When he opened the House of Traditional Leaders this week, President Jacob Zuma reiterated his call for a national debate on a moral code and on the values of South Africans. He argued that traditional leaders could play an important role in service delivery and rural development. The president quoted Albert Luthuli's famous model of leadership: "A chief is primarily a servant of his people." By Pregs Govender
29 March to 27 April 2010 (Global): The witchcraft epidemic in Africa is fueled by religious extremism. Practitioners of traditional African religions, traditional healers, witch-doctors and Christian missionaries and religious leaders incite witch-hunts on this continent. There are comparisons to be made between Africas current witch-craze, European Inquisitions and American witch-hunts. Perhaps the lessons to be learned in Africa are the same as those that needed to be learned by Europeans and Americans; there is no culture without human rights. All men and women, including Witches, have the right to live without being falsely accused, assaulted, persecuted or murdered.
08/03/2010: We need to understand what it means to be heterosexual as well as homosexual, and that our sexualities affect whether we live or die. During this 54th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women on the occasion of the 15+year review of the Beijing Declaration and Platform, the Coalition of African Lesbians (“CAL”) reinforces that: LGBTI rights are human rights, that we are not claiming or asking for “special” or “additional” rights BUT that we call on our African governments to condemn the violence perpetrated against sexual minorities, to refrain from engaging in this violence and to take all measures to ensure the protection of sexual minorities, in particular, lesbian and transgender women subjected to violence.
More than two-thirds of African countries have laws criminalizing homosexual acts, and despite accounting for a significant percentage of new infections in many countries, men who have sex with men tend to be left out of the HIV response. "[They] are going underground; they are hiding themselves and continuing to fuel the epidemic," UNAIDS executive director Michél Sidibé told IRIN/PlusNews recently. "We need to make sure these vulnerable groups have the same rights everyone enjoys: access to information, care and prevention for them and their families." IRIN/PlusNews has compiled a short list of human rights violations against gay Africans: