Bushmen living in Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve will receive a crucial new water supply next month after winning a lengthy court battle, the diamond firm mining the area said. Botswana's highest court ruled in January in favour of the Bushmen who had fought for years for the right to re-open a crucial water well that supplied their village.

Malawi's President Bingu wa Mutharika said Saturday he would not take International Monetary Fund (IMF) advice to devalue the local currency because he was protecting the poor. Both the business community and the IMF were 'pressuring the government' to devalue to Kwacha to K180 to a dollar, he said. 'If we do that, prices of essential products and services will go up including transport. Who will win?' asked Mutharika. The president was speaking after the IMF said its programme in Malawi had stalled over policy disagreements.

The Right2Know campaign has welcomed the ANC's concessions on the Protection of Information Bill (the Secrecy Bill). 'It is a first, but important step, which may signal a willingness by democrats within Parliament and government to push back against an apparent grab for power by securocrats within the state. This would have been impossible without the voice of ordinary South Africans who have led the struggle for the Right2Know campaign over the past year.'

Ghana has a free education system, yet over a million of Ghana’s children do not attend school, says this article from Ghana's The Mail. 'Ghana’s government has a duty to create an environment that facilitates education. It should provide not only the education itself, but the means to get materials such as books and pens if a family cannot afford it.'

An estimated 10 million people across the Horn of Africa are facing a severe food crisis following a prolonged drought in the region, with child malnutrition rates in some areas twice the emergency threshold amid high food prices that have left families desperate, the United Nations reported. In some areas of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Uganda, drought conditions are the worst in 60 years, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in an update.

Clashes between Egyptian security forces and more than 5,000 protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square, have left more than 590 injured, according to witnesses and medical officials. Tahrir Square, the epicenter of protests that toppled Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's former president, was sealed off early on Wednesday (29 June) as lines of security forces in riot gear strived to regain control from demonstrators. Witnesses said the clashes started on Tuesday when police tried to clear a sit-in at the state-TV building, which included families of those killed during the country's revolution earlier this year, known as the 'martyrs', according to the Daily News, an Egyptian news website.

A new report from Unicef notes that global income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, is 64 per cent higher than it was 200 years ago. The report notes that the poorest 20 per cent of the world's population holds two per cent of its income. At the rate of change posted in the past 20 years, it will take more than 250 years for the bottom 20 per cent to go from two per cent to 10 per cent.

The UN has, for the first time, taken a major step towards defining the relationship between the internet and human rights. At a recent event there were more than 50 attendees and the event culminated in over 40 countries signing on to a joint statement commending the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression’s report, which had been featured at the event. This article from the Association for Progressive Communications includes an interview with Joy Liddicoat, head of APC’s Connect your rights! campaign, to get a better understanding of what this means for internet rights.

The announcement by SADC in its final communique on 12 June that it would immediately deploy monitors to Zimbabwe and raise money to assist the country's cash-strapped Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee, JOMIC, has unnerved Mugabe, says this article, which argues that South African President Jacob Zuma is getting tough on Mugabe. 'JOMIC is a tripartite body created under the 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA) to monitor cases of continuing violence, intimidation and other violations of the power-sharing deal brokered by SA on behalf of SADC and endorsed by Mugabe, Arthur Mutambara and Morgan Tsvangirai, the perceived winner of the disputed poll.'

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and two of his confidants, citing evidence of crimes against humanity committed against opponents of the Libyan regime. Judge Sanji Mmasenono Monageng announced the decision on behalf of a three-judge panel in The Hague on Monday, saying the warrants were meant to force Gaddafi, his son and his intelligence chief to appear before the court and prevent the possibility of a cover-up.

Swaziland opposition forces say the South African government has agreed on a R1.2 billion loan to bail out its cash-strapped government. The Swazi opposition believes that King Mswati III asked President Jacob Zuma for R10bn. Lucky Lukhele, spokesman for Swaziland Solidarity Network based in Joburg, said: 'It is shocking that a government that banned the Dalai Lama from visiting the country in 2009 has degraded itself to being a "sugar daddy state" to a bona fide "feudal overlord",' he said.

Hacktivist group Anonymous says it has dumped onto the web data that it claims was taken from the government servers of several countries. The group indicated this was part of its AntiSec operation, a move to steal data from governments it did not agree with. In a message on its Twitter account, Anonymous claimed to dump data from 'Anguilla, Brazil, Zimbabwe and Australian Government Servers.' Anonymous said it started with the userbase of Zimbabwe, which it said was 'rather small'.

Up to 44 per cent of children in Mozambique suffer from chronic malnutrition, according to an official study. The conclusion was made by the World Food Program (WFP) representative in Mozambique, Lola Castro, and the deputy representative of the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) in Mozambique, Roberto de Bernadi said. Entitled 'Child poverty and disparities in Mozambique 2010', the study analyses child poverty, malnutrition, child abuse and impact of HIV/AIDS.

The African Union (AU) should press Senegal to extradite the former Chadian dictator Hissène Habré to Belgium, a coalition of his victims and human rights groups said. 'Time is up,' said Jacqueline Moudeina of the Chadian Association for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (ATPDH). 'We would have liked to see Habré tried in Africa, but after 20 years the important thing now is that justice be done somewhere.'

Mauritania said on Sunday 26 June that 17 people were killed in a joint attack carried out with Mali on an al Qaeda in North Africa's (AQIM) camp in the Wagadou forest region near Mauritania's border on Friday. A spokesman for the Mauritanian army said 15 al Qaeda fighters were killed and nine were captured by the Malian army. Seven Mauritanian soldiers were wounded, but two of them died later from their wounds.

Certain antiretroviral (ARV) drugs commonly used in the developing world may be responsible for premature ageing, according to the authors of a new study published in the journal, Nature Genetics. Newer, less toxic but more expensive ARVs are more commonly used in the Western world. Nucleoside analogue reverse-transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) have enabled millions of people living with HIV to prolong their lives. 'We noticed that people in their 40s who had been on NRTIs for the past several years had signatures of ageing in their muscles commonly found in healthy people in their 70s and 80s,' said Prof Patrick Chinnery of the University of Newcastle in the UK, one of the study's lead authors.

Nearly 70 journalists were forced into exile over the past 12 months, with more than half coming from Iran and Cuba, says a new survey by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The report is just one of the ways IFEX members marked World Refugee Day on 20 June. Eighty-two per cent of journalists left their home countries between 1 June 2010 and 31 May 2011 because of imprisonment, or the threat of being jailed, says CPJ. Another 15 per cent fled following physical attacks or threats of violence.

In this Policy Brief PLAAS Senior Researcher Ruth Hall argues that Africa, a continent plagued by chronic food insecurity, is now considered to be the future breadbasket of the world, and is expected to help meet its rising food needs. In the process of cashing in on the opportunities offered by cheap land and water, large-scale investors are displacing land uses and land users in ways that could aggravate the already severe challenges of rural poverty and hunger.

Zimbabwean police Wednesday (29 June) arrested an editor and a journalist from a privately owned newspaper for reporting on the arrest of an ally of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. Nevanji Madanhire, the editor of The Standard newspaper, and Patience Nyangove, a reporter, were picked up by detectives at the paper’s offices in central Harare. A manager of the parent company – Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) – was also arrested.

The latest issue of the Biowatch Bulletin is out and includes the following:
- Planned US control of SA seed supply threatens food security
- SA GM update
- Biowatch comments on SA's climate change response Green paper
- World Social Forum, COP 17 and other events
- Agro-ecology - workshops and trainings
Visit for more information.