Dozens of Ugandan soldiers are thought to have been killed when Islamist extremists attacked their base on Sunday in the latest of a series of bloody strikes against peacekeepers in Somalia. Local officials told the Guardian that as many as 46 Ugandan troops, part of the 22,000-strong regional force in Somalia, died in the attack by the al-Qaida affiliated al-Shabaab movement in the town of Bulamarer, 80 miles south-west of the capital, Mogadishu, at around 9am local time. Ugandan officials have said only four soldiers were killed in the attack, which was repulsed with heavy casualties among the extremists. Such attacks are designed to hasten the departure of Amisom, the military and policing coalition under the authority of the African Union, which has been fighting al-Shabaab for more than a decade.

The Angolan government has cautioned Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) not to use a lack of funding as an excuse for further delay in the holding of presidential and parliamentary elections now due to be held on December 23. Angolan foreign minister Manuel Augusto in an interview with Daily Maverick in Pretoria on March 28 expressed the views of the Southern African region as a new poll showed that 69% of Congolese people do not trust the country’s electoral authority to organise free and fair elections and 80% disapprove of President Joseph Kabila. The poll by the Bureau d’Études, de Recherches, et de Consulting International (BERCI) and the Congo Research Group (CRG) at New York University also found that 74% of Congolese believe that Kabila should step down before the elections are held and 69% believe he should now declare explicitly that he will not be a candidate in this year’s elections.

South Africa’s foreign minister said Monday that the Australian government had retracted comments by its home affairs minister suggesting that South Africa was not a “civilized country” because of its treatment of white farmers. In March, the minister, Peter Dutton, said that “persecuted” South African farmers deserved the protection of a “civilized country” – alluding to Australia – and said he would explore the possibility of fast-tracking refugee visas for them. The South African government has been considering a constitutional amendment to expropriate farmland without compensation to its owners to address racial disparities in the country. Mr. Dutton’s comments, as well as his suggestion that the farmers faced a “horrific circumstance,” drew fury in Pretoria, where government officials quickly demanded a retraction.

South African anti-apartheid campaigner and former first lady Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has died aged 81. She and her former husband Nelson Mandela, who were both jailed, were a symbol of the country’s anti-apartheid struggle for three decades. However, in later years her reputation became tainted legally and politically. Crowds of mourners and political figures flocked to her home in Soweto, in Johannesburg, after news of her death broke.