Category Archives: South Africa

Covering covid-19 in Africa: ‘The virus cannot stop this life and energy’

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The Guardian’s Africa correspondent on life in a country that has fought and faced down more than one epidemic

In the evening I went for a run, down to the gate from my guesthouse, past a huddle of round huts and through the fields of sugar cane to the lake. A dog barked, a child howled, someone laughed, and tinny music played somewhere in the gathering darkness.

Eshowe, a small town in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province, is a place of astonishing natural beauty. The run did not last long. I stopped and watched as weavers, glossy starlings and sunbirds swooped through the trees, catching the last rays of the sun. To the north, low dry hills lined the horizon. To the south, the breakers of the Indian Ocean crashed on miles of wild shore. Eshowe was memorable for something else too: the very human suffering I found there, and equally human hope.

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Does Netflix’s Blood and Water show the ‘real’ South Africa?

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The streaming giant’s Cape Town-set series has been a huge hit. But do dramas of its ilk lack authenticity, or is their global feel the key to their success?

Neon lights dance across an infinity pool, while, inside an enormous mansion, couples canoodle in immaculate white corridors and the cool kids sneak away to smoke. At this kind of party, there are those who are recognised at the door and those who have to blag to get their name on the guestlist. As the birthday girl schmoozes with her guests, an awkward attendee does anything to escape the hubbub and keep her head down, as red cups pile up in the garden and a queue forms for the bar.

So far, so teen drama. But this isn’t London or LA: the two girls are Fikile Bhele and Puleng Khumalo, and the show is Blood and Water, set in South Africa. The second African series produced and released by Netflix, it focuses on the class divide between private Parkhurst school in Cape Town and its unnamed public counterpart, as well as Khumalo’s search for her missing sister. Like many dramas aimed at younger viewers, the first instalment kicks off in the midst of a debauched, booze-soaked gathering before branching out into the dark underbelly of popularity – think student-teacher relationships and moneyed parents wielding their power in the education system in the form of “donations”.

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South African conservationist killed by lions he reared

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West Mathewson was attacked without warning by lions during one of their regular walks

A South African conservationist has been killed by lions he hand-reared. West Mathewson, 69, was walking two white lionesses on Wednesday when one of the animals attacked and killed him without warning, his family said on Thursday.

The incident took place on the premises of the family-owned Lion Tree Top Lodge, in South Africa’s northern Limpopo province.

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Unofficial world’s oldest man dies aged 116 in South Africa

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Fredie Blom said earlier this year he had ‘lived this long because of God’s grace’

A 116-year-old South African man believed to be among the world’s oldest people has died, his family said.

Born on 8 May 1904, Fredie Blom told Agence-France Presse earlier this year he had “lived this long because of God’s grace”. South African media have described Blom as “unofficially” the world’s oldest man.

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Global report: WHO says world could rein in pandemic in less than two years

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South Korea records most cases since early March; South Africa infections pass 600,000; Brazil on ‘downward trend’

The world should be able to rein in the coronavirus pandemic in less than two years, the World Health Organization has said, as South Korea reported the most daily infections since early March and expanded social distancing measures across the country.

The WHO’s chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, struck a partly optimistic note when he drew comparisons between the Covid-19 pandemic and the with the 1918 flu pandemic, saying technology could help end the spread.

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Beverley Ditsie: the South African woman who helped liberate lesbians everywhere

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Growing up in 80s Soweto, Ditsie was immersed in the struggle against apartheid. But she knew racial oppression was only part of the fight – and organised the first Pride march in Africa

Beverley Ditsie first understood what the word “gay” meant while listening to Boy George. She was a teenager in the South African township of Soweto in the early 1980s, obsessed with the UK’s New Romantic movement. In South Africa, people were speculating about the singer’s sexuality, as they were all over the world, and when Ditsie heard that to be gay was to love someone of the same sex, she felt a shock of joy.

“I remember this confusion that I’d always had; I’d been trying to work out how I’d get over this thing. I always thought I was the only one,” says Ditsie. “I thought: ‘I’m just gay. Oh my God! I’m just gay, everything is OK. I’m just gay.’” For a fleeting moment, Ditsie felt free – something that was almost taboo in a country in turmoil as a result of apartheid. “As a child, you grow up being told you can’t use the word ‘free’ or ‘freedom’, because then you’re a terrorist and so will be taken, beaten, arrested, killed.” In the excitement of the moment, she ran to tell her family, who were having Sunday lunch, that she, too, was gay. She expected them to be pleased. “The look on their faces kind of said: maybe not,” she says with a wry smile and a raised eyebrow.

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Coronavirus live news: new French cases surpass 3,000 for second day; Italy hits record cases since May

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Italy closes all discos; Spain takes new measures as infections soar; New Zealand adds 13 infections to total

The UK government has said that in the 24-hour period up to 9am on Sunday, there were a further 1,040 lab-confirmed cases of the coronavirus. Overall, a total of 318,484 cases have been confirmed in the UK.

As of Sunday, 41,366 people have died in the UK within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19. This was up by five from the day before.

Ireland’s health chiefs will meet on Monday to decide if further restrictions are needed to slow a sharp increase in the spread of coronavirus that the government and officials have described as deeply concerning.

Ireland has reopened its economy at a slower pace than most EU countries but that has not prevented a jump in cases over the last two weeks that led to the first localised reimposition of some restrictions last week.

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Global report: WHO warns against dangers of ‘vaccine nationalism’

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US study says 300,000 Americans could die from coronavirus, Bolsonaro urges Brazilians to ‘get on with life’; Africa passes 1m cases

The World Health Organization has warned against “vaccine nationalism”, cautioning richer countries that if they keep treatments to themselves they cannot expect to remain safe if poor nations remain exposed.

As global cases of Covid-19 passed 19 million on Friday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it would be in the interest of wealthier nations to help every country protect itself against the disease.

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The Guardian view on wildlife in lockdown: feeling the pressure | Editorial

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If countries that use tourism to fund conservation are not supported, species and habitats will disappear

At London zoo, the giraffes, which are easily visible from the street, had regular visitors even during lockdown, and an illuminated NHS sign on their famous building. Like most other attractions that rely on tourists for income, zoos forced to shut owing to the coronavirus face a financially fraught future. But the risks to captive animals and their keepers are nothing to those faced by wild creatures and the people who guard them. Already under huge pressure from multiple sources, international conservation efforts have been thrown into fresh chaos.

The picture that is emerging of the global impact of Covid-19 on wildlife is complicated. Fishing hours were found by researchers to have fallen by 10% in March and April, for example, while South Africa reported a 53% drop in the number of rhinos killed by poachers, compared with the first six months of last year (from 316 in 2019, to 166). The sudden dramatic fall in air pollution and traffic (road, sea and air) brought rapid if short-lived benefits for many of the planet’s non-human inhabitants. In the UK, as in other countries, people who could afford to took the opportunity of the lockdown to spend more time in the countryside or their gardens. So far, it is a bumper year for British butterflies.

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South Africa registers more than half a million coronavirus cases

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Infections rise following easing of lockdown as government struggles to retain public trust

South Africa has registered more than half a million confirmed cases of Covid-19, health officials have said, as the government struggles to retain public trust amid allegations of widespread corruption, arbitrary decisions on restrictions and administrative incompetence.

Africa’s most industrialised nation was widely praised for its early response to the pandemic but criticism has since mounted as a strict lockdown was eased.

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Coronavirus global report: ‘response fatigue’ fears as Mexico hits 9,000 daily cases

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Many countries that believed they were past the worst are grappling with new outbreaks, says WHO

Mexico has recorded more than 9,000 daily coronavirus cases for the first time, as the country overtook the UK with the world’s third-highest number of deaths from the pandemic after the US and Brazil.

The surging numbers were reported as the World Health Organization warned of “response fatigue” and a resurgence of cases in several countries that have lifted lockdowns.

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The images of ordinary Soweto that captured apartheid’s injustice

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David Goldblatt’s photo essay from 1972 is a key document of an era. Now he is the subject of a major show in London

The photographer David Goldblatt, the great chronicler of the apartheid era in South Africa, is to be celebrated by one of the first London art galleries to re‑open this month.

Goldblatt, who died in 2018, has not been the subject of a major London show for more than 30 years. The new exhibition, David Goldblatt: Johannesburg 1948-2018, at the Goodman Gallery in Mayfair, will focus on a particularly moving photo essay, Soweto, from 1972. The photographs in the series were taken over six months in a febrile atmosphere that would lead to an uprising in this impoverished area of Johannesburg four years later.

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Global report: Barcelona facing new lockdown as Tokyo raises alert level

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Tensions over how to quell outbreak in Catalan capital as cases flare up around the world

Part of the northern Spanish region of Catalonia has gone back into lockdown, with Barcelona suggesting it might also follow suit with restrictions in some districts, as authorities sought to control a resurgence of coronavirus cases emerging just weeks after a nationwide lockdown was lifted.

As a judge overturned a previous court decision to approve the stay-at-home order for the Lleida area, west of Barcelona, friction was emerging over how to handle an increase in cases in a suburb of the Catalan capital.

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Coronavirus live news: WHO reports record global cases as South Africa reinstates alcohol ban

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Cases rise by over 230,000 worldwide in 24 hours; Florida cases increase by record total for a US state; Brazil cases near 2m. Follow the latest updates

Mainland China reported eight new Covid-19 cases as of the end of 12 July, up from seven reported a day earlier, the Chinese national health authority said on Monday.

The National Health Commission said in a statement that all of the new cases were imported infection involving travellers from overseas, the same as the seven cases a day earlier. The capital city of Beijing reported no new confirmed cases for the seventh consecutive day.

The Commission also reported six new asymptomatic patients, those who are infected with the coronavirus but have no symptoms, compared with five a day earlier. China does not consider such patients as confirmed cases.

Total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases for mainland China now stands at 83,602, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.

Hong Kong health authorities are continuing to battle its worst virus outbreak yet. It saw a rise in cases in March as people began returning from overseas, prompting increased social distancing measures and restrictions which had started to ease in recent weeks.

On Sunday another 38 new cases were confirmed, including 30 local transmissions. Of the 30, 13 have an unknown source.

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Coronavirus live: Colombia faces calls to put capital into total lockdown

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Cases rise by over 230,000 worldwide in 24 hours; EU summit ‘may not agree Covid-19 recovery fund’; 130m ‘may go hungry in 2020 because of virus’

An entire hospital in Mexico’s southern Oaxaca state has been put in quarantine after 68% of its remaining staff tested positive, writes Analy Nuño in Guadalajara.

Doctors and nurses at the Macedonio Benítez Fuentes hospital in the town of Juchitán de Zaragoza held protests last week, calling for a lockdown after 120 of their colleagues were put under isolation after positive tests.

The hospital won’t close – we will still deal with urgent cases, and have already analysed our staffing requirements to attend to the community as our colleagues start to return to work.

China has stepped up a travel warning to Australia, telling its citizens of a risk of being searched “arbitrarily” by law enforcement authorities, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

Tensions between the two countries have been escalating on various fronts after Beijing reacted with fury to calls for an independent investigation into the origins and spread of the pandemic, which first surfaced in central China last year.

We urge Australia to change its course and stop interfering in Hong Kong’s affairs and China’s internal affairs in any way, or risk further damage to China-Australia relations.

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The Guardian view on Covid-19 worldwide: on the march

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Infections are accelerating in largely untouched countries and those which hoped they had come through the worst. But there is hope

“Most of the world sort of sat by and watched with almost a sense of detachment and bemusement,” said Helen Clark, appointed to investigate the World Health Organization’s handling of the pandemic. The former New Zealand prime minister was describing the early weeks of the outbreak, and the sense that coronavirus was a problem “over there”. The failure to recognise our interconnection created complacency even as the death toll rose.

It took three months for the first million people to fall sick – but only a week to record the last million of the nearly 13 million cases now reported worldwide. As England emerges from lockdown at an unwary pace, Covid-19 is accelerating globally. The WHO has reported a record surge of a quarter of a million cases in a single day. The death toll is over half a million people and rising fast.

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Coronavirus report: India reports record spike as cases double in South Africa

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Indian cases pass 800,000; Johannesburg struggles to find vital equipment; Texas warns ‘worst is yet to come’

India reported a record spike in coronavirus cases on Saturday, taking the national total to more than 800,000 and pushing several states to bring back lockdowns, despite the punitive economic cost.

Now the world’s third-worst affected country by case load, it reported a spike of 27,114 cases on Saturday, although mortality rates have been lower than in other badly affected countries with confirmed death toll now 22,123.

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Five killed and 40 arrested in hostage situation in South Africa

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Six more people were injured in incident at a church near Johannesburg

Police in South Africa said five people were killed and more than 40 arrested after an early-morning shooting involving hostages at a church near Johannesburg.

A statement said police and military personnel who responded to reports of a shooting at the International Pentecostal Holiness Church in Zuurbekom found four people “shot and burned to death in a car” and a security guard shot in another car. Six other people were injured.

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Global report: India becomes third worst-affected country as giant Covid-19 hospital opens

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Cases reach almost 700,000 to pass Russia in third place; Iran suffers record death toll; alarm in South Africa as cases jump amid easing of lockdown

India has passed Russia as the country with the third-highest number of coronavirus cases in the world after recording a record number of cases for one day.

The health ministry added 23,000 new cases on Monday, taking India’s total to 697,000 and almost 20,000 deaths. On Sunday India racked up nearly 25,000, its highest total for one day.

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Matsepo Ramakoae and Lesotho’s lost chance to elect its first female leader

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After the resignation of Thomas Thabane the small south African nation could have addressed its huge political gender imbalance. What happened?

Lesotho, a tiny mountain kingdom in southern Africa, has always been dwarfed in size and achievements by its neighbour South Africa.

Many people around the world were not even aware of Lesotho’s existence until the beginning of this year when then prime minister Thomas Thabane and his third wife, Maesaiah Thabane, were accused of murdering Thabane’s estranged second wife, Lipolelo, in 2017.

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