Category Archives: Africa

Uproar in Zimbabwe as teenager who ‘fought off sexual assault’ charged with murder

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Activists believe the case, in which the accused says she acted in self-defence, shows the law fails women

A teenager has been charged with murder in Zimbabwe despite claims she was defending herself against a sexual predator. The action has triggered protests from lawyers and activists, who have raised concerns about how victims of sexual violence are treated in the country.

Tariro Matutsa, 19, said she acted in self-defence when she picked up a piece of firewood and hit 40-year-old Sure Tsuro several times last month. She said he had cornered her as she cooked over a fire at her home in Mudzi, a rural area east of the capital, Harare, exposed himself and aggressively demanded sex.

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Ethiopian officials threaten to send troops back into Tigray

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Warning comes less than 48 hours after unilateral ceasefire declared by Addis Ababa

Ethiopian military and diplomatic officials have threatened to send troops back into Tigray less than 48 hours after announcing that Addis Ababa had declared a unilateral ceasefire in the devastated northern province.

The announcement on Wednesday that Ethiopian federal forces would withdraw from Tigray caught many observers by surprise, and signals a major shift in strategy. However, the new threat underlines the fragility of any current calm.

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Covid tourism freeze could cost global economy $4tn by year end

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Turkey, Ecuador and South Africa will be among hardest hit as pandemic-related losses reach $2.4tn, says UN report

The cost to the global economy of the tourism freeze caused by Covid-19 could reach $4tn (£2.9tn) by the end of this year, a UN body has said, with the varying pace of vaccine rollouts expected to cost developing nations and tourist centres particularly dear.

Nations including Turkey and Ecuador will be among the hardest hit by the severe disruption to international tourism, with holiday favourites such as Spain, Greece and Portugal also badly affected. Pandemic-related losses have reached up to $2.4tn this year, according to a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad). The potential lost tourism-related income in 2021 is equivalent to the effect of switching off 85% of the UK economy, while projected losses over 2020 and 2021 could equate to removing Germany from the global economy for two years.

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WITCH: We Intend to Cause Havoc review – the history of Zamrock, Africa’s great forgotten rockers

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Film-maker Gio Arlotta and two young musicians are on a quest to track down the legendary leader of a 1970s Zambian band

Who knew 1970s Zambia had its own thriving musical genre? This modest documentary revisits the brief, almost-forgotten history of “Zamrock” – or at least what remains of it, which appears to be very little beyond the back catalogue of its leading band, Witch. Witch’s rhythmic blend of British blues, funk, psychedelic and garage rock has aged very well, and reissues of their albums in the 2010s found a new audience, including Italian film-maker Gio Arlotta, who consequently undertook an expedition to Zambia to try to find the band, accompanied by two young Dutch musicians, Jacco Gardner and Nic Mauskovic.

There’s now a well-trodden route for such musical travelogues, laid down by the likes of Buena Vista Social Club and Searching for Sugar Man, and while this lacks the polish or drama of either of those, it’s an engaging and uplifting journey. One of the problems it runs into is a lack of surviving footage of Witch in action. Arlotta and co scour Zambia’s pre-digital archives, but the best they come up with is some unseen footage of James Brown. Nor does it help that most of Witch’s original lineup are dead.

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Armed forces open fire in crackdown on anti-monarchy protests in Eswatini

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Teargas used against protesters in African kingdom with an overnight curfew imposed

Government forces in the southern African kingdom of Eswatini fired gunshots and teargas on Tuesday to break up protests calling for reforms to its system of absolute monarchy, witnesses said. A dusk-till-dawn curfew was also imposed.

The acting prime minister, Themba Masuku, denied media reports that King Mswati III had fled the violence to neighbouring South Africa.

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Jacob Zuma sentenced to 15 months in prison for contempt of court – video

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The former president of South Africa Jacob Zuma has been sentenced to 15 months in prison for contempt of court after he failed to appear before a corruption inquiry earlier this year. The inquiry is examining allegations of high-level graft during Zuma’s period in power. Judge Sisi Khampepe said: 'I am left with no option but to commit Mr Zuma to imprisonment, with the hope that doing so sends an unequivocal message … the rule of law and the administration of justice prevails'

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Former South African president Jacob Zuma sentenced to 15 months in prison

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Zuma found to have been in contempt of court when he defied an order to appear at corruption inquiry

Jacob Zuma, the former president of South Africa, has been sentenced to 15 months in prison for contempt of court after failing to appear before a corruption inquiry earlier this year.

Zuma, 79, who was the president for nearly nine years until 2018, was not present to hear the South African constitutional court deliver its ruling and sentence.

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Tigray rebels vow to drive out ‘enemies’ despite ceasefire declaration

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Celebrations on streets of Mekelle after soldiers and officials appointed by Ethiopian government flee city

Dissident leaders of Ethiopia’s war-hit Tigray region have dismissed a government ceasefire declaration and vowed to drive out “enemies” from the region, after rebel fighters advanced on the Tigrayan capital.

In a dramatic development in the nearly eight-month-old conflict, which has been marked by large-scale atrocities, federal security forces and officials from the central government appointed interim administration fled Mekelle on Monday night. Residents took to the streets in jubilation, firing celebratory gunfire and fireworks into the sky.

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‘You can’t cancel Pride’: the fight for LGBTQ+ rights amid the pandemic

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Lockdown hit LGBTQ+ communities hard but even as Pride events are called off there is hope and a promise that the parades will return

This month, for the second year in a row, there was no Pride parade in San Francisco, arguably the city most laden with history and symbolism for the LGBTQ+ community.

It is a decision Fred Lopez, who took over as executive director of San Francisco Pride at the beginning of last year describes as “heartbreaking”.

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Coastguard seizes half a tonne of cocaine floating off Algeria coast

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Fishermen alerted authorities to ‘suspicious’ items floating in the sea

The Algerian coastguard has seized almost half a tonne of cocaine after fishers alerted authorities to “suspicious” items floating off the north-west coast.

The coastguard fished out 490kg (1,080 pounds) of cocaine split up into 442 packages from the water six nautical miles (11 kilometres) off Oran’s Cap Carbon on Saturday evening, a defence ministry statement said on Monday.

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Interim government of Tigray flees as rebels seize capital

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Spokesperson for Tigray People’s Liberation Front says Mekelle is ‘under our control’

The interim government of Ethiopia’s war-hit Tigray region has fled as rebel fighters advanced into the region’s capital and the national government announced a “unilateral ceasefire”.

Witnesses said federal soldiers and police were also abandoning Mekelle late on Monday, and fireworks and celebratory gunfire could be heard as Tigrayan fighters took the city’s airport and other key positions.

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‘It opened my eyes’: Lesotho ski resort goes off-piste to keep workers

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The pandemic has hit tourism but retraining and a range of initiatives have enabled staff to stay and even hit the slopes

Masiane Nthina made her way nervously from the kit room to the slopes. Shuffling with skis on her feet for the first time is not easy.

Nthina, an intern at the Lesotho Tourism Development Corporation, lives close to Afriski Mountain Resort, but had never visited it. She had always viewed the resort as the preserve of the elite and thought that on her meagre wages she could not afford to go.

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Malawi’s LBGTQ+ community celebrates first Pride parade

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Homosexuality remains illegal in the country, where a conviction carries a jail term of up to 14 years

For a few hours over the weekend the streets of Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, were covered in rainbows, as about 50 members of the country’s persecuted LBGTQ+ community took part in the country’s first Pride parade.

The risks to those who took part are high. Homosexuality remains illegal in Malawi, and those who identify as anything other than heterosexual face arrest and imprisonment.

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South Africa expected to tighten Covid rules as third wave gathers pace

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Economic heartland hit by rise in infections driven by Delta variant and faltering vaccination campaign

Authorities in South Africa appeared set to impose new restrictions on Sunday in a belated attempt to stem a rise in Covid-19 that is ravaging the country’s economic heartland.

The wave of infections has been driven by the spread of the more transmissible Delta variant, weak countermeasures and public fatigue with existing restrictions.

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Car bomb injures 13 UN peacekeepers in Mali

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Attack occurs in Gao region where insurgents linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State are active

Thirteen UN peacekeepers have been wounded in northern Mali by a car bomb, the UN mission said, while Mali’s army said six of its soldiers were killed in a separate attack in the centre of the country.

The attack on Friday in the north targeted a temporary base set up by the peacekeepers near the village of Ichagara in the Gao region, where Islamist insurgents linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State are active.

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Three aid workers found dead in Tigray, says Médecins Sans Frontières

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MSF says it condemns attack on colleagues ‘in strongest possible terms’ after bodies found near car

Three aid workers who had been working in Ethiopia’s Tigray region have bee found dead, their organisation, Médecins Sans Frontières, announced on Friday.

MSF said it had lost contact with the workers while they were traveling on Thursday afternoon. Their bodies were found near their empty car this morning.

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‘We were never a priority’: Zimbabwe Covid ‘hotspots’ face strict lockdown

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Tighter restrictions in 12 mostly rural areas come as health service struggles to cope with third wave of infections

Zimbabwe’s government has designated 11 rural areas across three provinces Covid-19 hotspots this week after a sharp rise in cases. The measures come as the country battles to contain a third wave of coronavirus.

Mashonaland West, Masvingo and Bulawayo provinces have been put into strict localised lockdowns to contain the spread of the virus. The government had already declared hotspots in three other regions, the first in May and two others in early June.

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Isis-linked groups open up new fronts across sub-Saharan Africa

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Military victories combined with new alliances and shifts in strategy reinforce militants’ position across much of continent

Islamic State’s affiliates in Africa are set for major expansion after a series of significant victories, new alliances and shifts in strategy reinforced their position across much of the continent.

Following recent gains in Nigeria, the Sahel, in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Isis propaganda published by the group’s leadership in its heartland in the Middle East is increasingly stressing sub-Saharan Africa as a new front which may compensate the group for significant setbacks elsewhere.

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Africans ‘dangerously exposed’ by lack of Covid jabs, says WHO

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Third wave could be Africa’s worst yet, official says, with health systems in some parts close to overwhelmed

The World Health Organization has made a new appeal for vaccines for Africa, saying a “fast-surging” third wave of Covid-19 is outpacing efforts to protect populations, “leaving more and more dangerously exposed”.

“The third wave is picking up speed, spreading faster, hitting harder. This is incredibly worrying. With rapidly rising case numbers and increasing reports of serious illness, the latest surge threatens to be Africa’s worst yet,” Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO regional director for Africa, said on Thursday.

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