Home Affairs Minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma must try again to be elected as the African Union Commission chairperson, the Southern African Development Community decided at the weekend. Foreign ministers from SADC countries met in Cape Town at the weekend, where her recent defeat at the AU summit in Ethiopia was discussed. Dlamini-Zuma contested the election against Jean Ping, the AU Commission head, who was standing for a second term.

Reacting to the announcement that Robert Zoellick is stepping down as World Bank President, a global coalition of campaigners has called for an open and merit-based process to elect the next World Bank leader, and for developing countries to determine the selection. The campaigners, including Oxfam, Eurodad and the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (Afrodad), have also asked the US to announce that it will no longer seek to monopolise the Presidential position.

‘Should Labour and the Left Propose a Global Green Jobs Alternative to Austerity and Climate Change?’

A Harare court on Wednesday 15 February dismissed an acquittal application by a group of activists arrested a year ago for watching footage of the people’s revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. The six, including former MDC-T MP Munyaradzi Gwisai, were among more than 40 people arrested last February after watching the video at an academic meeting, which was raided by police. After their initial arrest some in the group, including Gwisai, were tortured in police cells and kept in solitary confinement at Chikurubi maximum security prison in Harare for weeks.

Thousands of protesting miners burnt tyres and torched a police office near Impala Platinum's Rustenburg mine in South Africa on Thursday 16 February as a month-long strike at the world's second-largest producer of the precious metal turned violent. Police also said a miner who was beaten up during an overnight demonstration near the Rustenburg plant had died of his injuries.

Following the cyclone and floods that ravaged Quelimane town and its outskirts, health officials have raised concern over the possibilities of cholera, malaria and diarrhoeal outbreak. Tropical Cyclone Funso swept across the coastal areas of Zambezia province leaving trail of destruction to property and crops. Thousands of people were left homeless among them elderly, child-headed families and the sick. For the local health authorities in Quelimane, it is the destruction of water and sanitation facilities and puddles of water scattered around the affected communities which are of major concern.

Small-scale farmers, family farmers, landless people, indigenous people, migrants - women and men - are now determined to mobilize to oppose any commodification of life.

A meeting to discuss the return of people to their lands after they were evicted during post-election violence led to the illegal arrest of 31 people on 26 February.

In this East African article, Charles Onyango-Obbo, writes about the old school information sharing approach of the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF). It has reduced the regular press briefings to a drip. And even when it brings the generals out to speak to the media, they give very little away. There are rarely any leaks. But a juicy leak about the KDF's approach to Kismayu did come through - revealing important implications for businessmen, tax collectors, Al Shabaab and the environment.

At least 600 Ugandan girls have been forced into Malaysia’s sex trade in what has become a human trafficking epidemic, a foreign diplomat has said. Hajah Noraihan, the Malaysian consul to Uganda, said despite an early warning to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2008 when the number of trafficked girls stood at 30, the constant flow of victims had not slowed.

Four months ago, Clemence Uzizo, 21, a welder living in Soweto, Johannesburg's most populous suburb, made the mistake of venturing out to a local shop without his asylum-seeker permit. Neither the police who arrested him, nor the immigration officials who detained him, verified Uzizo's legal status before deporting him to Zimbabwe, the country of his birth. 'My permit was at home but I didn't have a cell phone to call to ask someone to bring it,' he told IRIN not long after making a risky and expensive return to South Africa via the Limpopo River. 'Since my father brought me [to South Africa] in 1992 I've lived here, so I don't know anyone in Zimbabwe.'

Women, who are already compensating for rising food prices and energy costs with additional time and labour - are now further disadvantaged through land grabbing. Land grabs are land lease or sale agreements between parties with unequal bargaining power, often transacted through covert or illegal means. Although land grabs in the 21st century bear some resemblance to massive land grabs that characterized colonization and empire-building in Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries, grabs today are courted by African governments, endorsed through intentionally vague paperwork and lauded in official speeches espousing their trickle-down merits.

Was the ANC’s decision disciplining or silencing the ANC Youth League? asks Zama Ndlovu on the Mail and Guardian blog Thought Leader. 'Before Julius Malema entered the political scene, there was very little public discourse on the acute socio-economic issues faced by a growing number of young South Africans today. After 18 years of political freedom, more than half of South Africans under the age of 25 remain unemployed – among the highest jobless rates in the world.'

In parallel narratives Simon Bright tells the stories of Rhodesia’s transition to Zimbabwe and the personal journey of Robert Mugabe, using one to explain the other and finally suggesting why Mugabe chose the road he has.

As a biography it has everything - first-hand accounts of Mugabe’s early life with a desperately poor Catholic mother, what he was like at school, the effects of a Jesuit education and his rage against his absent father. As his star ascends commentators reflect on early landmarks, particularly his attendance of Ghana’s independence celebrations in 1957.

It’s clear the highly intellectual Young Turk was admired and respected through the 1960s and 70s: Bright traces the origins of the esteem through fascinating archival film interviews. The parallel story of the transition is equally well researched, as are later episodes of importance, notably Lancaster House, the Matabeleland genocide and the growing role of global business in Africa’s economies.

But it’s the behind-the-scenes jostling for power which Bright exposes that is the most riveting, and from it Mugabe emerges as unquestionably one of history’s most canny, devious leaders. It is a haunting film, the music an achievement in itself, a mix of liberation, folk and contemporary sounds. Simon Bright was co-producer of the pivotal 1996 Zimbabwe liberation film ‘Flame’.

* This brief is courtesy of the director and Spier Films.

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The Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL) is mobilising against the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, which has been re-tabled in the Ugandan Parliament.

Senegal's police on Tuesday 14 February blocked youths from settling in a square in Dakar where they planned a permanent sit-in to protest President Abdoulaye Wade's bid to run for a third term in February polls. Scores of police were deployed on and around Obelisk Square, preventing members of rapper-led youth movement 'Fed Up' from gathering for their protest.

The ECOWAS Community Court in Abuja, Nigeria, on 6 February 2012 ordered the Gambian government to comply with its ruling on Musa Saidykahn, a former editor-in-chief of the banned The Independent newspaper, by compensating him for violating his human rights in 2006. On 16 December 2010, the regional court confirmed that Saidykhan was tortured by President Yahya Jammeh's security agents while in detention in 2006. It also ruled that Saidykhan’s arrest and subsequent detention were illegal and violated his right to personal liberty and a fair hearing as guaranteed by Articles 6 and 7 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights. The ECOWAS court, therefore, awarded Saidykhan damages of US$200,000.

Eleven people have died from meningitis out of 40 reported cases in four departments across Côte d’Ivoire as of 31 January, leaving people scrambling to access the vaccine for their families. The Ministry of Health has declared the outbreaks in the departments of Kouto and Tengrela in the north as epidemics, and is providing free vaccinations in both locations through mobile health teams, with the help of the World Health Organization and UNICEF.

The International Detention Coalition (IDC) has made a submission to the UN Special Rapporteur concerning a report on the issue of immigration detention. The report draws from global research and consultations undertaken by the IDC and focuses on the international trends emerging in the use and impact of immigration detention, the legal standards relating to the detention of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, as well as alternatives to immigration detention.

The South Centre organised a workshop at the beginning of February on the state of the global economy, and reflection on recent and future multilateral negotiations. The workshop provided a forum at the beginning of 2012 for policy makers, diplomats and experts of developing countries to reflect on the state of the global economy and prospects for developing countries, and on the implications of important multilateral negotiations that have recent taken place, and that will take place this year. Documents presented at the workshop and available from the South Centre website include:
- The Staggering Rise of the South By Y?lmaz Akyüz, Special Economic Advisor, South Centre
- Instability and Downturn in the World Economy and the Prospects of the South", Statement by Petko Draganov, the Deputy Secretary-General, UNCTAD
- EPA Negotiations between EU and Africa, by Aileen Kwa, Coordinator, Trade and Development Programe, South Centre.