News stories by Ntandoyenkosi Ncube

When Letesia Mbewe was nominated as a beneficiary in a cash transfer pilot project in Zambia’s Chipata district, she had no idea the project would change her life and that of her three children.

For 10 years, Roselyne Shikami, sold boiled eggs at the bus station just outside the densely wooded Kakamega Forest in western Kenya, near the border with Uganda. Now she is selling butterflies.

'Some said, how can women dancers tell us about climate change? Some said, how can dancers talk about planting trees? Others asked, how can women dancers build schools? But now the government says a drum has managed to fill our granaries, a dancer has managed to build schools.'

Support for regional trade is one of the cornerstones of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). But the focus has been on large scale trade in goods and services, ignoring one important group that was trading throughout the region.

Women’s rights groups have urged the establishment of a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission in Zimbabwe as part of bringing to justice people who committed human rights violations - including sexual abuse against women - during the run-up to a second-round presidential vote in June 2008.

Eighteen political activists who were sent back to prison May 5 following their formal indictment on charges of terrorism have been released the following day after an intervention from the highest level.

A coalition of human rights and pressure groups fighting for political reform in Zimbabwe and refugee community in South Africa has called for the immediate release of 18 members activists who have been detained on terrorism charges.

Heather Bennett, the wife of Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) treasurer, Roy Leslie Bennett, says the party has let her husband down.