While some African national leaders continued to court Robert Mugabe at an African Union meeting in Egypt, despite their own observers saying that the presidential election was unacceptable, South African churches have spoken candidly.

Zambian and Zimbabwean Roman Catholic bishops have exhorted the government of Southern African to take much stronger action in pressuring the government in Harare to ensure a credible presidential election in Zimbabwe.

The head of Africa's biggest church grouping says he is tormented by a wave of attacks against foreigners in South Africa that have claimed the lives of at least 50 people - denting the reputation of the post-apartheid society.

More than 40 foreigners have been killed in gang attacks in South Africa in the last week. Several thousand terrified immigrants are now reported to have fled the country, says Christian development agency World Vision.

The South African Council of Churches (SACC) has expressed shock and sadness over the violence directed at foreigners living in the Alexandra township, north of Johannesburg. The violence has now spread to the city centre and across the Gauteng region.

The Zimbabwe Christian Alliance, a network of church and civic bodies, says it has no hope that inter-party peace talks brokered by South Africa's Thabo Mbeki will achieve results before Zimbabwean elections scheduled for 29 March.

Only a small number of the refugees arrested in a controversial police raid on Central Methodist Mission in Johannesburg, South Africa, remain in jail, according to the bishop there. Appeals went to Desmond Tutu for help.

A South African church-backed group that helps former combatants involved in violence during the apartheid era to play a peaceful role says its life skills programme is needed helping a country undermined by violent crime.

British mining corporations supported by the UK government, such as Vedanta Resources, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, are complicit in human rights abuse while making huge profits in developing countries.

The World Alliance of Reformed Churches has said that a South African church, suspended from the grouping in 1982, cannot be readmitted because it has not renounced the support for the apartheid ideology that led to its exclusion.