[It was on the 8th of January 1912 when a broad spectrum of African people comprising representatives of people’s and church organisations and other prominent individuals gathered in Bloem-fontein, South Africa, with the chief aim of uniting and bringing all Africans together as one people to defend their rights and freedoms.]
BURUNDI :
Burundi : les grossesses des filles de plus en plus fréquentes dans les écoles primaires et secondaires
Xinhua/lundi 9 janvier 2012
BUJUMBURA, 8 janvier (Xinhua) — Les grossesses de jeunes écolières et élèves deviennent de plus en plus fréquentes dans certaines écoles des provinces burundaises de Rutana (sud-est) et de Cibitoke (ouest), rapporte dimanche la radio nationale burundaise.
Le directeur provincial de l’éducation dans cette province de Rutana, Simon Ngenzebuhoro, a invité les parents à suivre de près leurs enfants, surtout ceux qui étuident dans les collèges et les lycées communaux qui sont à régimes d’externats.
Il a aussi demandé aux directeurs des établissements à prodiguer des conseils aux enseignants et aux élèves.
Un enseignant a engrossé une fille de la 7ème année issue d’une famille qui l’avait hébergée. Quatre enseignants ont perdu leurs postes pour avoir eu des relations avec leurs élèves. Un professeur d’anglais au lycée de Rutana a déserté l’école après qu’ on ait découvert qu’il avait des relations sexuelles avec son élève.
Un professeur de mathématiques au lycée communal de Musongati a déserté l’école pour avoir engrossé une fille de la 2ème pédagogique. Le dernier cas est signalé au collège communal de Butare en commune de Bukemba.
En province de Cibitoke, un maître responsable de 60 ans à l’ école primaire de Muremera en commune de Buganda a engrossé une fille de la 6ème année. Au lycée communal de Buhoro, un enseignant de l’école primaire de Murehe a eu des relations sexuelles avec une élève de la 9ème année.
Le directeur de l’éducation dans la province de Cibitoke Saidi Anicet a condamné le comportement de certains parents qui règlent à l’amiable ce genre de comportement au lieu de saisir la justice.
L’année dernière, ce sont 30 filles qui ont abandonné l’école à cause des grossesses dans la seule commune de Mabayi de cette province de Cibitoke.
RWANDA :
Rwanda: Kagame in SA for ANC Centenary Celebrations
Edmund Kagire/The New Times/8 January 2012
Yesterday, President Paul Kagame arrived in South Africa to attend the 100th Anniversary celebrations since the founding of the African National Congress (ANC).
Along with other high profile dignitaries, President Kagame is scheduled to attend a Dinner for Heads of State as well as a national event that will, today, take place at Bloemfontein Stadium.
“Rwanda and South Africa have enjoyed warm relations from the time ANC took power in 1994,” a statement released by the President’s Office indicates.
The ANC was founded as the South African Native National Congress on January 8, 1912 in Bloemfontein with the aim of fighting for the rights of black South Africans and was renamed ANC in 1923.
The Centenary is a milestone achievement for the ANC as a liberation movement. It seeks to celebrate the organisation’s proud traditions, values and principles that earned the movement an indelible place among the people of South Africa and many others in liberation movements around the world.
President Kagame is accompanied by Ministers, Louise Mushikiwabo of Foreign Affairs and Aloisea Inyumba of Gender and Family Promotion. Abdul Karim Harerimana, a member of the East African Legislative Assembly is also part of the delegation.
South African President, Jacob Zuma, will pay tribute to Nelson Mandela and other heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle in a speech at the city’s football stadium where more than 100,000 people are expected to wrap up the three day festivities.
The celebrations include a traditional ceremony, a golf tournament, concerts and gala dinner. Zuma is also expected to light a centenary flame, which will tour South Africa as a symbol of the resistance against apartheid.
A Sunday service will be held in the Wesleyan church building where the movement was born. The South African post office will also release a commemorative stamp to celebrate Africa’s oldest liberation movement.
Facing justice in Rwanda
www.thestar.com/Published On Sun Jan 8 2012
It has been an incredible 17 years since Canada first attempted to send Léon Mugesera back to Rwanda to face accusations that he helped to incite the genocide that led to some 800,000 deaths in that country. Mugesera now faces another deportation order this week, but is fighting that as well. Ottawa should persist until he faces justice in his homeland.
This tangled saga goes all the way back to 1992, when Mugesera, then a high-ranking official in Rwanda’s government, made a speech in which he told Hutu militants that Tutsis are vermin and cockroaches whose bodies should fill the rivers of Rwanda. Eighteen months later, the Hutu majority rose up and massacred hundreds of thousands of Tutsis in the worst genocide of recent years.
Rwanda has tried thousands of so-called genocidaires, both those who participated in the murders and those who promoted it. It wants to try Mugesera as well, and as far back as 2005 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that there is reason to believe that he promoted hatred and genocide by inciting Hutus against Tutsis. It upheld Ottawa’s decision to deport him but Mugesera argued that he could not get a fair trial back in Rwanda and should be tried in Canada.
Those arguments have grown weaker over the years. In 2007, Rwanda formally abolished the death penalty, removing one of the main reasons for Ottawa’s reluctance to enforce its deportation order (in fact, Rwanda has not executed anyone since 1998). The Rwandan justice system has been strengthened: the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda recently ruled that the country’s courts are sufficiently impartial to justify sending accused war criminals to face justice there. And aside from abolishing capital punishment, the country has also done away with sentences considered cruel and unusual elsewhere, such as solitary confinement for life. Other accused Rwandans who fled to Europe are expected to be sent back soon to face the music.
Mugesera plans yet another bid this week in Federal Court to delay his deportation. Like any accused person, he deserves a fair trial with a robust defence — and Ottawa should make sure it has reassurances that will happen in Rwanda. But it should make sure this sorry tale finally comes to an end
Jobs galore for Kenyan teachers as Rwanda seeks tutors
By BERNA NAMATA /www.theeastafrican.co.ke/Posted Sunday, January 8 2012
Rwanda is planning to hire at least 4,000 teachers from the East African Community this month, opening an employment window for thousands of unemployed teachers in the region.
The move is part of plans to scale up the use of English as the language of instruction in schools as well as increase its use in the largely French-speaking economy, as it seeks opportunities in the integrated EAC where English is the formal language of communication.
Kenya’s education permanent secretary Prof James ole Kiyiapi, said the ministry had received Rwanda’s request and forwarded it to the Teachers Service Commission.
“Rwanda proposed certain contractual terms and the TSC has basic minimum conditions for its members, especially when you consider that the teachers will be working away from their home country. But Rwanda is yet to get back to us to finalise the terms.”
The hiring of teachers — to act as school based mentors — will help to eliminate the heavy imbalances in the market that has left countries like Kenya and Uganda with a surplus while its neighbours experience acute shortages.
For example, Tanzania suffers an acute shortage of secondary school teachers as a result of the successful implementation of a five-year Secondary Education Development Programme that began in 2004, under which 1,050 new secondary schools were built countrywide.
Last year, Tanzania also went shopping in Kenya and Uganda for high school teachers for science and mathematics subjects though definite figures of how many were recruited are yet to be established.
But in 2010, the Tanzanian government had initially planned to hire additional 49,000 teachers.
Rwanda’s recruitment process should begin this month with about 2,000 mentors expected from Kenya.
A recent survey by the World Bank and Kenya’s Export Promotion Council found that the demand for professional services such as banking, insurance, legal, accounting, architectural, ICT and engineering has been rising with the progression of the integration process, offering Kenya and other countries an advanced human resource base — a chance to boost their service exports.
Emerging investment opportunities in East Africa have been marked by a growing interest in international affiliations by local firms aiming to improve their brand equity, a trend that is pushing up demand for professional services.
But movement of labour across countries in EAC was still facing challenges.
“We are still being held up by perceptions that there is conflict between national laws and those of the EAC regarding the movement of labour,” said Kenya’s EAC Permanent Secretary David Nalo.
“We are seeing higher demand for key professional services such as architecture, law, engineering and hospitality across the region” he added.
Of the 4,112 mentors that will be recruited, 2,543 mentors will be posted to primary schools; 1,471 to secondary schools and 98 to vocational training colleges.
“They will mentor our teachers so they can know how to teach English and help to improve the reading culture.
The partnership will continue until all our teachers perfect their English language skills,” Dr Mathias Harebamungu, the Rwanda State Minister-in-charge of primary and secondary education told The EastAfrican last week.
While English was introduced as the language of instruction in schools in 2008, and a complete switch from French took place in 2009, several teachers are still struggling to comply, with many having to learn the language from scratch.
According to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Education in 2009, 85 per cent of primary school teachers and 66 per cent of secondary school only had beginner, elementary or pre-intermediate levels of English.
The switch came after Rwanda became a member of the East African Community, and member states embarked on the process of harmonising their education curricula, with English being the shared language of instruction.
It was also a precursor to Rwanda joining the British Commonwealth, in November 2009.
RDC CONGO:
RDC: l’ONG La Voix des Sans-Voix publie un rapport sur les élections
www.pressafrik.com/ Lundi 9 Janvier
Une ONG influente en République démocratique du Congo, La Voix des Sans-Voix, a présenté ce dimanche 8 janvier 2012 son rapport final sur le récent processus électoral dans le pays. Dénonçant les fraudes, elle demande désormais aux leaders politiques d’engager un dialogue en vue de sortir de l’actuelle crise politique et d’envisager la tenue de nouvelles élections.
Après avoir listé les fraudes rapportées par les observateurs sur le terrain, Rostin Manketa, le directeur adjoint de La Voix des Sans-Voix, a clairement remis en cause les scrutins présidentiel et législatifs : « Lesdites élections n’ont pas été transparentes et par conséquent, non crédibles, au grand dam de la population congolaise désillusionnée par la boulimie du pouvoir de ses acteurs politiques ».
Le directeur de La Voix des Sans-Voix, Dolly Ibefo, appellent donc le président Kabila et son principal opposant Etienne Tshisekedi à engager un dialogue. « Nous nous trouvons dans une situation où il y a une crise réelle de légitimité. Je crois que le dialogue peut résoudre cette crise », affirme-t-il.
Dans la foulée de ce dialogue, La Voix des Sans-Voix demande un nouveau processus électoral dans des délais raisonnables. « L’organisation d’élections crédibles sous la supervision de nouveaux animateurs impartiaux de la Céni et la certification des résultats par la communauté internationale », précise Rostin Manketa
Après des semaines de bras de fer politiques, difficile de croire à une table ronde entre les leaders de la vie politique congolaise. De son côté, la commission électorale compte toujours donner les résultats des législatives le 13 janvier.
Source: RFI
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Lire suite du document : bur09012012.doc
