Reporting to the Chief of Party in Rumbek and the IRC Deputy Director-Programs, the Program Coordinator will take responsibility for the implementation of the program in three areas (Bahr-el-Ghazal (Malual Kon), Southern Kordofan (Kauda) and Upper Nile (Leer)).

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo here on Monday announced that the country has developed a 10-year plan on its educational development program at all levels. Speaking at a conference on financing, Obasanjo said with the program in place, he believed the country was ready to benefit from any foreign aid in the sector.

Public university lecturers in Kenya are planning to call a strike next month if the Government does not start immediate negotiations over salaries. The Universities Academic Staff Union (Uasu) officials have started meeting members to seek an endorsement of the planned strike should they fail to push the Government to the negotiating table. At the heart of the impending confrontation is the lecturers' quest for a new Collective Bargaining Agreement following the expiry of another one effected two years ago.

The Regional Director will provide strategic program leadership and overall management of the Oxfam America Regional Office. He/she will also provide overall creative and administrative leadership to agency development of a long-term strategic vision and action plan for a growing regional program.

Meeting in Cairo earlier this month, representatives of African unions and African intellectuals met to share their critiques of current development policies, targeting both international financial institutions and African governments. African scholars had documented the failures of structural adjustment decades ago, noted political economist Adebayo Olukoshi. But with few exceptions these policies are still being imposed.

This fellowship provides an opportunity for two mid-career or senior South African journalists to participate in a three-week programme of discussion and study on international media issues. A series of seminars led by journalists, scholars and key policy makers will focus on issues such as journalism and media, public policy, economics, international relations, environmental affairs and new media technologies.

The post holder will provide strategic leadership to the Conflict Transformation Programme in the Great Lakes region of Africa, which aims to facilitate trust-building between parties in conflict. S/he must have experience leading and managing programmes in conflict resolution.

Two scholarships are offered for candidates from Ghana (1 candidate) and Tanzania (1 candidate) to study on the distance learning International Professional Doctorate in Education (EdD) at the University of Sussex, starting in July 2006. This is a 3 year programme. Candidates will be expected to complete their doctorate within 3-4 years. The successful candidates will be required to attend an annual Summer School at Sussex.

The European Union has pledged to fund 200 new "girl-friendly" schools countrywide, in a joint bid with the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) to work towards a greater inclusion of females in education.

Each year, the University of Edinburgh provides two academic scholarships for students from Southern African countries to pursue Masters or doctoral studies in any subject. The University covers the overseas rates fees and University accommodation, but additional living expenses are not presently met.

MS-Training Centre for Development Cooperation is calling for applicants to a course on Sustainable Livelihood Approaches to Poverty to be offered from 5th to 23rd June 2006. For further information on this course please contact the Course Administrator at [email][email protected] and visit our website

Uganda has been seen as a model for development, but must now make a commitment to uphold the rights of the more than 3 million children who remain vulnerable to poverty, disease and insecurity, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said as President Yoweri Museveni’s new government took over. Speaking on the occasion of Mr. Museveni’s inauguration to his third term as elected President on Friday, a UNICEF representative in Uganda praised the policies and legislation that had resulted in an increase in primary school enrolment from 3 million in 1997 to 7.3 million in 2005.

Britain is waiting for a European Union report on Uganda's February presidential and parliamentary elections, before deciding on whether to release 15 billion pounds ($9.375 billion) withheld last year. The money was part of $73 million that donors cut or diverted from aid to the government citing concerns over the high public administration costs and the talk of a level political playing field.

Health minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang used her quarterly briefing to chastise the media for lending coverage to Jacob Zuma’s shower comments, for reporting “only on HIV/AIDS” and for discounting her claims on nutrition. She was updating the media on progress being made by Government’s social cluster in Pretoria. The minister also revealed that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) health ministers were in the process of establishing an AIDS fund “to do certain things”.

Classrooms, student bursaries and the provision of more vocational training institutions have been identified as the major challenges to be resolved in order to improve the country's education system. Minister of Education Nangolo Mbumba spoke to New Era on various issues regarding the country's education system, until recently under heavy criticism from various quarters.

The government of Sudan is to provide scholarships for Sierra Leoneans to study in Sudan in various fields of study. The scholarships will cover traveling to and fro, lodging, feeding, allowance, tuition and other expense for students pursuing courses in engineering, computer, medicine and Islamic Studies.

President Muammar Gaddafi of Libya has pledged to build a school for war-affected youths in Liberia. The Libyan leader made the pledge in Tripoli, Libya, during an official visit by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. He made the pledge after a young Liberian boy who lost his arm in the Liberian war explained his ordeal.

Police in Kitwe yesterday (May 15) arrested seven pupils from Mindolo High School and Mama Monty Basic School after they ran amok and destroyed school property. The pupils also temporarily blocked the Chingola road using rocks and threatened to stone motorists, who were forced to turn back on either side of the road. The pupils were protesting over the current strike by teachers in Kitwe.

The Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC) is organising and hosting a conference from 12 – 15 June 2006 with the theme “South Africa’s Unemployment Crisis: Overcoming Unemployment – Strategies for giving effect to the Right to Work.” Participants will include activists from Right to Work Campaign Forums from 6 provinces, a host of older and newer social movements, international guests and individuals committed to eradicating unemployment. They will deliberate on mass unemployment – a key feature of neoliberal capitalist globalisation – and the strategies for combating unemployment in South Africa and internationally.

Ellen Kuzwayo, South African activist, writer, feminist, icon, died 3 weeks ago. Obituaries and tributes to her ran in every major media outlet on the African continent, not to mention the New York Times, Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper. So what can I possibly add to the chorus?

I met Mama Kuzwayo when I was a student in the UK, at the University of York. As Minority Rights Officer on the Student Union, I received a call one day from Agnes Sam, South African author of the short story collection, “Jesus Is Indian”. Living in York at the time, she told me that The Women’s Press was arranging a book tour for Ellen Kuzwayo, to promote her autobiography, “Call Me Woman”. Would we be interested in having her appear on campus?

I’d never heard of Ellen Kuzwayo. Or “Call Me Woman”. The irony of my Kenyan education was that my access to African writers and writing was confined to text books in our literature curriculum. Outside that, we read Danielle Steele, Harold Robbins, the European and American writers we found in our school libraries.

So I had no idea that she was the first black writer to win the CNA Prize, South Africa’s highest literary honor. I knew nothing of her illustrious history as a teacher, social worker, anti-apartheid activist, until I read “Call Me Woman.” Then I was riveted. Not because it was great writing. On the contrary, her style was pedestrian, a chronological recounting of facts and events. It was clear that she did not write from a love of language or literary craft.

And yet, each page of “Call Me Woman” rings with a uniquely powerful and utterly compelling voice. The voice of Ellen Kuzwayo brought the reality of a whole generation of black South African women to the world. Women dispossessed of their land, their freedom, their very bodies; women who survived displacement, disenfranchisement, violence at the hands of both the apartheid state and husbands and fathers. In a narrative all the more striking for its lack of embellishment, “Call Me Woman” painted a portrait of courage, resilience and intelligence that would not be extinguished, all harnessed to the struggle for dignity and self-determination.

Mama Kuzwayo wrote her autobiography to tell the story of lives that were unseen, unknown. During the 1980s, a time of terrible repression and violence under the Botha regime, in conditions of daily struggle and uncertainty, she took on a task that would have daunted far more experienced writers. Simply because it had to be done. Her life story still holds up as an outstanding historical document of South Africa’s history in the 20th century, told from the viewpoint of black South African women.

By the time of Mama Kuzwayo’s arrival at York, I had read “Call Me Woman”, and I was in awe of her. I wondered why someone of her stature would come all the way to the North of England, to speak to an overwhelmingly white, middle-class, and politically provincial student population. At the time, there was still debate in British media and society over the wisdom of sanctions against South Africa. Only one other African had ever spoken at York: Kenneth Kaunda in the 1970s. It was a lesson to me in global hierarchies of power: that a 76 year old South African woman, already a legend in her own country, should need to generate the support of white British students, younger than her grandchildren.

When she arrived, I was mortified that we had to make her walk across the campus, for over 20 minutes, in the icy, windy dark, to get to the auditorium where she was to speak. Clearly tired from travelling, she made no complaint – she radiated patience and humour. It made me deeply uncomfortable that the associate from The Women’s Press who accompanied her, a young woman only a couple of years older than me, addressed her bluntly by first name, as “Ellen”.

When she spoke, to a half-empty auditorium, she was a mountain. She spoke without notes, of the episodes that had shaped her as an activist and a woman, she laid out the economic and political extremities facing her people.

In the Q and A that followed, I listened to her dissect both ignorance and racism with unwavering dignity and rapier analysis. To the clichéd: “Don’t sanctions just hurt poor black South Africans?” she responded:

“If we said we want sanctions to stop, we would be saying we want to be slaves forever. Who wants to be a slave forever?”

A British male student began, in the guise of a question, to lecture her about overpopulation in Africa. She answered him with a pithy and devastating exposition of the dismemberment of African families and communities under apartheid.

After the talk, and book signing, I took her to her room for the night – another icy, windy walk across the dark campus. She stumbled several times, and I realized again how old she was, how exhausted. Her room was a stark college bedroom, tiny, cold, unwelcoming. I made her a cup of tea, rubbed her feet, tried to make her comfortable. We talked of Desmond Tutu’s recent visit to Kenya, where he declared that detention without trial anywhere on the continent was a violation of human rights. The speech had drawn a hailstorm of abuse from the despotic Moi regime. There was so much I wanted to ask her, but I was both shy, and reluctant to tire her further. When I said goodnight, she took both my hands: “Thank you my dear, for spoiling me a little.”

The next morning, the feminist newspaper on campus, which I had helped found, interviewed her over breakfast. Three of us from the editorial collective reveled in the richness of her relaxed conversation. She introduced us to Ubuntu – now a standard catchword, but then a concept little known outside South Africa. How it was explained, contained, in the Zulu proverb: A person is a person because of other people. She had the most eloquent hands I have ever seen. They etched her words on the air, punctuated her phrases. Fifteen years later, they still speak from the yellowed newsprint photographs we took of her.

After that breakfast, she left to return to London. She hugged me warmly, gave me her address in South Africa, made me promise to send her a copy of the interview when it was published. I did. I never met her again. But over the years, she remained an icon and hero for me. A reminder of what it means to claim your power, in the face of every force that denies your humanity, and then to offer your whole self in service to that humanity. I remembered her when I came across a quote from St. Francis of Assissi: “There is no use in walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.” And even later, when I encountered the words of Gandhi: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

As I browsed the web for her obituaries, I came across an interview with her by British writer, Nicci Gerard. It was published in the New Internationalist, in 1985, five years before I met Mama Kuzwayo in York. Of everything I read about her, this was what stayed with me:

“She says: ‘I am who I am and my life is my own.’ She knows that ‘before you feel hopeful for your country you must feel hope for yourself; if there is no hope for you, you can’t look ahead.’ She says that she lives with fear but that she is bigger than that fear - ‘you must go ahead and damn the consequences.’”

(See full article at:

I have often regretted not having the courage to ask her, when I had the opportunity, to say more about her time in detention and how she survived it. How she endured a violent marriage with spirit unbroken. I wanted to mine every nugget I could from the wealth of her political experience, her years of activism, writing, organizing.

These words seem like the answer. As does her book – which I return to again and again, and continue to find fresh value in. As does the memory of a woman larger than exhaustion, larger than the ignorance of those around her, larger than fear.

* More on Ellen Kuzwayo:
www.shailja.com

* Please send comments to [email protected]