The support from Socialist Worker is much appreciated but please note that there are a number of factual errors in this article - e.g. the Slums Act was declared unconstitutional last year, Sutcliffe banned this particular march in 2006 and not 2009 etc.

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=20203

South Africa’s World Cup stadium of slums

Twenty years after the release of Nelson Mandela, the World Cup is coming to South Africa. Viv Smith looks behind the glamour to see what it means for ordinary people

Dear friends,

Uganda’s parliament is preparing to pass a brutal new law that would punish gay people with prison -- even death.

Initial international criticism drove the President to call for a review. But after a well-funded and vicious lobbying effort by extremists, the bill looks set to be passed -- threatening widespread persecution and bloodshed.

Opposition to the bill is rising, including from the Anglican church. Ugandan gay rights advocate Frank Mugisha writes, "This law will put us in serious danger. Please, sign the petition and tell others to stand with us – if there’s a huge global response, our government will see that Uganda will be internationally isolated by the proposed law, and strike it down."

Sud Africa ha già perso

di Francesco Gastaldon e Filippo Mondini

A CAPE TOWN, negli ultimi mesi, sono stati espulse almeno ventimila persone dai vari «settlements» [insediamenti informali] della città per essere spostate di forza in casette costruite tra l’aeroporto e la città. L’opera di «beautification» [«abbellimento»] è cominciata. Ma questo la propaganda per i mondiali di calcio 2010 in Sud Africa non lo dice. È anche così che le autorità sudafricane si preparano a ospitare i mondiali in programma tra giugno e luglio. Nell’immaginario collettivo italiano il Sud Africa è noto per due cose: l’African national congress [Anc], il parti-to-Stato di Mandela, e i campionati del mondo 2010. Mandela e il suo partito fanno venire in mente momenti gloriosi di speranza e di liberazione, di lotta e di sacrificio. I mondiali di calcio, invece, fanno venire in mente una immagine di Africa che ce l’ha fatta, che finalmente ha raggiunto standard occidentali. E liberisti. Purtroppo questi due grandi miti, a un’osservazione meno superficiale, si rivelano ennesimi giganti dai piedi d’argilla. L’Anc ha ormai rivelato la sua natura antidemocratica. La repressione e gli omicidi politici contro il movimento sociale Abahlali baseMjondolo sono lì a ricordarlo [si vedano gli articoli pubblicati negli ultimimesi su Carta e su www.carta.org].

In this week’s labour news from the African continent and beyond (http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/454/WK%2031%20ALRN.mp3 ) [mp3] The Kennedy Thirteen, members of the embattled shackdwellers’ movememt Abahlali baseMjondolo are arraigned in court, miners stage a sit-in at a Mpumalanga mine, and Tanzanian workers push for salary review implementation. This bulletin is part of a partnership between Worker’s World Media Productions and Pambazuka News that seeks to highlight labour issues affecting Africa’

The Police & Abahlali baseMjondolo

A List of Key Incidents of Police Harassment Suffered by Abahlali baseMjondolo
- compiled by Stephanie Lynch and Zodwa Nsibande

Please note that this list of the main instances of police harassment suffered by Abahlali baseMjondolo does not include the day to day police harassment suffered by shack dwellers in general which is clearly most acute in the areas under the jurisdiction of the Sydenham Police station. Day to day harassment includes racial abuse, racialised stop and search practices, casual violence, 'raids' in which bribes are demanded on the pain of arrest, men are randomly forced to do press ups on the threat of assault and in which electronic goods without a purchase receipt are simply confiscated by the police on the grounds that they must be 'stolen'. At times this generalised day to day abuse poses serious risk to the safety of shack dwellers. For instance an unarmed 17 year old boy visiting family at the Foreman Road settlement was shot in the knee on New Year's Eve 2006 for urinating in public. However it should be noted that not all officers at the Sydenham Police station take part in this abusive behaviour and that some have sought to meet with Abahlali baseMjondolo to express their concerns. Indeed Abahlali has good relationships with certain officers, African and Indian, and settlement committees work with those officers against crime.