A group of about 50 Zanla war veterans last week allegedly stormed Matopo Hills in Matabeleland South Province, but were blocked by Chief Masuku after they attempted to dig up the remains of Cecil John Rhodes from the tourist resort area. Rhodes was buried on World’s View (Malindidzimu Hill) in Matopo National Park following his death in 1902. According to sources, they reportedly claimed the remains of the former colonialist were causing poor rains in the region. National Museums and Monuments director Godfrey Mahachi described the move as illegal. 'All I can say is that the reason why we are keeping Rhodes’ grave is that it is part and parcel of the history of Zimbabwe,' he told NewsDay.

New laws governing traditional courts could strip 22-million rural South Africans - and women in particular - of some of their most basic rights. The Traditional Courts Bill, on which public comment closed this week, aims to set a framework whereby customary courts will have legal clout. Civic organisations have slammed it as being unconstitutional, but traditional leaders argue that the Bill has been grossly misinterpreted by civil society.

The secretariat of the Basel Convention has published a report looking into the current state of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) in Africa. The report highlights the importance of developing safe recycling capacity and recovery infrastructure in Africa. As is well known, the impact of inappropriately-treated WEEE can be catastrophic for the health and the environment in communities that do not have adequate recycling facilities in place.

A map on the blog of the LA Times newspaper shows patterns of global civilian gun ownership. Guns are much more common in North America than in Africa and most of Asia and South America than in India, according to the most recent data available from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The statistics include handguns, rifles and other small firearms.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has issued a legal opinion declaring that the detention of Lapiro de Mbanga, one of Cameroon’s most famous singers, by the Cameroonian government was completely arbitrary and a violation of international law, specifically the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

This edition deals with the housing crisis and includes the following articles:
- The Neoliberal Project, Privatisation and the Housing Crisis
- Housing Associations: Privatisation Via Not-For-Profits
- Housing Profiteers and their Facilitators & Company Profile: Grainger
- Homelessness: Who profits from destitution?
- The Return of Class War Conservatism: the Realities of Housing in the ‘Big Society'
- Housing Benefit Cuts: Educate, Agitate, Organise!
- Anti-Squat Security Companies: Protection by Occupation?
- The Criminalisation of Squatting
- Alternatives: Housing Co-ops & Case Study: Phoenix Co-op
- Campaign Spotlight: SQUASH

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Across the Darfur region of western Sudan, female workers weighed down by heavy buckets are a common sight on building sites. The work is arduous and the pay pitiful, but many women in Darfur have no other way of earning a living. 'This work is very hard,' said Aisha (not her real name), who works on a construction site in Nyala. 'Most days, we stay on the site from six in the morning to six at night without eating anything. We drink water perhaps once or twice a day. Anything we do eat is taken out of what we are paid.'

The UN says the number of Malian refugees fleeing to neighbouring countries to escape fighting between Tuareg rebels and the military has doubled over the past 10 days. More than 44,000 people have crossed into Mauritania, Niger and Burkina Faso.

Human rights group Ditshwanelo has urged the Botswana government to suspend the execution of murderers. This follows the hanging of Zibani Thamo on 31 January for the murder of his girlfriend in 2007. In Southern Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe are some of the countries that institute the death penalty. South Africa abolished the death penalty in 1995, a year after the demise of apartheid, while Namibia had already done so when it gained independence in 1990.

'We all know that the provision of housing in Durban has been taken over by corrupt politicians and their friends to make them rich while hundreds of thousands of people in this city continue to live in shacks facing fires, floods, rats and evictions. In Shallcross there are shack dwellers who occupied neglected RDP houses which were built over 2 years ago and then left uncompleted. The residents who have been waiting for more than 17 years for the houses promised to them decided to occupy these houses, including an old granny in her 80 years who lives with her grand children, after a heavy wind had destroyed their shacks last year. Another reason for these occupations has been that the housing officials have allegedly sold some of these houses to people from outside the area including those who do not qualify for the RDP houses such as teachers, nurses and police officers.'

More than 50,000 women have been treated for complications from unsafe abortions in Zambia during the past decade, compared to just 600 women who have received legal abortions in the same period. International organizations and local activists cite barriers to safe and legal abortion, despite a law regarded liberal regionally. Others say abortion should not be legal under any circumstances in a Christian nation such as Zambia.

On 14 February, police pre-emptively dispersed a planned demonstration in central Maputo by the Forum of Mozambican Demobilised Soldiers. The police response and lack of progress in negotiations between the demobilised fighters and the government is likely to drive further protests in Maputo in the next weeks, says Think Africa Press. There are over 13,000 demobilised fighters in Mozambique. While former combatants of the anti-colonial struggle have received pensions, demobilised fighters from the 1975-1992 civil war have not received the same benefits. The civil war soldiers demand equality of status and a monthly pension of $460.

Out of a population of 49-million, 7.5-million South Africans are out of work. Young people are worst affected, with over half of 18- to 25-year-olds unemployed. According to the labour federation, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), there's no other middle income country in the world with such a high rate of unemployment. 'This is a crisis. We call it a ticking bomb,' said Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu's general secretary.

While there is a strong relationship between increasing urbanisation and increasing prosperity, it cannot be assumed that gender inequalities are reduced at the same time. In several spheres of urban life such as labour, education and transport, urbanisation may have contradictory effects for women and girls.

By systematically refusing to answer questions about abuses and dispossession in Sudan and Ethiopia the oil giant Lundin Petroleum and Sweden's minister for foreign affairs Carl Bildt have found a winning strategy, writes Kerstin Lundell, author of the award winning 'Business in Blood and Oil: Lundin Petroleum in Africa'. 'Based on earlier experiences, we find it's not of a constructive nature to comment on unsubstantiated claims about Lundin Petroleum and the corporation's business.' That's all the answer I've received for all the questions I've asked for the past four years about the company's knowledge of or involvement with all the events - the murders, the burning of entire villages - in Sudan and Ethiopia that I've encountered as I collected material for my book 'Business in Blood and Oil' and for articles in Process Nordic magazine.

As the body count rises from the conflict between members of the separatist Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) and the Senegalese army, Casamancais are starting to lose hope that they will ever see a path to peace. The latest in a string of killings by rebels took place on 14 and 15 February in Sindian (near the Gambian border 100km north of the Casamance capital Ziguinchor), when four Senegalese soldiers were killed and nine wounded in clashes with the MFDC during a Senegalese army search mission for MFDC fighters and bases. Casualty numbers on the MFDC side are unknown.

The DRC Government has pulled three media stations off air. The media houses, two close to opposition leader Jean-Pierre Bemba and one belonging to the Roman Catholic Church, saw their signals stopped by the ministry of Information. 'Last Friday, we just received a letter from the minister of Information urging us to refrain from broadcasting commercial advertisement allegedly because, as a private community media, we are not allowed. We do not know why exactly our signal has been stopped,' Mr Patrick Nsiala, the programme officer of the Catholic TV (RTCE) told the Africa Review. Unconfirmed reports indicated that the minister for Information, Mr Lambert Mende, had invited the affected media houses for talks.

An estimated $50-billion is exported out of the African continent illegally every year, former president Thabo Mbeki said on Saturday. Mbeki was speaking at the launch of a United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) high level panel in Johannesburg. The panel, chaired by Mbeki, would investigate illicit and financial flows of finance out of the continent.

Rethinking development: global and regional alternatives for the development in the South

African applicants should send their applications to:
CODESRIA,
2012 South-South Summer Institute,
BP 3304, CP 18524, Dakar, SENEGAL
Tel: (221) 825 9822: Fax: (221) 824 1289
E-mail: [email][email protected]
Website: www.codesria.org

Asian applicants should send their applications to:
CODESRIA,
2012 South-South Summer Institute,
BP 3304, CP 18524, Dakar, SENEGAL
Tel: (221) 825 9822: Fax: (221) 824 1289
E-mail: [email][email protected]
Website: www.codesria.org

and

CLACSO,
2012 South- South Summer Institute
Callao 875, 3º (1023) Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA
Tel: (54 11) 4811-6588 / 4814-2301; Fax: (54 11) 4812-845
E-mail: [email][email protected]
Website: www.clacso.org

Latin American and Caribbean applicants should send their applications to:
CLACSO,
2012 South- South Summer Institute
Callao 875, 3º (1023) Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA
Tel: (54 11) 4811-6588 / 4814-2301; Fax: (54 11) 4812-845
E-mail: [email][email protected]
Website: www.clacso.org

'LGBT Liberians live in fear, disempowered and daily imperiled. The war for them has not ended. Their lives are defined by danger and violence, persecution, hate speech and threats, discrimination and harassment. They are stigmatized, publicly rejected and almost completely abandoned by government. Their vulnerability affects all areas of their lives – church, school, employers, landlords, media, street mobs, rapists, predators, political actors, opinion leaders, family.'