News Africa Extended

News Africa Extended

Succession: Mugabe warns veterans

Posted: 09 Jun 2016 07:06 PM PDT

“War veterans must know that it is the politics that leads the gun, not vice versa,” says Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe.

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Harare - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Thursday warned veterans of the 1970s independence war against trying to influence the choice of who will succeed him when he eventually leaves office.

Read also: Lone voices speak out as Mugabe clings on

The 92-year-old leader said on March 18 that leaders of the influential Zimbabwe Liberation War Veterans Association had indicated they wanted him to retire, something he said he would consider if they asked him directly.

On Thursday, however, he told a meeting of the Zanu-PF ruling party's central committee that the veterans should stick to looking at the welfare of men and women who fought against colonial rule and not dabble in Zanu-PF's succession politics.

“War veterans must know that it is the politics that leads the gun, not vice versa, as the war veterans are not bosses of the party,” said Mugabe, a war veteran himself.

“The war veterans leaders have no business to talk about succession in the party.”

Mugabe has previously said his successor must be chosen democratically and that his wife Grace will not automatically inherit the role - seen as a warning to feuding members of Zanu-PF that he is still in charge after 36 years in power.

Mugabe said the veterans, who have publicly accused some Zanu-PF members of trying to manipulate the president by rallying behind his wife, were behaving like dissidents.

In Zimbabwe, that term revives memories of a 1980s crackdown against Mugabe's political rivals by an elite North Korean-trained brigade in which rights groups say 20 000 civilians, most from the minority Ndebele tribe, were killed.

“Are we seeing another dissident rise and activity again?” Mugabe said. “The dissidents tried it and failed.”

REUTERS

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Malaria ‘out of control’ in DRC, says charity

Posted: 09 Jun 2016 10:09 AM PDT

Malaria in eastern DRC is “out of control” with many parents letting their sick children die at home, a medical charity said.

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Nairobi - Malaria in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is “out of control” with many parents letting their sick children die at home because they cannot afford treatment, a medical charity said as it ramps up its emergency response.

Children under 13 made up 80 percent of the 45 000 malaria outpatients Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has treated in the last four weeks in Haut-Uele Province in northeastern DRC.

“The situation is definitely out of control,” MSF's emergency coordinator for DRC, Stephane Reynier de Montlaux, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview.

“Many people are dying ... It is children that are the first victims.”

The government asked MSF to step in after recording more than 93 000 malaria cases in four health zones in the province in the first 16 weeks of 2016 - almost four times the figure for 2015.

Malaria is the leading cause of mortality in DRC, with 21 million cases in 2013, the second highest globally after Nigeria, World Health Organisation data shows.

MSF said it was unclear what has caused the outbreak and is providing medicines and support, including latrines and chlorine to keep overcrowded hospitals clean.

Most patients in eastern DRC seek treatment at health posts where malaria drugs are supposed to be free.

But patients end up paying for a prescription if the drugs are out of stock and are also charged for further tests and treatment as required, Reynier de Montlaux said.

“They cannot go to the hospital just because they cannot afford the price (of treatment) and whole logistics (of getting there),” he said.

“So they go back to the village and the kid dies in the village ... It's a very recurrent story.”

There have been reports of numerous burials since the surge in malaria cases was recorded, Reynier de Montlaux said.

“I met a mother in a health centre. A village she was visiting two days before lost 10 children in one week which is really enormous,” he said.

DRC is one of the poorest countries in the world, lacking basic infrastructure like roads and health posts.

Eastern Congo, home to numerous militias, is plagued by bouts of volatility following a regional conflict between 1996 and 2003, which sucked in more than half a dozen countries.

Four out of 10 children diagnosed with malaria by MSF also had severe malnutrition, complicating their treatment.

MSF has admitted 1 600 malaria patients to hospital over the past four weeks because they required intensive care, such as blood transfusions and oxygen therapy.

Reuters

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Africans in India battle racism

Posted: 09 Jun 2016 04:36 AM PDT

For Africans residing in India racism is a daily battle in a country where their dark skin places them at the lower end of a series of social hierarchies.

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New Delhi - Fear and anger. Those are the emotions that shadow Odole Emmanuel Opeyemi every time the Nigerian man steps out of his New Delhi apartment.

Every encounter with Indians is fraught with those feelings, whether he’s taking an autorickshaw or the Metro, buying vegetables or trying to find a spot to park his car.

“When I sit down in the Metro, people sit away from me. Even old men and women will stand up as if any contact with me will give them a disease,” he said, describing the mixture of fear and revulsion with which most Indians treat Africans.

Opeyemi is among hundreds of thousands of Africans in India, drawn by better education and work opportunities.

For them rampant racism is a daily battle in a country where their dark skin places them at the lower end of a series of strictly observed social hierarchies.

Indians routinely perceive Africans as either prostitutes or drug dealers.

The daily indignities Africans suffer usually go undocumented both by the police and local media.

That changed on May 20, when Congolese student Masunda Kitada Oliver was fatally attacked in a dispute over hiring an autorickshaw in New Delhi.

Three men who insisted they had hired the vehicle beat him up and hit him on the head with a rock, killing him, according to police.

The death made the city’s African students, diplomats and business owners rally together demanding quick justice.

The African Heads of Mission in New Delhi issued a statement asking the government to address “racism and Afro-phobia” in the country.

“Given the pervading climate of fear and insecurity in Delhi, the African Heads of Mission are left with little option than to consider recommending to their governments not to send new students to India, unless and until their safety can be guaranteed,” the statement said.

The killing and the outrage it sparked drew an unusually prompt reaction from local police and India’s foreign ministry. Two men suspected in the attack were arrested within a day, while a third remains at large.

Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted that her ministry asked for “stringent action against the culprits.” But the ministry also said all criminal acts involving Africans should not be seen as racial in nature.

The bad press the country got as a result of the killing prompted India’s glacial government machinery to move quickly to try to address the issue.

An India-Africa art exhibition was cobbled together at government expense and on short notice.

A protest planned by African students in the Indian capital was put off after government officials reached out to African student groups.

The police and government began holding workshops in neighbourhoods across the city to try to sensitive local residents about their African neighbours.

There were other well publicised examples of anti-African prejudice in India before Oliver’s death.

In February, a Tanzanian woman was beaten and stripped naked by a mob in the southern city of Bangalore after a Sudanese student’s car hit an Indian woman.

In September 2014, a video of three African men being beaten inside a security booth at a New Delhi Metro station went viral.

For several minutes a large mob beat the men with bare hands and sticks and shoes as they climbed up the walls of the glass booth in terror. The police were absent.

These incidents made it to the local newspapers. Hundreds more do not.

Prejudice is open in India. The matrimonial columns of the newspaper are strictly segregated along caste lines. Landlords in cities including New Delhi and Mumbai deny homes to people based on race and religion.

Indians from northeastern India, who look different because of their Asian features, are routinely harassed and have to endure being called names on the streets.

But the worst kind of discrimination is reserved for the Africans. In a country obsessed with fair skin and skin lightening beauty treatments, their dark skin draws a mixture of fear and ridicule.

Landlords shun Africans in all but the poorest neighbourhoods, and in those they are charged unusually high rent.

African students in the New Delhi neighbourhood of Chhatarapur reported paying 15 000 rupees ($225) a month for a single room and bathroom that would normally rent for 6 000 to 7 000 rupees.

Strangers point at them and laugh - or gang up and assault them.

At a recent racial sensitisation session in Chhatarapur, the mutual distrust between the Indian landlords and their African tenants was glaring.

“I’m scared,” said Nancy Joseph, a 23-year-old law student from South Sudan.

That fear keeps her from visiting friends at night. The autorickshaw driver may refuse to take her. Groups of Indian men could gather and call her vile names just for fun.

“Delhi is the worst city I’ve ever lived in,” said Eddie King, a student from Nigeria. He hasn’t made a single friend in the year that he has spent in the country.

“I can’t talk to my classmates. They won’t even answer me. They pretend they don’t understand.”

The landlords say African tenants drink all day and play loud music all night, characterisations that Africans dismiss as unfair.

“They stand drinking beer on the road. We feel scared crossing the area,” landlord Umed Singh said.

Whether this session succeeded in sensitising anyone was unclear. Police simply told both sides to try to understand each other.

King said he’ll leave India as soon as he finishes his studies next year.

“The African man cannot work with Indians. That’s just the truth,” he said.

Opeyemi, a 34-year-old soccer coach, said he will stay. It’s easier for him to earn a living here than in Nigeria, so he will endure the indignities.

Those include hearing someone call out “Habshi!” - the Hindi word for a black person - as he tries to get on a bus.

Recently, as he tried to park his car, someone called him “bandar” - a monkey.

“The security was looking but they said nothing,” Opeyemi said.

“We are scared. We don’t fight back because we know what will happen,” he said.

“They will break your head with a brick.”

AP

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‘Wrong man arrested’ in people-smuggling case

Posted: 09 Jun 2016 04:22 AM PDT

A broadcaster in Sweden is raising questions about whether Italian authorities arrested the wrong man in a major people-smuggling investigation.

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Stockholm - An Eritrean broadcaster based in Sweden is raising questions about whether Italian authorities have arrested the wrong man in a major people-smuggling investigation.

Meron Estefanos, who is well known in the worldwide Eritrean refugee community, tells The Associated Press that scores of people, including relatives of the man extradited to Italy on Wednesday, told her he is Medhanie Tesfamariam Kidane, an Eritrean refugee, not Medhane Yehdego Mered, a prime suspect in the transport of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe.

Contacted about the reports on Wednesday night, Palermo, Italy, chief prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi said he hadn’t heard them and had no reason to believe Italy had the wrong man.

Britain’s National Crime Agency, which was involved in the investigation, said it was aware of a Guardian report that the wrong man was arrested but that it was too soon to speculate about the claims.

AP

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Militants ‘kill 43’ in attack on AU base

Posted: 09 Jun 2016 04:01 AM PDT

Somalia's al-Shabaab militant group said it rammed a suicide car bomb into an AU military base and killed 43 Ethiopian soldiers.

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Mogadishu - Somalia's al-Shabaab militant group said it rammed a suicide car bomb into an African Union military base, stormed inside and killed 43 Ethiopian soldiers on Thursday.

Residents near the base in the central town of Halgan said they heard a huge explosion and then heavy exchanges of gunfire shortly before dawn. Shots ran out at least an hour after the initial blast, they added.

There was no immediate comment from the African Union's AMISOM force, which is made up of troops from African nations supporting Somalia's Western-backed government and army in the fight against the al-Qaeda-linked militants.

“We understand there are casualties on both sides. AU forces fought back fiercely and repulsed al-Shabaab,” Somali military officer Major Abdifatah Elmi told Reuters from Bulaburde town in the region. But he said he did not have figures.

“Several residents were injured by stray bullets,” he said.

AMISOM usually says it is up to troop-contributing countries to announce casualties. In the past, casualty figures cited by al-Shabaab have been much higher than official numbers.

“Our fighters stormed the Halgan base of AMISOM,” al-Shabaab's military operations spokesman Abdiasis Abu Musab told Reuters. He said the group used a suicide car bomb and then militants had exchanged fire with Ethiopian troops there.

He said “several” al-Shabaab fighters died, but did not give a number.

“It was a huge blast. It destroyed the gate and parts of the base,” the spokesman said, adding al-Shabaab fighters overran the base and drove out the Ethiopian troops before withdrawing.

Al Shabaab fighters also repelled a counter attack by Djibouti troops deployed from another base in the area, he said.

The group often launches gun and bomb attacks on officials, Somali security forces and AMISOM in a bid to topple the government and impose its own strict interpretation of Islam on Somalia.

In January, Kenyan troops serving with AMISOM suffered heavy losses when al-Shabaab made a dawn raid on their camp in El Adde, near the Kenyan border.

Al-Shabaab said it killed more than 100 soldiers but Kenya gave no exact casualty figure.

Reuters

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Liberia ‘is again free of Ebola’

Posted: 09 Jun 2016 04:00 AM PDT

Liberia was free of Ebola, meaning there are no known cases of the deadly tropical virus left in west Africa, the health ministry said.

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Monrovia - Liberia's health ministry said on Thursday the country was free of Ebola, meaning there are no known cases of the deadly tropical virus left in west Africa.

“Liberia is again free of Ebola. We have just ended the incubation period following the last case,” Sorbor George, chief of communication at the ministry, told AFP.

Liberia was the country worst hit by the outbreak, with more than 4 800 people killed.

At its peak in 2014, Ebola sparked anxiety about a possible global pandemic and led some governments to threaten or unilaterally enforce travel bans to and from the worst-affected countries - Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Guinea was declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organisation on June 1 and Sierra Leone on March 17.

In all, the virus affected 10 countries, including the United States and Spain, with more than 28 000 cases reported.

The Liberian health ministry called on people to remain vigilant in order to avoid another outbreak in the future, with the all-clear given only for new cases to be registered.

“We have been carrying on a sensitisation campaign. This campaign will continue, and we will still be in readiness to contain any eventual outbreak,” Sorbor George said.

AFP

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Six children die during baptism in Zimbabwe

Posted: 08 Jun 2016 11:36 PM PDT

Six children died while being baptised in Muriwo village, police said, adding that the organisers of the event had tried to flee before being caught.

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Harare - Six children died while being baptised in a river in eastern Zimbabwe, police said on Wednesday, adding that the organisers of the event had tried to flee before being caught.

The two boys and four girls were among nine children aged between one and nine who were taken for baptism by two members of an apostolic church.

“Six juveniles died during baptism in Muriwo village in Mashonaland East (province) on Tuesday,” police spokeswoman Charity Charamba said in a statement.

“We would like to warn members of the public to desist from engaging in dangerous practices under the guise of freedom of worship.”

A four-year-old boy escaped from the river shivering with cold and alerted a passer-by, she said.

“After realising the children were dead, the culprits ran away from the scene but they were later arrested. They are being charged with culpable homicide.”

Local media said those arrested were two women aged 30 and 34.

Apostolic churches and sects in Zimbabwe have grown in popularity in Zimbabwe, which has suffered from years of economic decline.

AFP

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Chadian troops arrive in troubled Niger

Posted: 08 Jun 2016 11:32 PM PDT

The first of an expected 2 000 troops from Chad began arriving in Niger following a deadly attack by Boko Haram insurgents in Bosso.

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Abidjan - The first of an expected 2 000 troops from regional military powerhouse Chad began arriving in neighbouring Niger on Wednesday, where Boko Haram insurgents inflicted heavy losses in the town of Bosso last week, a local security source said.

Chad is a leading member of a multi-national force fighting the Nigeria-based Islamist fighters who have extended their attacks to neighbouring countries from their base in northern Nigeria.

“The first Chadian soldiers have already arrived in Bosso on board around 30 heavily-armed all-terrain vehicles,” the source said.

A Chadian military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the troops will “search everywhere for Boko Haram”.

The planned offensive comes after Boko Haram on Friday attacked a military post in Bosso in Niger's Diffa region, killing 26 soldiers including two from neighbouring Nigeria, in one of its deadliest attacks in Niger that sent tens of thousands fleeing.

A total of 55 insurgents were killed in the fighting and “many” injured, according to Niger authorities.

On Tuesday, witnesses near Bosso said Boko Haram remained in control of the town though the Niger government had said the previous day that “Bosso was totally under control.”

In the regional capital, Diffa, about 140 kilometres to the west, teacher Ari Issa said he had seen many fighter planes.

Local radio Anfani said “military planes are coming and going between Lake Chad and Diffa airport”.

There was no immediate confirmation from the Chadian army.

Last year, Chad dispatched soldiers to Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon to fight Boko Haram. The multi-national force includes the four countries.

About 50 000 people have fled the Bosso area, UN refugee agency (UNHCR) spokesman Adrian Edwards said Tuesday.

Boko Haram's seven-year insurgency has left at least 20 000 people dead in Nigeria and made more than 2.6 million homeless, leading to calls for more support within the region.

The UNHCR said most of those fleeing the violence in Bosso had walked to Toumour, some 30 kilometres to the west.

In Abidjan on Wednesday, the medical charity Doctors Without Borders called for urgent help for those displaced in Bosso, saying they were short of water and food as well as medicine.

A local journalist working with Radio Anfani told AFP earlier this week that on Tuesday he was sheltering in Toumour with no food, along with many others who had fled the violence.

“The Boko Haram gunmen stayed in Bosso from 6.30pm (17.30 GMT) on Friday to 3.00am on Saturday, burning the military barracks, police facilities and local administration office before looting shops and carting away food supplies,” he said.

He said the gunmen used heavy artillery which allowed them to overrun the town's garrison.

“They came in large numbers shouting 'Allahu Akbar' (God is greatest),” he said.

AFP

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Al-Shabaab attack base of Ethiopian troops

Posted: 08 Jun 2016 11:32 PM PDT

Somalia al-Shabaab militants reportedly stormed into a base used by Ethiopian troops in the latest assault on soldiers serving with AMISOM.

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Mogadishu - Somalia al-Shabaab militants stormed into a base used by Ethiopian troops after ramming a suicide car bomb into the entrance on Thursday in the latest assault on soldiers serving with the African Union's AMISOM force, the Islamist group said.

The base at Halgan town lies in a region of central Somalia about 300km north of the capital, Mogadishu.

Residents said they heard a huge explosion at the base and a heavy exchange of gunfire shortly before dawn.

They reported gunfire could still be heard at least an hour after the initial blast.

“Our fighters stormed the Halgan base of AMISOM,” al-Shabaab's military operations spokesman Abdiasis Abu Musab told Reuters.

He said the group used a suicide car bomb and then militants had exchanged fire with Ethiopian troops there.

“It was a huge blast. It destroyed the gate and parts of the base,” he said.

AMISOM had no immediate comment.

The group often launches gun and bomb attacks on officials, Somali security forces and AMISOM in a bid to topple the Western-backed government and impose its own strict interpretation of Islam on Somalia.

In January, Kenyan troops serving with AMISOM suffered heavy losses when al-Shabaab made a dawn raid on their camp in El Adde, near the Kenyan border.

Al-Shabaab said it killed more than 100 soldiers but Kenya gave no exact casualty figure.

Reuters

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