

The third summit of the African Union held in Addis Abba, Ethiopia in the second week of July 2004 saw African leaders opening their arms to the effective formal participation of the wider civil society organizations (CSO’s) in Africa and the Diaspora by approving the Statutes of the Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC). The establishment of ECOSOCC under the provision of Articles 5 and 22 of the African Union Constitutive Act is a confirmation and assurance that popular participation in the activities of the African Union (AU), as enunciated in the African Charter for Popular Participation, is a prerequisite for its success.

The ECOSOCC process is a historical opportunity for the formulation of a new social contract between African Governments and their people. Involving CSO’s in African Union endeavours is a positive move and is a way of involving ordinary citizens of Africa in decision and policy-making processes of issues that concern their daily lives.

More to this is that involving CSO’s is key considering the role they would be expected to play as watchdogs of their governments and that CSO’s have the ability to reach out to grass root level people in African communities.

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A new Somalia government would be formed in Nairobi by the end of this month, the Intergovernmental Authority and Development (Igad) technical committee has announced. And speaking in Nairobi at a joint Igad facilitating committee and international partners' meeting, Kenya's special envoy to Somalia Bethuel Kiplagat said an all-inclusive government of national unity for the war-torn country was possible by end month.

Namibia held its third local government election on May 14, 2004. The entire process proceeded without major controversies, and was pronounced as having proceeded in a free and fair atmosphere, all political players and actors therefore accepted its outcome. It later turned out that voters in some local authorities were disturbed by the fact that leaders of their parties altered the compositions and sequences of list of candidates that emerged from the party primaries for these elections.

Kenyans are losing patience and hope in Narc's ability to deliver on its election promises, a new opinion poll shows. In the last three months, the government's approval rating has fallen from 50 per cent to 43 per cent, according to the Gallup poll conducted by Steadman and Associates. The government particularly takes a beating over the twin issues of corruption and constitutional review.

Justice Minister Brigitte Mabandla confirmed this week that the ministerial inquiry into the scandal-plagued liquidations industry would solicit submissions on all problems in the sector. This broadening of the investigation's remit is expected to make it the most exhaustive yet into the alleged rampant corruption in the sector and follows a series of arrests last week.