Heavy rains that lashed South Africa's southeast left eight people dead over the weekend and caused extensive damage to property, an official said. Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown were the hardest hit, with a road linking the two towns closed to traffic after a large part of it collapsed. 'Most of the flood victims drowned, other people died in a road accidents,' said John Fobian, a spokesman for regional disaster management.

The Dutch Parliament has voted to suspend the deportation of young asylum seekers who have been in the Netherlands longer than five years at least until a new government is formed. The vote was taken during the first parliamentary sitting since elections. Earlier this year, a bill was put forward that would grant residency to refugees under 18 who had been in the Netherlands for eight years or more. There was insufficient support for the proposal in the previous parliament, but now there would be a majority.

Many Tunisians feel their revolution was hijacked and the current ruling party has not improved their lifestyles. There are many who will not rest until their demands are finally met. From the tenth floor restaurant of the El Hana Hotel overlooking Bourguiba Street, the stage of the Tunisian revolution, some of its intellectuals peer down. 'Don’t be too impressed by the city’s lights,' advises one. 'They’re deceptive. The alleyways aren’t so pretty.'

Hundreds of residents of a northeastern Nigerian city were fleeing Sunday after three days of Islamist attacks that left at least 31 dead and many buildings and properties razed, witnesses said. The troubled city of Potiskum had been under security lockdown since Thursday with troops patrolling the streets and residents keeping in-doors for fear of new attacks.

Amid rising insecurity, a senior official in Kenya’s North Eastern Province has ordered all refugees and unregistered migrants from neighbouring Somalia to move to the under-resourced Dadaab refugee complex by 20 October or face forced relocation. Garissa County Commissioner Mohamed Maalim, who chairs the county’s security committee, said the order - publicly announced on 6 October - applied to all 'Somali refugees and aliens in towns and trading centres' in the region.

Heavily armed men, believed to be state security agents, abducted two MDC-T officials in Bulawayo recently, torturing and interrogating them. They were released the next day. According to a statement from the party, Emanuel Kambarami and Andrew Vera were abducted from their homes in Mpopoma by five agents. Kambarami is the chairperson for Mpopoma, ward 9 constituency and Vera chairs the ward’s Youth Assembly.

A man facing trial for publishing videos critical of religions should be immediately released by the Egyptian authorities and all charges against him dropped, Amnesty International said. Alber Saber Ayad, an activist from the 2011 uprising, is charged with 'defamation of religion'. If convicted he could receive a six-year prison sentence and a fine of 500 Egyptian Pounds (US$82).

New evidence implicates Libyan militias in an apparent execution of dozens of detainees in rebel custody following the capture and death of Muammar Gaddafi last year, a watchdog has said. In a report released detailing Gaddafi's final hours on October 20, 2011, Human Rights Watch said it had gathered evidence that Misrata-based militias captured and disarmed members of the dictator's convoy and subjected them to brutal beatings.

Riots erupted in Zanzibar’s Stone Town and Tanzania’s commercial city of Dar es Salaam Wednesday following the arrest and disappearance of Muslim clerics. According to information posted by the US Embassy in Tanzania on its website, there have been roadblocks, tyre burning, rock throwing and rioting in Darajani, Mbuyuni and Kisonge in Zanzibar following the disappearance of Sheikh Farid Haji.

Janet Otieno, a Nairobi-based journalist, writes that xenophobia seems to be steadily taking root in Africa’s newest nation, as the hosts growingly perceive foreigners are encroaching on their territory and taking up their jobs. Even humanitarian workers are not spared in a country where civilians still possess firearms given proper disarmament is yet to be carried out since a bloody civil war ended.

Love Mathobela was born in South Africa and has lived most of her life here, but she is not yet recognised as a citizen. 'I had a birth certificate and South African passport which my father had obtained for me using his forged South African identity documents he acquired when he came to South Africa 22 years ago. During the 2010 Special Dispensation for Zimbabwean Nationals, my father gave away his forged identity documents including mine as requested by the law.'

‘We are victims of an imperialist war to rob our land, belongings and our dignity as a people’.

A Moroccan court has jailed an activist with the February 20 protest movement for 12 years for taking part in an unauthorised demonstration, a human rights group said, slamming the ruling as an act of vengeance. The charges against Bashir Benshaib, 32, who was sentenced by an appeals court in Al-Hoceima, included blocking a road, theft, aggression and drug dealing, Faisal Ousser of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) told AFP.

The UN feeds AMISOM’s troops, the EU pays them and the US and Italy pay Somali troops. The US, though, is the biggest single financial contributor. 'The Americans have supported the training of our troops here, in Uganda and in Burundi, and largely they sponsor it,' said one source in this Washington Post article. The US insists AMISOM is not the West’s proxy. 'AMISOM is an African peacekeeping force responding to an African crisis,' says the top US official on Somalia, James Swan.

The Joint Task Force (JTF) in Borno State has disclosed that it killed 24 suspected Boko Haram members in different parts of Maiduguri metropolis on Monday night during series of encounters with its personnel. Similarly, no fewer than 25 persons were killed and properties worth millions of naira destroyed in a renewed attack by Fulani herdsmen against residents of Yogbo in Guma Local Government Area of Benue State on Sunday. Among those killed were children and women.

The Civil Society Associations Gambia (CSAG) has filed an application against the government at the ECOWAS Court of Justice regarding the West African country’s 38 death row inmates at Mile 2 Central Prisons. Banka Manneh, chairman of the CSAG, made the announcement in a statement released by the West African bloc ECOWAS on Monday in the Nigerian capital Abuja. The group accused the Gambian government of violating the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Customary International law.

Sudanese security forces burned and looted a village in the Nuba mountains of South Kordofan state in May and filmed the attack, a monitoring group said on Tuesday, providing satellite images, cell phone video and witness accounts to back its claims. The Satellite Sentinel Project, whose founders include Hollywood actor George Clooney and the Enough Project, said a joint unit of Sudanese police known as Abu Tira, the Sudan Armed Forces and the Popular Defense Forces militia attacked Gardud al Badry on May 18 and then bombarded it with artillery on July 29.

Loud explosions and gunfire have rocked Nigeria's northern city of Maiduguri, which has seen growing violence by the militant Islamist group Boko Haram. Details are unclear, but reports said at least 10 people had been killed, including several soldiers. A primary school and a radio tower were reportedly set ablaze.

The last part of Africa to be decolonised, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, remains one of the most peaceful. Yet, despite comprehensive protocols and agreements, SADC faces acute challenges characterised by tensions between member states, resource deficits, citizens’ exclusion, social discontent and limited internal and external coordination. Regional security cooperation requires adept infrastructures underwritten by political commitment; but the organisation’s Secretariat appears powerless to ensure policy implementation, says this International Crisis Group report.

The Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI), which represents 20 families whose relatives were killed by the police on 16 August 2012 at Marikana, have engaged the services of Professor John Dugard SC, one of the world’s leading international lawyers, to consider whether police action in Marikana on 16 August 2012 met international legal standards. Osmond Mngomezulu, attorney for the families of 20 people who were killed by police fire on 16 August, said 'The evidence emerging from the Inquiry is consistent with a picture of sustained police brutality on 16 August. Professor Dugard’s wealth of experience – both in international and human rights law – will assist us in subjecting police conduct to the most searching examination.'