The Democratic Republic of Congo will go to the polls on 23 December to elect a successor to incumbent president Joseph Kabila, who has been in power since January 2001 when he inherited the position from his assassinated father
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) promised to change its ways in an out-of-court settlement over a blacklisting scandal but hope of real change has been engulfed by a wave of censorship at the public broadcaster since the start of...
South Africa's Right2Know Campaign (R2K) is “Camping out for Openness” outside parliament in Cape Town this week as deliberations over the draconian Protection of State Information Bill draw to a close. The National Council of Provinces, the second...
The South African Communist Party (SACP) this week made a public call for a law to be instituted to protect the country’s president against "insults". The call, by one of its provincial branches, was in response to growing public outrage about R240...
In South Africa, the singing of "struggle songs" remains a bone of contention. Some South Africans contend, along with the courts, that songs should be banned when their lyrics incite violence. Other South Africans regard the songs as a way to...
Nigerian poet Wole Soyinka knows something about the dangers of speaking out. In 1967 the Nobel Prize winner was arrested and held in solitary confinement for two years after criticising the Nigerian government, a military coup had taken place in...
South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma dropped his defamation lawsuit against the country’s most prominent newspaper cartoonist, Zapiro.
Rural people travelled hundreds of kilometres to voice their objections at South Africa’s parliament about a new bill that threatens to impose a separate and unequal legal system on them --- just to hear that their submissions are being blocked....
South Africa’s parliament is in its final stages of reviewing a bill that, if passed, could have severe implications for press freedom in the country and the African continent. The Protection of State Information Bill (also known as the Secrecy...
"The press in Sudan is going through the most intense crackdown," said Adil Color, a writer and editor at Al-Midan newspaper, the mouthpiece of the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP). "If we publish an issue [of the newspaper] that is critical and...