IRIN – An empty market, tightened security and a general wariness of possible violence have greeted the announcement of President Fauré Gnassingbé’s re-election, pending constitutional court approval, with 61 percent of the two million votes cast on 4 March.

Business at the largest market in the capital, Lomé, has slowed after anxious merchants shuttered their stands. “I am waiting to see how the country will be after results are announced to continue my work in the market,” fish vendor, Da Vivi, told IRIN. “Since Friday [5 March] I have not been to the market because I do not know what will happen. My life is more important than money.” 
 
Demonstrations were quickly dispersed with tear gas during the vote count and again on 7 March. There have not been reports of excessive use of force, according to local human rights groups. Hotlines set up to report poll violence remained silent. 

President Gnassingbé was elected in a 2005 contested poll that led to a bloody security crackdown, hundreds of deaths and tens of thousands of Togolese fleeing to neighbouring countries, according to the UN.

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88337

NEWZIMBABWE – PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has said he will run in next year’s general elections but called for the deployment of peacekeepers to prevent a repeat of the violence which characterised the disputed 2008 polls. Addressing party supporters in Chitungwiza on Sunday Tsvangirai said international peacekeepers were needed to guarantee a free and fair election. “We agreed that within the next 18-24 months we (would) go for elections. So far we have gone through the first year and we are left with only a few months. We don’t want a violent election but an environment for a free and fair election. “We are not afraid of going for an election. I hear reports about violence, about houses being burnt. We have to stop the violence before the election. Let’s bring in foreign observers. “Why don’t we have a peace keeping force so that everyone (can) exercise their democratic rights? Why don’t we have a peacekeeping force so that we have peace and stability before we conduct an election? If we can’t do it ourselves lets use SADC and AU to create that environment for a free and fair election,” the MDC-T leader said.

Read more – http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news-1974-PM+says+ready+for+elections/news.aspx

IRIN – As Burundi approaches elections designed to cap the country’s democratic transition after years of civil conflict, there is growing concern about worsening security and limits to political freedom.

“The situation is explosive,” Pierre Claver Mbonimpa, chairman of the Association for the Promotion of Human and Prisoner Rights (APRODH), told IRIN.

“Demobilised people [former members of now defunct armed groups] have become uncontrollable,” he said. (Read an IRIN story on the prevalence of weapons and political youth wings)

“Youths from the [ruling] CNDD-FDD party cause many problems in the country. But in reaction, the [opposition] FRODEBU youth has become very active. Judging by their name, Intakangwa, which means ‘those who cannot be frightened’, they are prepared to respond to any provocation,” said Mbonimpa.

Elections for councillors in Burundi’s 117 communes take place on 21 May. There is a presidential election on 28 June, a legislative poll on 23 July, and senators will be elected on 28 July. In September, Burundians will vote for heads of 2,639 “collines”, the country’s smallest administrative units.

“People are killed in their houses for unknown reasons,” according to François Bizimana, spokesman for the CNDD opposition party.

“When we organize meetings, the Imbonerakure break them up and beat our supporters,” he said, referring to the ruling party’s youth arm, whose name means “those with foresight

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88313

ZimEye – President Robert Mugabe has revealed that Zimbabweans might go for elections next year when the two-year period for the shaky government ends.

Mugabe said he would contest in the elections. He said the fresh elections would be held even if a new constitution is not in place.

Mugabe said he would contest in the elections if given the chance by Zanu-PF, a party that gave him a five-year term at the December congress.

“Yes I will contest the elections if Zanu-PF says yes. I will go for the elections,” said Mugabe.

Mugabe told editors of various media  organisations at Zimbabwe House Thursday that it was highly likely that elections will be held in 2011.

The polls will be harmonized just like the shamed 2008 March elections but Mugabe hinted that local government elections would be suspended.

Read more – http://www.zimeye.org/?p=14351

It has been a difficult few weeks for the Tories – the Ashcroft affair, talk of splits, erratic poll numbers and doubts over their economic policy. But at last they can enjoy some good news: no lesser global statesman than Robert Mugabe has offered David Cameron his endorsement.

“We have always related better with the British through the Conservatives than Labour,” Zimbabwe’s president said today. “Conservatives are bold, [Tony] Blair and [Gordon] Brown run away when they see me, but not these fools, they know how to relate to others.”

Mugabe fell out with the British government when, under his land reforms, he encouraged Zimbabweans to seize the farms of British descendants. After Mugabe was accused of rigging the 2002 election, Blair imposed sanctions on the Zimbabwean leader and some of his associates, banning their travel ban and freezing bank accounts.

Today Brown restated the British government’s position telling the visiting South African president Jacob Zuma, involved in brokering Zimbabwe’s unity accord, that the sanctions would not be lifted#

Read more – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/04/robert-mugabe-david-cameron-conservatives

  NEWZIMBABWE – PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has urged western countries to remove “all sanctions” on Zimbabwe, in the same week that the United States extended sanctions by another year.

Tsvangirai is growingly frustrated by western countries’ publicly-expressed doubts over the power sharing government he formed with President Robert Mugabe in February last year.

After meeting Soren Pind, Denmark’s Minister for Development Cooperation, on Monday, Tsvangirai said countries wishing to help Zimbabwe should do so through the unity government.

“If you want to support the people of Zimbabwe you have to support the coalition government,” Tsvangirai said in comments carried by state television.

Read more – http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news-1945-PM+wants+all+sanctions+lifted/news.aspx

 IRIN – For the many thousands of people displaced by conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kivu regions who have returned to their villages, home has its many hardships.

“Return has not always been durable, as the reduction of food rations in camps [for displaced people - IDPs] and the arrival of the new planting season rather than any improvement in security have led people to go back,” the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) stated in a 24 February report. 

“Many people returned home to find their land occupied, while renewed clashes in return areas also forced people to flee again soon after their arrival home,” it said.

Across eastern DRC, “access to basic necessities … has deteriorated over the last year in the context of military operations and reprisals and continuing abuses against the population. The vast majority of IDPs and returnees have no access to health centres and schools, or to clean water, food, seeds, tools or building materials,” according to the report.

During 2009, according to IDMC, about a million people returned to their villages in North and South Kivu – about the same number who fled because of clashes, mainly between government forces and Rwandan Hutu rebels.

In North and South Kivu, there are 1.36 million IDPs, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88269

(IRIN) – Botswana is adopting a two-pronged approach to tackle abuse of its immigration system by increasing the sophistication of travel documents, visas and work permits, and putting more boots on the ground to apprehend undocumented foreign nationals.

Zimbabweans escaping their country’s continuing economic, political and social malaise – despite the formation of a unity government more than a year ago – have favoured neighbouring Botswana, one of southern Africa’s most prosperous nations.

Letso Mpho, acting spokesman for Botswana’s Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs, told IRIN that workplace inspections would be “intensified” from 1 March 2010, and special immigration assistants would accompany police and home affairs officials to help identify undocumented foreign nationals.

The government has also begun introducing electronic online passports (e-passports), and the computerization of work and residence permits for all foreign nationals. The current passport is to be phased out in 2011.

“The ongoing e-passport project will improve the security features of the Botswana passport. The document is machine-readable – it will be difficult to fake or even tamper with it,” Mpho said.

Britain, the former colonial power, has issued strong warnings to Botswana to improve its passport security systems or risk its citizens having to apply for visas to visit the UK.

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88270

IRIN – South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal ordered the Department of Home Affairs on 24 February 2010 to immediately release an Ethiopian asylum seeker from “unlawful” detention after he had languished in repatriation centres for over nine months.

Costs were also awarded against the Minister of Home Affairs and the Director-General of the Department in an order that Gina Snyman, of the Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) Refugee and Migrant Rights Project, termed a “scathing rebuke”.

LHR requested that the identity of the man not be disclosed for fear of retribution should he be deported to Ethiopia. He is a political activist of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), a separatist organization “established in 1973 by Oromo nationalists to lead the national liberation struggle of the Oromo people against the Abyssinian colonial rule,” according to its website.

The man was first arrested in Port Elizabeth, on the south coast of the country, for being an “illegal foreigner” and then “detained at the Lindela Repatriation Centre for more than 275 days”, the LHR said in a statement.

The Lindela centre is in Gauteng Province in the north of the country, about 40km from Johannesburg, and is the main departure point for deporting and repatriating undocumented foreign nationals from South Africa.

“The court found that home affairs had no basis to detain the asylum seeker. Highlighting the clear illegality of the detention, the court suggested that the department either did not understand the law, or had chosen to ignore it,” LHR said.

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88250

IRIN – Zimbabwe’s still-limping economy can provide few essential services, so children living along the border cross into South Africa to attend school during the day or even to see a doctor, often at great risk to their personal safety.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) regional child protection advisor for East and Southern Africa, Cornelius Williams, said the movement of unaccompanied child migrants from Zimbabwe was one of the biggest problems confronting humanitarian agencies in the region. Between 3,000 and 15,000 Zimbabwean children are known to move into and out of their country every month.

“Unfortunately, governments continue to devote most of their resources to child trafficking, where much smaller numbers of children are involved,” Williams told IRIN at a meeting of officials from 15 countries in Pretoria from 23 to 25 February to discuss ways of strengthening cross-border co-operation to protect children at risk.

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88249