Zimbabwean Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede has told Parliament’s committee on home affairs that deportations of Zimbabweans from South Africa and Botswana were stretching his department’s capacities, forcing it to operate seven days a week. Mudede said his staff now worked long hours to process documents for deported citizens. He said his office was overloaded, even though last year staffers went to South Africa to document Zimbabweans without passports who sought permits to reside there.

The Election Watch from Idasa is designed to aid civil society groups in the DRC and the region in holding governmental institutions accountable and ensuring a free and fair election. The Election Watch is based on the SADC principles and guidelines for conducting elections. It holds countries to the standards that they originated and agreed to abide by as members of the regional community.

Burundian troops killed 18 gunmen in fierce clashes, a government official said on Tuesday 22 November, stoking fears that a new rebellion may erupt in the central African nation. The coffee-producing country has enjoyed relative peace since the Hutu rebel group, Forces for National Liberation, laid down its weapons and joined the government in 2009 after almost two decades of war. But attacks on civilians and soldiers have intensified since elections last year were widely boycotted by the opposition.

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has said the removal of fuel subsidy will not address the numerous challenges facing the country. Issa Aremu, the vice president of the NLC, made this known in Abuja at a ceremony organised by an NGO, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. He listed the non remittance of tax by multinational companies operating in the country, crude oil theft, the petroleum income bill pending before the National Assembly and the issue of local content as some of the problems facing the country.

Four men convicted of murdering a lesbian near Cape Town will receive their sentences just before Christmas. Zoliswa Nkonyana,19, was stabbed and stoned to death in Khayelitsha on 4 February 2006. Since the trial began, gay rights campaigners and residents from the town have continued to picket outside Khayelitsha Magistrates’ Court.

The long reign of President Museveni has worsened negative ethnicity in Uganda. Vincent Nuwagaba, himself a victim of ethnic prejudice, urges his compatriots to reject the vice and fight for justice for all regardless of ethnic origins.

South Africa's parliament passed legislation last week aimed at better protecting state secrets but the measure has been widely criticised for provisions that could help the government hide corruption. Reuters has a useful fact page that details the major provisions of the Protection of Information Bill.

Refugees in Italy - both asylum seekers, as well as those who already have obtained a protection status - live largely in absolute misery and homelessness. Most of them are ejected from the Italian basic accommodation system for asylum seekers after a maximum of six months and end up without any assistance to speak of.

The lead petitioners in the ongoing oil sector probe have tabled what they said was more evidence implicating the three ministers accused of taking bribes from oil firms. Testifying before the House ad hoc committee, they presented letters linking Minister Hilary Onek to a $3 billion deal to construct an oil pipeline to connect Uganda, Kenya and Democratic Republic of Congo to the Lake Albert region. The petitioners, who revealed they are carrying out a parallel investigation on the sector, said the minister’s involvement was contrary to the national policy to have a refinery.

Tanzania’s government could be headed for hot soup following announcements that the British government will be cutting aid due to corruption. According to reports the Tanzanian government should brace for a cut of up to 30 per cent of United Kingdom aid money channeled through its Department for International Development (DFID) for the year 2011/12 budget. Currently donors contribute between 24 to 30 per cent of the total government budget. A large percentage of these funds support development expenditure - implying that any cut will jeopardise Tanzania’s development aspirations.

Government-backed death squads have killed more than 300 members of Burundi’s former rebel group and opposition supporters in covert operations over the past five months, a rights group said. The group, Government Action Observatory, a coalition of civil society groups, said the Central African country’s regime and its proxies have waged a systematic campaign of extrajudicial killings against the former rebels, who went back to the bush after pulling out of 2010 polls over fraud claims.

The Civil Society Committee for COP17 (C17) is calling on the global community to unite against climate change by participating in this year’s Global Day of Climate Action (GDA). The GDA is a traditional and important event during the United Nations climate change negotiations and takes place at the Conference of the Parties (COP) each year. The primary action – a mass march of international and national community, labour, women, youth, academic, religious and environmental organisations and activists – demonstrates civil society’s common determination to tackle climate change.

Forbes recently published its first list of Africa’s 40 Richest people. This blog post takes a more detailed look at the lists and notes the enormous concentration of wealth on the list, that those on the list come from only six countries, that there is a huge spread of wealth even amongst the richest and that the list is an all-male cast.

The switch by many farmers in Kenya's Rift Valley province from staple cereals to more profitable coffee is likely to increase the country's dependence on grain imports and possibly affect food security, agricultural experts have warned. 'It is unsafe to use our land for crops with the hopes of being fed by other countries,' said James Nyoro, managing director for Africa of the Rockefeller Foundation. Kenya will have to import 2.3 million tonnes of cereal during the 2011-2012 marketing year to meet demand, a year-on-year increase of 37 per cent, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, which estimated domestic harvests of maize - a staple for 90 per cent of Kenyans - at 2.5 million tonnes, down 18 per cent because of poor weather.

Conflict had been brewing in the village of Fanaye in northern Senegal for months before clashes broke out in late October. The launch of a project by an Italian-Senegalese company to grow crops for biofuels on 20,000 acres of local land had been met with scepticism and anger by some villagers; protesters called it 'a form of slavery'. When work began on the project in September, a young man attacked a plantation worker with a sword. A local council meeting descended into violence, buildings were burned and two people died as villagers fought each other with sticks and machetes.

Kenyan MPs will pocket $13.3 million (Sh2.1 billion) if elections are held in August next year. The payout, described as 'immoral' by the Law Society of Kenya (LSK), will be compensation for having their terms, in the view of some, cut short. Each MP will be paid $88,600 (Sh8 million) for each of the eight months they will be asked to 'forfeit' if the election is held in August as stipulated in the Constitution, as well as the $11,100 (Sh1.5m) 'winding up allowance' they voted themselves.

Kenyan doctors are concerned at the slow pace of talks with the government meant to avert a national strike slated for 5. December. The Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union said the government was dragging it’s feet in kick-starting negotiations. The 2,300 doctors in Kenya’s public hospitals have issued a 19-day strike notice.

Burundi government officials should halt their intensifying pressure on journalists, Human Rights Watch said. In the last few weeks, journalists have been summonsed by state prosecuting authorities for questioning with increasing frequency in response to radio broadcasts implicating state agents in alleged human rights abuses. Senior government officials, including three ministers, have stepped up public warnings against the media in recent days, threatening them with legal action.

A medical source in the Zeinhom morgue near Cairo’s Tahrir Square has told Bikyamasr.com that 71 Egyptians have been killed since clashes erupted. This was as fierce fighting between protesters calling for an end to military rule and the police and the army continued last week.

Foreign investment in arable land in Mali increased by 60 per cent between 2009 and 2010, says a report published to coincide with the first international farmers' conference to tackle the global rush for land. The report, by the US-based Oakland Institute and the Malian national farmers organisation, estimates that more than 544,500 hectares of Malian land have been leased or were under negotiation for lease by the end of 2010.