South Africa’s president wins second five-year term and will lead party into elections in 2024
The South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has been re-elected as leader of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) for a second five-year term in a party leadership contest.
Votes casts by delegates at the party conference gave Ramaphosa a clear victory over his rival, Zweli Mkhize, a former party treasurer and health minister.
Continue reading...Incumbent faces Zweli Mkhize, whom he suspended as health minister over corruption allegations, in a party vote
South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) nominated just two candidates to run for its top job on Saturday, leaving President Cyril Ramaphosa facing the health minister he suspended over corruption allegations in a party vote.
The winner will have the ANC’s blessing to run for president in 2024 elections under its banner, historically a shoo-in for the country’s top job since the party’s leading light Nelson Mandela ended white minority rule in 1994.
Continue reading...Fall in votes follows President Kais Saied’s suspension of legislature and redrawing of country’s political map
Tunisia has been plunged into political uncertainty after it recorded the lowest electoral turnout in its recent history following President Kais Saied’s suspension of parliament and subsequent redrawing of the country’s political map.
Its main opposition alliance called on Saied to “leave immediately” as voters overwhelmingly snubbed the the legislative election in what officials at the country’s Instance Supérieure Indépendante pour les Élections (ISIE) said was a participation rate of 8.8%.
Continue reading...Opposition groups are boycotting vote that one prominent party leader describes as ‘a still-born farce’
Tunisians have gone to the polls to elect a new parliament, 11 years to the day since a vendor’s self-immolation sparked the fall of their ruling tyrant and triggered a wave of popular revolts across north Africa and the Middle East.
In the troubled decade since, other regional states that once cracked under the strain of popular revolts have been increasingly smothered by counterrevolutions that clawed back civic gains and political freedoms championed by their citizens.
Continue reading...French foreign minister Catherine Colonna said the countries had returned to ‘full consular cooperation’ on visit to Rabat
France and Morocco have announced they were mending fences after months of tensions over visas, and said the French president, Emmanuel Macron, would visit the north African kingdom in early 2023.
Speaking in Rabat alongside her Moroccan counterpart Nasser Bourita, the French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, said it was time to “write a new page together”.
Continue reading...Dmitry Sytii under US sanctions for links to mercenary group founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is close to Vladimir Putin
A Russian businessman believed to be a close ally of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group founder, has been taken to hospital in Central African Republic (CAR) after an “assassination attempt”, the RIA Novosti news agency has reported, citing the local Russian embassy.
Dmitry Sytii, who officially works as head of the “Russian House” culture centre in CAR’s capital, Bangui, had sanctions imposed on him by the US in September 2020 for his alleged links to Wagner Group, a private military group that has deployed more than 1,000 fighters in the unstable country to fight rebels.
Continue reading...Denis Mukwege has demanded sanctions be imposed on Rwanda to ease the crisis in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
The west must ditch its “double standards” and act decisively against the violence worsening in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Dr Denis Mukwege, the Nobel prize-winning surgeon, has said.
In a stinging criticism of the international community’s “negligence”, Mukwege urged Britain and its allies to impose sanctions on neighbouring Rwanda to help ease the growing crisis in the east of the country.
Continue reading...Excitement builds for final against Argentina as spectators, some draped in French and Moroccan flags, praised play of both teams
Amid a cacophony of beeping car horns, fireworks, and people hanging from car windows waving flags, cheering football fans poured on to Paris’s Champs-Élysées on Wednesday night to celebrate France beating Morocco to reach the World Cup final, hoping it would become the first country in 60 years to retain the title.
“We’re in the final!” yelled Romain, 16, who had high school the next day but was planning a late night celebrating. “When France won the World Cup in 2018, I was 12 and couldn’t really celebrate in the streets,” he said. “It feels brilliant tonight, but facing Argentina will be close, nail-biting.”
Continue reading...President commits to strengthening Africa’s food supplies, tackling climate and partnering to take on rising global power
Back at the House oversight hearing into anti-LGBTQ+ violence, Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) says her group has recorded an alarming surge in hate-related killings:
Over the last 10 years, the campaign has tracked over 300 incidents of fatal violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people. In 2022 so far, we’ve recorded the murder of 35 people.
It’s fueled by nearly unfettered access to guns, political extremism and rhetoric that is deliberately devised to make our community less safe, less equal, and less free. Violence has become a lived reality for so many in our community.
We should have societal guilt for taking too long to deal with this problem. We have a moral obligation to pass and enforce laws that can prevent these things from happening again. We owe it to the courageous, young survivors and to the families who lost part of their soul 10 years ago to turn their pain into purpose.
A few months ago, I signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law. We’ve reined in so-called ghost guns which have no serial numbers and are harder to trace. We’ve cracked down on gun trafficking and increased resources for violence prevention.
Continue reading...WHO director-general says he is ‘not in good shape’ after learning Eritrean troops killed his uncle in Tigray
The head of the World Health Organization said on Wednesday that Eritrean troops “murdered” his uncle in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.
The WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a former Ethiopian minister who comes from Tigray, has previously been a vocal critic of Ethiopia’s role in the conflict that has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions.
Continue reading...Legal action backed by Amnesty alleges hateful posts inflaming war in northern Ethiopia were allowed to flourish on platform
Meta has been accused in a lawsuit of letting posts that inflamed the war in Tigray flourish on Facebook, after an Observer investigation in February revealed repeated inaction on posts that incited violence.
The lawsuit, filed in the high court of Kenya, where Meta’s sub-Saharan African operations are based, alleges that Facebook’s recommendations systems amplified hateful and violent posts in the context of the war in northern Ethiopia, which raged for two years until a ceasefire was agreed in early November. The lawsuit seeks the creation of a $1.6bn (£1.3bn) fund for victims of hate speech.
Continue reading...Walking on two legs may not have been linked to environmental shifts, as previously thought
The ancestors of humans may have begun moving on two legs to forage for food among the treetops in open habitat, researchers have suggested, contradicting the idea that the behaviour arose as an adaptation to spending more time on the ground.
The origins of bipedalism in hominins around 7m years ago has long been thought to be linked to a shift in environment, when dense forests began to give way to more open woodland and grassland habitats. In such conditions, it has been argued, our ancestors would have spent more time on the ground than in the trees, and been able to move more efficiently on two legs.
Continue reading...Result boosts president’s effort to win second term as leader of the ruling African National Congress
South Africa’s parliament has voted against launching an impeachment process against embattled president Cyril Ramaphosa, boosting the veteran politician’s effort to win a second term as leader of the ruling African National Congress at a key elective conference that opens later this week.
The motion to impeach Ramaphosa followed a report by an independent panel appointed by parliament that accused the veteran politician of serious misconduct after the theft from his private game ranch of somewhere between $500,000 (£410,000) and $5m in cash almost three years ago.
Continue reading...President and Antony Blinken woo nations at summit in Washington in hope they will align with west rather than Russia or China
Dozens of African leaders have assembled in Washington for a summit aimed at rebooting US relations on the continent, which have languished in recent years.
The US-Africa summit, the first since 2014, will be the biggest international gathering in Washington since the pandemic and the most substantial commitment by a US administration to boosting its influence in the region for almost a decade.
Continue reading...Dozens of people injured after heavy rain destroys houses and ruins roads in DRC’s capital
At least 100 people have been killed and dozens injured in widespread floods and landslides caused by heavy rain in the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kinshasa.
The prime minister, Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde, said officials were still searching for more bodies.
Continue reading...Group says Moroccan and Spanish police failed to provide even basic first aid for hours after deadly crush at enclave
The “widespread use of unlawful force” by Moroccan and Spanish authorities contributed to the deaths of at least 37 people who perished during a mass storming of the border fence between Morocco and Spain’s north African enclave of Melilla in June, according to a report.
The Amnesty International report also accuses Moroccan and Spanish police of failing to provide even basic first aid to those injured in the crush as they were left “in the full glare of the sun for up to eight hours”. It says Moroccan authorities prioritised moving corpses and treating security officials above the needs of injured migrants and refugees.
Continue reading...Conflict has displaced at least 400,000 people since March in a growing humanitarian crisis
In the camps on the flanks of the Nyiragongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they listen carefully. Not for warning of an eruption but to the dull thuds of distant mortar and artillery fire. Some days there are none, and hopes are raised. On other days, the sounds of war make clear to every one of the thousands of villagers huddled in their makeshift shelters that they will not be going anywhere very soon.
“We want to return home to cultivate our fields and keep our cows, sheep and goats because we are here and we are hungry. We are suffering a lot,” said Nsambimana Ashiwe, 64, at a displacement camp in Kanyaruchinya, a few miles south of the frontlines.
Continue reading...63-year-old Joerg Lange’s employer, humanitarian organisation Help, did not say how release secured
A 63-year-old German aid worker, Joerg Lange, has been freed more than four years after he was kidnapped in western Niger near the Malian border, his employer, humanitarian organisation Help, said in a statement on Saturday.
Armed men on motorcycles kidnapped Lange in April 2018 near the Nigerien town of Inates in borderlands where militant groups, some with links to al-Qaida and Islamic State, have carried out frequent attacks for years.
Continue reading...Fact-finding team sent by Pakistani government finds contradictions in reports on Arshad Sharif’s death
A team set up by the Pakistani government to investigate the killing of a well-known Pakistani journalist in Nairobi said it found several contradictions in the version given by Kenyan authorities, and believes it was a case of pre-meditated murder.
The TV journalist Arshad Sharif, who had fled Pakistan citing threats to his life, was shot dead in Nairobi in October. Kenyan officials said it was a case of mistaken identity and that police hunting car thieves opened fire on his vehicle as it drove through a roadblock without stopping.
Continue reading...A lack of essential drugs and equipment is causing health centres to close, while critics accuse the government of complacency
Health workers in Malawi claim the government is “ignoring” acute shortages of drugs and equipment that are crippling the country’s hospitals.
Patients have been asked to bring in their own syringes while the theatre and labour ward at the main Bwaila maternity hospital in the capital, Lilongwe – has faced temporary closures because “we don’t have equipment/supplies to work with”, according to a notice pasted to a wall. Regular power cuts are also impacting.
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