Residents of a Philippi informal settlement and police have clashed again as protests over electricity supply entered their third day. Three police Nyalas cordoned off the corner of New Eisleben and Sheffield roads on 21 July when protests flared up again in Siyahlala. Residents set containers on fire and used them to block off sections of Sheffield Road, while teenagers and children lined the road, armed with rocks, watching for police.

Following the acquittal on all charges of 12 young men arrested after performing a dance at an Abahlali baseMjondolo Heritage Day, the Unemployed People’s Movement has issued a statement saluting the ‘witnesses for the prosecution that had the courage to tell the truth in the court’ and celebrating a victory for ‘the struggle of the working class and the poor in South Africa.’

Mandela Park Backyarders would like to congratulate Abahlali Basemjondolo for striking back against the government to free their comrades. Struggling for justice has proved to be packed with obstacles put before us by those we put in power through ballot paper.

Uganda’s Constitutional Court on Monday 18 July began hearing a petition against the law that bars homosexuals from being employed and accessing equal opportunities. An LGBTI activist Mr Adrian Juuko, the Executive Director of Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum (HRAPF), petitioned the court to nullify section 15(6) d of the Equal Opportunities Commission Act 2007.

We see this as a great day for the 12, their families, their movement and the struggle of the poor in South Africa.

The Democratic Left Front (DLF) salutes the 12 members of Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) who from Kennedy Road in eThekwini who were acquitted of all charges of murder.

Today we celebrate a victory as all twelve men of the Kennedy 12 were acquitted of all charges against them and released in the Durban Magistrates Court. We celebrate as these fathers, brothers and sons are able to finally reunite with their families and friends whose pain and suffering we can only imagine. This is a victory for the truth and a victory for the poor – indeed a wonderful gift on the birthday of Nelson Mandela!

I'm delighted to share the news with you that 'Dear Mandela' is finally completed, and will have its world premiere at the Durban International Film Festival on the 26 July.

The Kennedy 12 have been acquitted on all charges. No defence was led as no case was made against any of the 12 by the prosecution. However, clear evidence of a police frame-up did emerge and the only two credible witnesses (an ANC leader and a police officer) both testified to the correctness of the Abahlali account of what happened back in September 2009. A great day.

More details to come. Now we celebrate.

South Africa's fuel workers' union has rejected a minimum eight per cent wage increase and is holding out for a double-digit hike, the union's chief negotiator said on Tuesday (19 July).The strike has left petrol stations dry across South Africa for more than a week and will probably cost the continent's top economy billions of rand in lost output.

The violent two-week metalworkers strike has ended, with some workers gaining a 10 per cent wage increase. Eight of the nine National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (Numsa) regions accepted the offer, bringing an end to a strike that brought a near-total halt to the second-biggest contributor to GDP.

‘A failed municipality wants to give the freedom of Grahamstown to a failed president,’ writes South Africa’s Unemployed People’s Movement, as Makana Muncipality awards Jacob Zuma the freedom of the city on 14 July.

'The profiteering of SA’s businesses (enabled by lax compliance with labour law and weak regulation of trade and capital flows) stand in the way of creating decent jobs that can offer the majority of South Africa’s the dignity prescribed in our Constitution. In this context the Alternative Information Development Centre (AIDC) supports the struggle of NUMSA and other unions for a living wage. A victory for them will set a better standard for the whole labour market.'

Student leader and Swazi political prisoner Maxwell Dlamini has suffered what his family described as a possible mild stroke yesterday but was apparently denied proper treatment.

In its on-going efforts to provide support and assistance to the long-suffering people of Palestine, the South African Relief Agency (S.A.R.A) in conjunction with communities and other organisations has embarked on another humanitarian relief mission to Gaza. The mission is scheduled to depart from Durban and will travel overland through Africa to Gaza. The primary objective of the mission is to answer the call of the Palestinian people to conscientise the African continent and to break the immoral and illegal siege of Gaza and show solidarity with the beleaguered people in Occupied Palestine.

More details are available from the website.

Kamal Abu Aita, representative of the Egyptian Independent Union Federation (EIUF) which was recently formed in Tahrir Square during the revolution, has confirmed that the EIUF rejects any attempt to ‘normalise' relations with Israel. In a speech in London to hundreds of activists from the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, Abu Aita also welcomed the formation of the Palestinian Trade Union Coalition for BDS (PTUC-BDS) and called on the international trade union movement to join the coalition.

Four Numsa members were injured when police shot them with rubber bullets during an engineering sector strike in Krugersdorp, west of Johannesburg, the metalworkers' union claimed on Thursday, 7 July. The union's spokesman Castro Ngobese said the four men were in hospital and a case had been opened at a local police station. He condemned the alleged shooting, during protests for higher wages. On Wednesday Numsa claimed police intimidated, harassed, shot at and arrested strikers in Bellville, Cape Town and Germiston, Johannesburg.

Mouctar Diallo is a graduate student in Political Science and Anthropology/Sociology at the American University in Cairo and a Guinean National. He was arrested on April 30, 2011, three days after arriving in the Gambia to continue anthropological research he had begun in the Gambia the previous semester and had continued in his home country of Guinea. He spent over a week being questioned in jail and then was effectively under house arrest until June 28th, when the Gambian National Intelligence Agency (NIA) called him in again for questioning and told him they were making a case to prosecute him as a terrorist. They accused him of spreading Egyptian revolutionary ideas to Gambia. Since then, no one has been able to reach him.

Agostinho Chicaia – an Angolan human rights activist arbitrarily detained without charge in the Democratic Republic of Congo for more than two weeks – must be released immediately, Amnesty International has said.

Liberia has kicked off campaigning for 11 October presidential and legislative elections, with incumbent President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf facing criticism over her plan to seek re-election. Sirleaf, who was elected Africa’s first female president in 2005, said she wanted a second term to continue her work in rebuilding the west African nation which was devastated by the 1989-2003 civil war.