A paper in the Journal of Peasant Studies situates the current land rush in its historical context, focusing on legal mechanisms. 'Even before capitalist transformation this feudal-derived machination was an instrument of aligned class privilege and power, later elaborated to justify colonial mass land and resource capture. Now it is routinely embedded in the legal canons of elite-aligned agrarian governance as a way to retain control over the land resources which rural communities presume are their own.'

Nigeria was recently approved $4million from the United Nations Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) programme to conserve rainforest trees. Part of this was used to carry out 'REDD readiness', a series of workshops and campaigns aimed at forest communities and oil companies. The aim is to help them get to grips with conservation and the importance of curbing carbon emissions. Most of Nigeria's UN REDD money will be poured into Cross River, a reward for what its officials describe as government’s 'conscientious efforts to save the forests'. In a country that has lost over 90 per cent of its lowland rainforests, Cross River has been recognised as Nigeria's environment capital and contains over 50 per cent of Nigeria’s remaining rainforest. Many on the ground are already aware of the REDD money and expectations are high.

Scientists have shown that the cholera pathogen came to Haiti with foreign UN troops who carried the bacteria in their bodies, and whose military base was dumping its sewage into a nearby river. The imported disease has claimed more than 7,000 lives and continues to ravage communities across Haiti. Read more about the this issue on the website.

The withdrawal of Dominion Uganda Ltd from exploration around Lake Edward - an area which, according to independent petroleum geologists, may hold between 90 million and 1.1 billion barrels of oil - leaves a plethora of unanswered questions swirling around an industry that, in Uganda, remains no more transparent than a dollop of waxy crude. Why did Dominion pull out? What happened to a ‘Letter of Intent’ its parent company, UK-based Ophir Energy, signed in March 2012 with Canadian wildcatter, Octant Energy Corp., giving Octant an 80 per cent share in, and operatorship of, Exploration Area 4B? Did the government of Uganda approve these deals? And where does this leave the mysterious Alpha Oil - a Ugandan owned company that, in one of the sector’s best kept secrets, for many years held a five per cent stake in Exploration Area 4B?

The Energy ministry says it will re-examine laws to satisfy the emerging demands of transparency, disclosure, fairness and justice in the sharing of oil revenues among explorers, host governments and the local communities. 'The recent positive development in the exploration of fossils, especially petroleum and coal, also calls for a review of the current legal and regulatory frameworks to cater for emerging needs,' said the Energy PS Patrick Nyoike. ‘The National Energy Policy recognises that. We have a five- year window to put issues in place,' he told stakeholders discussing a draft Bill.

Ahead of the ANC policy conference, Cosatu's second-largest affiliate is flexing its muscles - calling for nationalisation and radical land reform. National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) general secretary Irvin Jim wants the union’s national conference in Durban this week to discuss the review of the South African Constitution, including changes to the property clause, seen by some within the ANC-led alliance as an impediment to social and economic transformation in the country.

When you stand on the island of Rukwanzi at the heart of Lake Albert, your first thought, echoing perhaps the casual rhetoric of the region’s oil men, is that you are at the edge of a new frontier. But for its communities the lake is a centre, a point of connection and integration, the great body of water into which the White Nile flows, part of the vast rift valley that draws Africa’s citizens into mutual dependency. What happens here matters to half a dozen neighbouring countries. But the lines being drawn now, as neat and straight as the borders on colonial maps, mark not sovereign territory, but exploration blocks for oil and gas companies. Just a few miles from Rukwanzi six Congolese were killed in September 2007, shot at by the Ugandan army while they travelled in a passenger ferry from the island to the DRC shore. It was revealed last week that Heritage Oil and Gas, the British wildcat explorer founded by former mercenary Tony Buckingham, played a key role in triggering that military operation after its staff had crossed illegally into Congolese waters.

The Ethiopian government has committed gross human rights violations by uprooting the indigenous people of Gambella from their traditional territories, which they have inhabited for centuries, in order to make more land available for commercial agricultural investment. During the first phase of the government’s 'villagization' programme, over 21,000 households were forcefully relocated from their traditional villages, farms and water resources. By the end of the programme 45,000 households (about a third of Gambella’s indigenous population) will be moved to new villages. The government has failed to fulfill promises to provide new villages with social services. And since the land in the new places is not suitable for traditional agriculture, people now rely on gold mining in order to survive.

Through the generous support of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, SAHA is able to distribute a limited number of free copies of the project report ‘Transition’s Child: The Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF)’ to interested activists, researchers, NGOs and educational organisations. The report is based on an oral history and document collection project on the South African social movement, undertaken by Dr. Dale McKinley on behalf of SAHA in 2010 - 2011.

The APF was formed in 2000 in direct response to the political and socio-economic conditions in which many poor communities have found themselves in the post-1994 era. The APF brought together community organisations, workers’ groups, activists and individuals to oppose privatisation and fight for free, fair and decent provision of essential services for disadvantaged people of South Africa.

In line with SAHA’s commitment to capture and document neglected histories as well as to create and support awareness of contemporary struggles for justice in the making of democracy in South Africa, the aim of this project was to create a comprehensive and accessible archive on the APF. In addition, the project was an attempt to explore some of the complexities and challenges of recording and archiving the history of social movements, the growth and development of which is often organic and decentralised, and as a result, usually poorly documented.

Along with the report, SAHA has developed an online virtual exhibition on the APF showcasing materials from SAHA’s archival collection on the social movement to ensure that the work is easily accessible on an on-going basis. The virtual exhibition serves as a participatory tool as visitors to the virtual exhibition are encouraged to comment on this telling of the APF’s history, share their memories of the events and issues profiled and thoughts on the issues central to the work of the APF, and contribute new materials to the virtual exhibition. The project report can also be downloaded from the virtual exhibition as well as from SAHA’s main website.

In conjunction with the launch of this report, SAHA has put together a small exhibition on the history of the APF, now on display on level 3 of Museum Africa in Newtown, Johannesburg, until March 2013.

If you would like to request a copy of the report (accompanied by a CD of the virtual exhibition), please email your contact details to [email][email protected] by 21 May 2012.

If you would like to contribute materials (documents, photographs, posters, pamphlets, reports, t-shirts, banners, etc) relating to the APF to the archival collection at SAHA, please email [email][email protected] .

Should you require further information about the project, the report, the physical exhibition or the virtual exhibition, please do not hesitate to contact SAHA on the following details:

Tel: 011 7171941

Fax: 011 7171964

Email: [email][email protected]

Considering the glaring inequalities in Kenya, the issue of how wealth from the newly discovered oil can be redistributed to the Turkana people must be a core theme for all social justice actors.

Eskom might face difficulties in raising funds for its coal-fired projects in future if environmental organisations kept challenging decisions to fund coal plants, Econometrix’s chief economist, Azar Jammine, said. Jammine was reacting to the release of a report by the World Bank on Friday, which showed that water and environmental concerns regarding the coal-fired Medupi power plant were valid. The World Bank’s inspection report shows that significant environmental, social and climate impacts were not adequately addressed by the bank when it awarded a $3.75 billion (R31bn) loan to Eskom for the construction of Medupi.

Although just a few hundred kilometres from Nairobi, the county of Turkana, where newly-confirmed oil reserves are set to go on stream in the next few years, feels more like a million miles away from the gleaming skyscrapers and concentrations of power and money found in Kenya’s capital. Turkana’s socioeconomic indicators do indeed set it apart. Only 39 per cent of the youth aged 15-18 in Turkana attend school, compared to the national average of 70.9 per cent. Can oil, coupled with an unprecedented process of political devolution enshrined in a new constitution, reverse Turkana’s fortunes?

South Sudan is losing its forests. And with no unified policy to deal with the situation the government is at odds, with one ministry saying that the loss of forests is a necessity for farming and another warning of the dire environmental consequences if this continues unchecked. While there is no information on the exact number of forests in the country, according to 2009 figures from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, forests and woodlands cover an estimated 29 per cent of the land area in South Sudan or 191,667 square kilometres.

The land issue is still very much politically sensitive. But now there is greater pressure to rehabilitate the land for productivity, investment and economic recovery than just fulfil a political process.

Follow super-secret agent 86 Maxwell Smart in Mission Equatorial Guinea

People who just want to grow food and make a living from the land are being expelled, criminalised, and sometimes killed, to make way for land grabbers. It is nothing less than an assault on peasants.

The government plans to spend R2,7bn buying more than 320,000 ha of agricultural land during the current financial year in a bid to advance its land reform programme, says Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti. The government aims to redistribute 24,5-million hectares, equivalent to 30 per cent of agricultural land, to black farmers by 2014 -a target it is far from meeting. The department last year acquired 848 farms totalling 882238 ha, reports Business Day.

Dorothy Dyton and her family have been removed from their land. The government, which owns all customary land, sold it to a sugar company. Like many other African countries, small-scale farmers in Malawi lack secure title to land. And a new law which would allow farmers to register their customary land as private property has stalled in Parliament.

The Mozambique government estimates that 80 per cent of its citizens use charcoal to cook. Almost everyone buys it on the informal market (here's an in-depth look at how that works), where it's the cheapest and most readily available cooking fuel. And it's that demand for charcoal that's feeding the plague of deforestation in Mozambique, where thick forests are razed at an increasingly alarming rate.

'Birthing Justice: Women Creating Economic and Social Alternatives' is a series that features 12 alternative social and economic models which expand the possibilities for justice, equity, and strong community. The latest installment looks at water being turned into a good for sale and for profit. 'Driven by a different vision and by economic necessity, a global counter-trend is growing to assure that household water be free or cheap, accessible, and safe, and that the earth’s water be kept pure and flowing. Marcela Olivera is a part of this movement. In 2000, she played a key role in organizing the massive protests in Cochabamba when residents of the city forced the Bechtel Corporation to give up control of the municipal water system, thereby restoring water as a human right for all instead of as a source of corporate income. This victory has been repeated elsewhere in Bolivia and around the world.'