South Africa, one of the continent’s most industrialized nations, is facing the worst electricity blackouts in its history. One of South Africa’s biggest industries — mining — is turning to solar power to keep operations running when power requirements fall short. Linda Givetash reports from Johannesburg
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Ethiopia’s government-funded human rights commission says security forces killed dozens of civilians following clashes with rebels in the country’s Gambella region in June.

According to the state-appointed rights body’s report published Thursday, the killings happened after an hourslong gun battle June 14 between regional security forces and militants from the Oromo Liberation Army and rebel groups from the Gambella Liberation Front.

After the OLA and GLF militants withdrew from the city, Gambella regional security force members searched houses and targeted civilians whom they accused of harboring weapons and fighters, the rights commission said.

The 13-page report concluded “at least 50 civilians” were killed “individually and in mass extrajudicial executions” by regional security forces between June 14 and June 16.

The bodies were then buried “en masse” with relatives denied access to them, said the commission, which also found that security force members had looted homes.

At the time, a Gambella city resident told VOA that he could hear sporadic shooting from his home in the days following the rebel groups’ assault.

Abel Adane, the Gambella office head for the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, said the killings took place in several locations across the city.

“Some people were killed at their homes, and some others were killed when they were walking on the streets of the town. For instance, one of the findings of our report is that one special force and city police of the regional government killed at least 11 civilians, all just in one house,” said Adane.

Abel added that several other people were taken to the local police commission where they were subsequently killed.

The report from the human rights commission was based on interviews with 58 people, including eyewitnesses and relatives of victims.

It also concluded that the OLA and the GLF rebel groups killed seven civilians while in the city, adding that six more people died after they were caught in crossfire.

A message to a government spokesperson requesting comment went unanswered.

Gambella’s regional police commission has said the rebels were responsible for the killings in the town.
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A frail 87-year-old Rwandan accused of encouraging and bankrolling the country’s 1994 genocide goes on trial at a United Nations tribunal Thursday, nearly three decades after the 100-day massacre left 800,000 dead.

Félicien Kabuga is one of the last fugitives charged over the genocide to face justice, and the start of his trial marks a key day of reckoning for Rwandans who survived the killings or whose families were murdered.

Naphtal Ahishakiye, the executive secretary of a genocide survivors’ group known as Ibuka, said it’s never too late for justice to be delivered.

“Even with money and protection, one cannot escape a genocide crime,” Ahishakiye said in Rwanda ahead of Thursday’s trial at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague.

The mass killing of Rwanda’s Tutsi minority was triggered on April 6, 1994, when a plane carrying President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down and crashed in the capital Kigali, killing the leader who, like the majority of Rwandans, was an ethnic Hutu. Kabuga’s daughter married Habyarimana’s son.

The Tutsi minority was blamed for downing the plane. Bands of Hutu extremists began slaughtering Tutsis and their perceived supporters, with help from the army, police, and militias.

Kabuga’s 15-page indictment alleges that, as a wealthy businessman with close links to the Hutu political elite, he incited genocide through the broadcaster he helped establish and fund, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM). He’s also accused of having paid for weapons, including machetes, used by militias to slaughter Tutsis and their perceived supporters.

The indictment says Kabuga and others at the radio station “operated RTLM in a manner that furthered hatred and violence against Tutsi and others perceived as ‘accomplices’ or ‘allies’ … and agreed to disseminate an anti-Tutsi message with the goal to eliminate the Tutsi ethnic group in Rwanda.”

In some cases, the broadcaster provided locations of Tutsis so they could be hunted down and killed, according to the indictment.

“RTLM broadcasts glorified this violence, celebrating killings, praising killers and encouraging perpetrators to continue the violence at roadblocks and other locations,” the indictment says.

It also accuses him of arming and supporting Hutu extremist “Interahamwe” militias, including one unit known as “Kabuga’s Interahamwe.”

Kabuga is charged with genocide, incitement to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide as well as persecution, extermination and murder. He has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

After years of evading international efforts to track him down, Kabuga, who had a $5 million bounty on his head, was arrested near Paris in May 2020. He was transferred to The Hague to stand trial at the residual mechanism, a court that deals with remaining cases from the now-closed U.N. tribunals for Rwanda and the Balkan wars.

Kabuga’s lawyers argued unsuccessfully that he was not fit to stand trial. However, on the advice of doctors who examined Kabuga, the process will run for just two hours per day.

Yolande Mukakasana, a genocide survivor and writer who lost her entire family in the genocide, said the case has come too late for many survivors who have died since the slaughter.

“Men and women of Kabuga’s age were found in bed and murdered. Shame (upon) his sympathizers who cite his old age as a reason not to (stand) trial,” she said.

Genocide survivor Justin Rugabwa told The AP that five members of his family escaped into hiding for several days during the genocide until Kabuga’s radio station revealed their whereabouts.

“When their names were read out on radio and hiding places revealed, the militias came and all died that day,” Rugabwa recalled.
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Sudan’s public prosecution has launched legal proceedings against a prominent newspaper and the bar association, triggering complaints that authorities are trying to restrict basic freedoms nearly a year after a coup.

On Monday, the public prosecution’s cybercrimes unit issued an order to block the website of Al-Sudani newspaper, one of the country’s most respected dailies.

A day earlier, the prosecution called the head of the steering committee for the Sudanese Bar Association in for questioning and ordered the seizure of its headquarters, a lawyer for the group said.

The public prosecutor’s media office did not respond to a phone call from Reuters.

Following the military takeover on October 25, 2021, scores of veterans who served under Sudan’s former ruling party began returning to the civil service, including within the public prosecutor’s office, justice department and foreign ministry.

The takeover put in question a widening of political freedoms in Sudan since the ousting of former autocratic leader Omar al-Bashir in a 2019 uprising.

“We learned about the prosecutor’s order through social media, and it was surprising because we were not informed of any complaint against the newspaper,” Al-Sudani editor-in-chief Ataf Mohamed Mukhtar said.

Mukhtar said the newspaper, whose website was still operating Wednesday, would fight the order, which he said could be issued only by the courts.

“This order goes against the right to free speech and free press that is guaranteed by the law,” he added.

The bar association had recently developed a proposal for a new constitution to resolve Sudan’s political crisis, which has seen the military locked in a standoff with pro-democracy civilian parties and protesters.

Lawyer Satie Al-Haj told Reuters a lawyer had made a complaint over the association’s financial disclosures. The association had secured a block on the order to seize the association’s headquarters, he said. 

“What is happening is an organized attack on freedoms by the remnants of the old regime who are trying to return to power,” Al-Haj said.
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Medical aid group Doctors Without Borders has called on the United Nations to add northwest Nigeria to its humanitarian response plan, due to high numbers of children suffering from malnutrition. The group, known by its French abbreviation MSF, said it has treated nearly 100,000 children in the region for malnutrition this year.

In a communique Tuesday, MSF warned that malnutrition among children in northwest Nigeria is at catastrophic levels and called for an immediate response from the global humanitarian community.

MSF even proposed that northwest Nigeria be included in the U.N.’s annual humanitarian response plan.

It’s the second time in three months that the medical aid group has raised serious concerns about the malnutrition crisis in Nigeria, following an alarm about northeast Nigeria in July.

Northwest Nigeria has been hard-hit by militant attacks and raids by kidnap-for-ransom gangs since late 2020.

MSF also said climate change and soaring food prices have made matters worse.

“We have scaled our response. We’re almost at a limit basically because we cannot handle this alone,” said Froukje Pelsma, MSF’s head of mission in Nigeria. “This is why we’re asking for more people to come.”

Pelsma said there are more than 30 organizations working in the northeastern part of the country but only three or four agencies in the northwest working on malnutrition.

“We want people, most especially the U.N. and other agencies, to look beyond the northeast,” she said.

MSF said it has admitted 17,000 children into 10 feeding centers across five states in the region.

Zamfara State has been the most impacted, with a 64 percent increase in the number of severely malnourished children this year compared to 2021.

“We’re working now in Kebbi, Sokoto Zamfara, Katsina and in Kano, but we’re still also very much afraid and pretty sure that we only see the top of the iceberg,” Pelsma said. “We can see numbers, but that doesn’t mean that that covers the whole issue, because we cannot be in every location.”

For years, humanitarian responses have been centered around northeastern states, especially Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, where the militant group Boko Haram has been active since 2009.

This week, top officials of the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) met in the capital to highlight problems of food security, with the goal of strengthening responses, using agriculture.

“There’s a lot to be done. This is a country where we have quite a big segment geographically that is affected by different forms of conflict,” said Fred Kafeero, FAO representative in Nigeria. “But how do we intervene in terms of strengthening and responding to that humanitarian emergency and moving towards resilience building? Much of our work is also looking at the root causes and trying to strengthen and build sustainability in the process.”

On Wednesday, MSF is taking part in a high-level humanitarian coordination team meeting with top officials of the United Nations.
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Burkina Faso says an Islamist militant attack on an aid convoy has left 11 troops dead and dozens of civilians missing. 

The Burkina Faso government said Tuesday that armed fighters ambushed a 150-vehicle military-escorted convoy carrying supplies to the northern town of Djibo.

It said at least 11 soldiers were killed and more than 50 civilians are missing.

The government said that the incident occurred Monday in the commune of Gaskinde in the northern province of Soum, where, since 2015, armed organizations affiliated with al-Qaida and Islamic State have taken over large swathes of territory.

Government spokesman Lionel Bilgo described the incident as “cowardly and savage.”

The death toll could reach 60, according to French news agency AFP, which cited a security source who said “practically the entire caravan was burned.”

The attack will likely exacerbate shortages of basic supplies, such as food and fuel in Djibo, which has been under a de facto siege for months by militant groups.

It may also increase concern about Burkina Faso, where some two million people are displaced amid increasing conflict and climate change.
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As Uganda reports more deaths from the latest Ebola outbreak in the country, medical interns at the hospital handling most of the cases have gone on strike. The interns say they are not being provided with adequate personal protective equipment against the deadly virus, which causes a hemorrhagic fever. Uganda’s health ministry has so far confirmed five deaths and 18 probable fatalities out of 36 cases.

Ugandan Health officials say they are holding talks with striking interns at central Mubende district’s hospital, which is handling most of the country’s spreading Ebola outbreak.

President for the Federation for Uganda Medical Interns, Dr. Musa Lumumba, says there is not enough personal protective gear for the interns at the hospital.

Speaking to VOA by phone, he called on Uganda’s Ministry of Health to urgently address the issue to protect doctors-in-training. 

“The issue of not having accommodation, so they stay in communities, which communities have got cases of Ebola,” Lumumba said. Protection of those at the frontline. And those at the frontline are the health care workers.”

Uganda Medical Association President, Dr. Samuel Oledo, told VOA one intern, three staff, and a medical student have been confirmed for exposure to the virus and at least three senior health officers (SHO) are showing symptoms.  

“We have 34 interns in Mubende.  And we have less than 12 doctors employed on the ground,” Oledo said. “If you have interns and they are pulling out at once, it’s catastrophic.  And the justifications are clear, honestly.  Results have come out today and one of the SHOs who actually performed surgeries with one of the interns on one case has become positive of Ebola.”

Oledo said they suspect as many as 104 medical students in Mubende hospital have been exposed to the virus.   

Uganda’s Ministry of Health has yet to confirm the exposures and infections of students and staff at the hospital.   

Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Ainebyoona denied there is a lack of protective equipment there to guard against Ebola.  

“All the protective gear to safeguard their life is available,” Ainebyoona said. “But like [with] any other infectious disease, fear will be expected. But we are working to ensure that we engage and counsel.  And ensure that there are teams to respond.”

Despite the spreading virus, Uganda’s Health Ministry said the situation is under control but acknowledged that three people suspected of being infected with the virus fled Mubende’s isolation unit on Monday.

Officials say security has been beefed up since to avoid a repeat. 

Uganda’s Ebola outbreak was first detected last week in Mubende, a central district, but has since spread to neighboring districts Kyegegwa and Kasanda.  

Some schools in Kyegegwa have shut down for two weeks to protect students.

First reports of a possible Ebola outbreak came from Kyegegwa’s Kyaka 11 refugee camp, raising alarm bells of a possible quick spread in the packed camp.  

But testing ruled out an outbreak in the camp.  

After Mubende’s cases were confirmed, the U.N.’s Refugee Agency UNHCR said it added controlled entry measures at refugee settlements.

“We are stepping up some assistance programs that had been curtailed due to lack of funding since July,” said Matthew Crentsil, the UNHCR Uganda representative. “That is procurement of soap. You would agree with me, this is fundamental in curbing the spread of Ebola.”

Uganda has yet to identify the source of the Ebola outbreak, which is the Sudan strain of the virus.  

The Sudan strain is less common than the Zaire strain and has no current, effective vaccine.

Uganda’s last Ebola outbreak in 2019 was the Zaire strain.  It last reported a Sudan strain outbreak in 2012.
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A Kenyan lawyer who was charged with bribing and threatening witnesses who were to testify against the country’s current president, William Ruto, has been found dead.

Kenyan police and family members of Paul Gicheru confirmed his death Monday night to local media.

It was not immediately clear what caused the 50-year-old lawyer’s death, and a police spokesman did not answer our calls.

The Kenyan Human Rights Commission told VOA news Gicheru’s death while he faced a trial before the International Criminal Court for alleged witness tampering is quite unfortunate. Senior program advisor Martin Mavenjina.

“It’s unfortunate that he has passed on under mysterious circumstances. As we speak right now there have not been conclusive investigations surrounding the circumstances of his death,” Mavenjina said.

Mavenjina says that he’s been keeping up on Gicheru for a long time and death is a big surprise. 

“I have been keenly following Paul Gicheru since he surrendered to the ICC,” Mavenjina said. “At no point in time have we been informed that Paul Gicheru had any health conditions or underlying health conditions or was sick at any point in time. We received this news in shock yesterday because the way it was reported you know he was found dead at his house with foam coming out of his mouth.”

Gicheru was facing charges of bribing and threatening witnesses in a case against Kenya’s newly-elected president, William Ruto, and broadcaster Joshua Sang.

Ruto and Sang were among several Kenyans, including former president Uhuru Kenyatta, who were charged with prompting violence in the 2007 disputed election.

Street clashes over the election left more than 1,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.

The ICC declared a mistrial in 2016, citing witness tampering, and a trial against Gicheru and Sang began in February with Gicheru pleading not guilty.

ICC spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told VOA he could not comment on Gicheru’s case until the confirmation of Gicheru’s death was submitted by Kenyan authorities to the trial chamber. 

A statement issued by the Law Society of Kenya urged the inspector general of the National Police Service to ensure that thorough investigations are conducted. It goes on to say that it’s in the public domain that several witnesses in the ICC cases have either disappeared or died, therefore there is significant public interest in knowing what caused Gicheru’s death. 

The group also wished a speedy recovery to Gicheru’s son, who was reportedly in the same house with his father at the time of his death and has been admitted to the hospital in critical condition. 
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Prominent Egyptian Islamist cleric Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, a major force behind the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions across the Middle East, died Monday in Qatar at age 96, leaving Islamists across the region without a spiritual mentor.

Known to many as a prominent force in the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions thata toppled veteran Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, Tunisia’s President Zine al Abidine Ben Ali and Libyan leader Moammar al Gaddafi, Sheikh al-Qaradawi is remembered for calling on those leaders to “step down” on Al Jazeera TV.

Al-Qaradawi, who was a top figure in Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood group, lived in exile in Qatar for the latter part of his life, where he headed an association of world Islamic clerics and hosted a religious program on Qatar’s Al Jazeera network.

The often jovial and avuncular Egyptian cleric could also spew tirades of vitriol and hatred against “despotic Arab leaders” making him persona non grata in his native Egypt and a number of European countries, where he was often not allowed to address conferences of fellow Islamists.

Al-Qaradawi is remembered by many for his angry and bitter sermons where he justified the killing of Jews, calling Israel an evil state and urging that it be destroyed.

Al-Qaradawi also spoke frequently on his Islamic religious TV show, where he answered questions on Islamic law, justifying things like the killing of gays and lesbians and the beating of wives by their husbands.

After the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the civil war that broke out in Syria in 2011, al-Qaradawi told viewers of his TV program that suicide bombings were permitted in Islam, despite verses in the Quran that prohibit individuals from killing themselves.

Numerous Islamic clerics opposed al-Qaradawi’s views, posting YouTube videos to criticize or condemn his positions on a variety of issues. Al-Qaradawi’s support for the setup of Islamic regimes in the Middle East met bitter opposition in his homeland of Egypt, as well as parts of the Gulf and North Africa.

Egyptian professor of political sociology Said Sadek tells VOA that he thinks that al-Qaradawi was mistakenly credited with the downfall of Egyptian President Mubarak, as well as Tunisian President Ben Ali — who he says were “toppled after 16 days of street protests.”

“What made [al] Qaradawi famous in the Arab world, more than his books, was his weekly program on Jazeera TV that promoted him and presented him like the [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini of the Sunni world and that he is the one who should guide the Muslim world,” Sadek said. “But in Sunni Islam it is different from Shia Islam. We had many others who were competing for this post.”

Sadek added that al-Qaradawi died at a time “when Islamic projects in the area were collapsing in places like Egypt, in Tunisia, in Morocco, and now fighting for survival in Iran.” He said secularists “don’t generally gloat about the demise of Islamists, but many see his death as part of a general decline of the Islamist wave which hit the region after 1967 and began declining after 2013 (following a street revolt against Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood).
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Somalia’s state media on Monday said the military has pushed al-Shabab terrorists out of large parts of the country’s central area in the latest gains in a large-scale offensive. 

An offensive by the Somali tribal militia backed by the Somali government was launched in the Hiran region a few weeks ago against al-Shabab militants, liberating several key townships before moving on to Galgaduud and then the Bay region in the south.  

There has been significant progress in the liberation of 40 settlements in the Hiran region alone, with the support of the Somali government’s military commandos trained by the United States. 

However, the actual fight is taken up by the clan-based, state-supported independent Macawisley militia as part of the popular uprising against militants. 

Local militia members formally linked to the southwest administration of Somalia captured four settlements on the outskirts of Baidoa in the Bay region from militants with the support of the Somali national army forces Monday, proving that the uprising against the group has now expanded to the south. 

State-run media reported Monday that Busley, Bulo-Jadid, Matani and Usli were among the newly liberated villages. 

In an appearance on a talk show hosted by a local TV station Sunday, Ahmed Moallim Fiqi, the interior minister of the Somalia government, said the Somali army and local militia tribes had defeated militants in central Somalia after liberating much of the Hiran and Galgaduud regions. 

He noted that 40 settlements in Hiran and six more in Galgaduud had been liberated in less than three weeks, deeming this work commendable. 

“Our forces seized territory from militants which stretches over 40 settlements including villages, places where fewer people live and others where more people live,” he said. “These 40 settlements are located only in the Hiran region and a new operation has been launched in the Galgaduud region to liberate more territories, and you can imagine what happened yesterday and today when militants fled their dead comrades and ammunition, and so far, six villages have been liberated, and this only started yesterday.” 

VOA has not independently verified the Somali government claims. 

The Somali military gains come just one day after al-Qaida-linked militants attacked a training camp, killing one soldier and wounding six others. 

The Somali government’s campaign to regain control of the country comes at a time when the country is experiencing a raging drought, which U.N. officials warn will lead to famine within months. 

 
…

South African protesters angry over water shortages shut down part of the country’s longest highway with rock barricades and burning tires.

Police described the situation in Ventersburg in the Free State province as volatile. The rural town is a popular refueling and resting place for motorists and truckers travelling on the N1 highway, which stretches from Cape Town in the south to the Beit Bridge border post with Zimbabwe in the north.

Warrant Officer Loraine Earle says the Welkom Public Order Policing Unit is on the ground monitoring the situation. She says they have spoken to some of the protesters and asked about their demands.

“They started this morning to protest. It’s because of the water situation in town. It’s now for the past few weeks that they don’t have water,” she said. “Members are on the scene. They’re monitoring the situation and nobody was arrested as yet.”

She says they have had water problems in Ventersburg on-and-off for the past seven weeks with no water for the past three weeks.

Those using the highway at Ventersburg have been advised to take alternative routes.
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At least one soldier was killed and six others injured in Somalia on Sunday when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a military base in the west of the capital Mogadishu, a soldier and a hospital worker told Reuters.

Somalia’s al-Qaida-allied group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the bombing.

The suicide bomber had disguised himself as a regular soldier and joined others as they filed into a military base early Sunday before he detonated the explosive, Captain Aden Omar, a soldier at the military base told Reuters.

“We lost one soldier and several others were injured. The bomber blew up himself at a checkpoint,” he said.

A nurse at Madina Hospital in Mogadishu told Reuters they had received one dead soldier and six others who were wounded.

Al-Shabab claimed it had killed 32 soldiers.

“A Mujahid suicide bomber killed 32 apostate soldiers and injured over 40 others inside a base in Mogadishu today,” Al Andalus radio station, which is affiliated with the group, said, quoting Abdiasis Abu Musab, al-Shabab’s military operations spokesperson.

Abu Musab said they had targeted the base because recruitment activity was being conducted there.

The Islamist group frequently carries out bombings and gun attacks in Somalia and elsewhere.

Al-Shabab wants to topple Somalia’s central government and establish its own rule based on its own strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law.
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At least 11 people, including eight police and a local chief, have been killed in drought-stricken northern Kenya by cattle rustlers whom they had been chasing, police said Sunday. 

The theft of livestock or quarrels over grazing and water sources are common between cattle herding communities in northern Kenya.  

Police said on Twitter that a “criminal and cowardly ambush” by cattle rustlers had taken place in Turkana county on Saturday. 

Eight of the dead were police officers, two were civilians and one a local chief, they said. 

The police who were killed had been pursuing members of the Pokot ethnic group who had attacked a village and fled with cattle. 

In November 2012, more than 40 policemen were killed in an ambush as they pursued cattle thieves in Baragoi, a remote district in Kenya’s arid north. 

And in August 2019, at least 12 people, including three children, were killed in two attacks in northern Kenya by cattle rustlers suspected to be from the Borana ethnic group. 

Kenya, the most dynamic economy in East Africa, is in the grip of the worst drought in four decades after four failed rainy seasons wiped out livestock and crops
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A gang of armed men killed at least 15 people at a mosque in northwest Nigeria’s Zamfara state, residents said Saturday.

The attack in the Bukkuyum local government area took place during Friday prayers at the Jumu’at central mosque in Ruwan Jema town, three residents told Reuters.

“The armed bandits came on motorbikes while holding their guns and moved straight to the mosque and began to shoot sporadically [at] us,” resident Amimu Mustapha said.

Another resident who asked not to be named said the attack took place at roughly 2 p.m. local time, adding there were many others injured.

A representative for the Zamfara state police did not immediately respond to calls or text messages seeking to confirm the residents’ reports.

In August, Ruwan Jema residents said they gave bandits 9 million naira ($21,000), petrol and cigarettes with the promise that the men would leave them alone.

Gangs of heavily armed men, known locally as bandits, have wreaked havoc across northwest Nigeria in the past two years, kidnapping thousands, killing hundreds and making it unsafe to travel by road or farm in some areas.

The attacks have confounded overstretched security forces. The military last week warned residents in Zamfara and two other states to leave forested areas ahead of a bombing campaign targeting bandits and terrorists.
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A 48-hour strike by air traffic controllers in West and Central Africa has been suspended, their union said Saturday. 

The strike, which started Friday, has disrupted flights across the region and left hundreds of passengers stranded at airports Saturday. 

The Union of Air Traffic Controllers’ Unions (USYCAA), which called the wildcat strike, said in a statement it decided to suspend its strike notice for 10 days immediately so as to allow for negotiations. 

“Air traffic services will be provided in all air spaces and airports managed by ASECNA from today Saturday, September 24, 2022 at 1200 GMT,” the statement said. 

The union said more than 700 air traffic controllers joined the strike to demand better working conditions and pay. 

The controllers work under the Agency for Aerial Navigation Safety in Africa and Madagascar (ASECNA) an 18-member state agency that manages air traffic over an area covering 16 million square km of airspace. 

Stranded passengers

Across the region, airport operations ground to a near halt as authorities tried to keep control towers operational for some flights. 

Hundreds of passengers were stranded at Douala International Airport in Cameroon Saturday morning, national television CRTV reported. National carrier Camair-Co said Friday it had canceled all its flights because of the strike. 

Nsoh Brinston, a stranded passenger who was to fly to Kigali, Rwanda, said his flight has canceled.  

“I will have to spend more than I intended due to the canceled flight. I will have to do another COVID test, which costs 30,000 CFA francs ($45),” he said.  

He would also have to find a place to spend the night. 

West, central Africa affected

In Senegal, the airport departure board showed cancellations for flights operated by Brussels Airlines, Kenyan Airways and Emirates as passengers gathered to check if their flight was still on schedule.  

A group of students from Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, who were due to fly back home from Dakar said they were stuck at the airport because they could not afford the fare to the city, around 50 km from the airport.  

“We were supposed to board at 0900 GMT but we’re still here,” one of the students said, requesting to remain anonymous. “We have been told the situation could be resolved by tomorrow.” 

“I was supposed to leave at 1400 GMT. The flight was announced as scheduled but we have just been told that it has been canceled,” said Maxine Compaore, who was supposed to fly to Abidjan, Ivory Coast. 

In Ivory Coast, eight flights scheduled to leave the commercial hub of Abidjan Saturday were canceled.  
…

A presidential poll in the separatist Somali region of Somaliland has been postponed for “technical and financial reasons,” the electoral commission said Saturday.

Muse Bihi Abdi was elected president of the self-proclaimed republic on the Horn of Africa on a five-year mandate in 2017 and the election was scheduled for November 13, a month before his term expires.

But the head of the electoral commission, Muse Yusuf, said technical and financial issues meant the poll could not go ahead.

Yusuf told a news conference in the capital Hargeisa that electoral lists were yet to be drawn up and “in such a short time frame it is not possible to organize the election.”

The commission did not indicate a potential new date, saying only there would be “a nine-month delay from October 1, 2022.”

Opposition candidate Faysal Ali Warabe backed Saturday’s move.

“I support the decision of the commission to hold the presidential election with a nine-month delay,” he tweeted, while refusing to countenance any extension of the president’s mandate.

Political analyst Barkhad Ismael said however that legislative authorities “are probably going to prolong the president’s mandate in the coming weeks.”

The run-up to the scheduled poll was marred when several people were killed and dozens wounded early last month after police fired on anti-government demonstrators in several towns, according to opposition party members and witnesses.

Hundreds of people protested after opposition parties accused the authorities of seeking to delay the vote.

A previous vote, originally scheduled for 2015, was postponed until 2017 owing to severe drought and technical issues.

The former British protectorate declared independence from Somalia in 1991 but the move has not been recognized by the international community, leaving the Horn of Africa region of about 4 million people poor and isolated.

Despite the recent unrest, Somaliland has remained relatively stable whereas Somalia has been wracked by decades of civil war, political violence and an Islamist insurgency.
…

The Church of England said the daughter of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu could not be an officiant at her godfather’s funeral in England because she is married to a woman.

The Rev. Mpho Tutu van Furth told The New York Times that she was “stunned” by the church’s “lack of compassion.”

However, Tutu was able, in the end, to fulfil her godfather’s wish. She was able to officiate his funeral, as the service was moved from a church and was instead held in her godfather’s garden in Shropshire.

Martin Kenyon, Tutu’s 92-year-old godfather, died last week. His funeral was held Thursday.

Kenyon and Desmond Tutu became friends when they were both students at Kings College. The archbishop was Kenyon’s daughter’s godfather.
…

Most African states have stayed silent as Western nations and rights groups condemn China over a recent United Nations human rights report on China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region. 

The report, published by then-U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet on her last day in office in August, said China’s actions against Uyghurs and others in the Xinjiang region “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity,” citing abuses such as arbitrary detention in camps, torture and sexual violence.

Some Western nations and their allies are now pushing for the U.N. to establish a commission of inquiry to further investigate the report’s findings.  But whether that happens depends on the number of member states who side with the West. 

China’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Chen Xu, delivered a joint statement September 13, during the 51st session of the Human Rights Council, saying the Xinjiang assessment was “based on disinformation and draws erroneous conclusions.” The statement was signed by 28 other countries, with close to half of the supporters from African countries such as Burundi, Cameroon, Comoros, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Last year, out of 43 countries, only two in Africa, Eswatini and Liberia, signed a U.N. communique condemning China’s policies in Xinjiang. In June, they signed again, but they are rare outliers.

South Africa, the continent’s third-largest economy, neither signed the letter supporting China’s position nor staked out a position critical of China. Analysts told VOA that South Africa — seen as the continent’s leading democracy — has simply mostly remained silent on the issue.

“South Africa, with its proud tradition as a shining example for human rights, struggles now, saying nothing about China’s apartheid,” said Magnus Fiskesjo, an associate professor at Cornell University’s Department of Anthropology, alluding to a system of discrimination and segregation that took place in South Africa from 1948 to 1994 

Officials from South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation did not respond to VOA’s request for comment.

Siding with China

Cobus van Staden, a China-Africa expert at the South African Institute of International Affairs, said that because of China’s economic clout, most African countries simply don’t want to “pick a fight” over Xinjiang, which, to many, seems far away. 

“We’ve seen most African countries side with China, and this includes a lot of majority Muslim countries. … In terms of how the African partners will vote on the human rights council [if there is a vote], I tend to fear that they will probably vote with China,” he said.

There are reasons for this, he said. China is Africa’s biggest trade partner, far outstripping the West, and a lot of African countries “tend to be quite suspicious of separatist movements and quite suspicious of militant or political Islam.” Nigeria, for example, has been plagued by Islamist militant groups.

Analysts say some African countries can relate to China’s position, as stated by the state-run Xinhua news agency, that “Xinjiang-related issues are not about human rights, ethnicity or religion at all but about combating violent terrorism and separatism.”

Van Staden said that it all plays into the wider animus between the West and its former colonies on the continent, with some African states seeing the West’s raising of rights issues such as Xinjiang as hypocritical considering the United States’ rights violations at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. 

African nations, according to observers, are also unwilling to alienate China, their Belt and Road initiative benefactor and the source of massive infrastructure loans.

Beijing has been offering African diplomats trips to the Xinjiang region, trying to present its position. Xinhua reported last year that ambassadors to China from the Republic of Congo and Sudan defended Beijing’s “anti-terrorism” efforts at a lecture in Beijing. Burkina Faso’s ambassador to China, Adama Compaore, reportedly said “Western forces” were “hyping up” the issue.”

Zeenat Adam, deputy executive director of the Afro-Middle East Center in Johannesburg and a former South African diplomat, said such tours by China are “a very strong marketing exercise of trying to continue their reach into Africa and by getting countries from within the African region … to see things from a Chinese government perspective.”

“It ensures that their investments and their trade into Africa is unhindered and unquestioned,” she added. “Investments from China are lucrative, not just for South Africa but for the entire African region, and this really affects the level of which any of these governments may question the mighty Chinese superpower regarding its policies on Muslims.”

China’s Muslim supporters

Egypt is among the Muslim countries in Africa that have supported China on the Uyghur issue, says Bradley Jardine, a political analyst who focuses on China and recently published a study for the Wilson Center on China’s global campaign against the Uyghurs.

“Across the Muslim world, it’s a very diverse region with very diverse strategic interests,” he said. “There are a lot of economic interests at play, particularly [with] actors such as Egypt, who in 2017 detained hundreds of Uyghur students and deported them to China.” 

According to Jardine’s research, more than 1,500 Uyghurs abroad have been detained or extradited — many in North Africa.

Carine Kaneza Nantulya, Africa advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said she sees a slight decline in joint statements with China on the Xinjiang issue. “The number of signatories has not only plateaued but, in fact, recently dropped.”

“Plenty of other African states have abstained, declining to join China’s counternarrative,” she said, pointing to Eswatini and Liberia, who joined other countries in condemning China’s policies in Xinjiang. 
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Officials in South Sudan confirmed this month they have bought land on the coast of Djibouti to build a port. South Sudan says the port will be key for exporting the country’s crude oil, which currently goes through Sudan, as well as for importing goods, most of which come through the Kenyan port of Mombasa.

Puot Kang Chol, South Sudan’s minister of petroleum, said last week that the land was purchased for exporting crude oil.

“I would like to announce to all of you, that as we have been pushing to make sure we open all our ways because as we all know, South Sudan is a landlocked country and therefore there is need for us to try our level best to have access to the market,” he said.

Two other African Great Lakes countries, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, recently said they will shift their port operations to Tanzania, leaving just Rwanda and Burundi still fully dependent on the port of Mombasa.

Duncan Otieno, a Nairobi-based economist, said the move leaves Kenya in a difficult situation as it feels the pinch of competition from the regional port in Dar es Salaam and now Djibouti.

“There is every reason to believe that exit of South Sudan will affect the port of Mombasa in the essence that, with Uganda existing and considering the port of Dar es Salaam, that is likely to affect the operations in the port of Mombasa,” he said. “We need to ask ourselves what could have led to DRC and Uganda and now South Sudan considering giving the port of Mombasa a wide berth.”

South Sudanese economist Abraham Mamer said the Djibouti port will provide a cheaper route for South Sudanese exports and imports.

“In terms of economies of scale, we are better off than building another railway to connect us to Sudan,” he said. “We are saving to directly import or export our oil from the eastern part of South Sudan through Djibouti, Ethiopia. So, for us we are not losing, we are gaining, South Sudan is not land-locked, it is land-linked so it is OK.”

However, Otieno said Juba’s attempt to cut reliance on Mombasa might have ramifications within the East African Community bloc, such as undermining the LAPSET project, a regional cargo transportation network starting at the Kenyan port of Lamu.

“Every country is guided by its national interest, which changes from time to time,” he said. “But that also needs to be looked into within the geopolitics of the regional body, EAC. There is need to consider this because it runs the risk of affecting the economy of this region.”

Mamer, on the other hand, said that South Sudan’s acquisition of land for a port in Djibouti will have no impact on LAPSET.

He said South Sudan cannot afford to lose that project, which will connect the country with Rwanda and Uganda.

“If we have many ways to import and export our goods then we are the best,” he said. We are going to build a refinery where we are going to import and export our finished product. Even if we have Djibouti, it is a way we can import and export, so we are not losing we are maximizing our impact in the region.”

South Sudan has oil deposits estimated at 3.5 billion barrels. That means if the country could ever find a way to end its chronic state of conflict and increase oil production, the economic impact could be enormous — no matter which port the country uses for its exports. 
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An air traffic control strike grounded flights in and out of West and Central Africa on Friday, causing chaos for passengers traveling to Europe and the United States and inside the continent.  

Staff at the Agency for Aerial Navigation Safety in Africa and Madagascar (ASECNA), which regulates air traffic across 18 countries, stopped working Friday during a dispute over working conditions and pay, defying court rulings and government bans barring them from doing so. 

On Friday night, a busy one for travel, flights to and from Europe and the United States were halted, said Reuters’ reporters at Senegal’s Blaise Diagne International Airport and in the United States.  

Flights inside Africa were also affected, airlines and passengers said.  

ASECNA told customers to check airline websites for updates. 

“In spite of the prohibition of the strike by all the courts … the Union of Air Traffic Controllers’ Unions (USYCAA) has launched a wildcat strike,” ASECNA said Friday. 

“We have already exhausted both administrative and institutional remedies in the management of this crisis, but we have in front of us trade unionists who are stubborn to do whatever they want,” ASECNA’s head of human resources, Ceubah Guelpina, told a news conference.  

The USYCAA union said in a statement that its members would cease providing services to all but “sensitive” flights until their demands were satisfied. 

Paul Francois Gomis, a leader of Senegalese air traffic controllers who were on strike, said that some union members in Cameroon, Congo and the Comoros had been arrested for participating in the strike. 

Air Senegal had grounded several flights as a result of the action, Reuters said. The airline could not be immediately reached for comment.  

Flights to the United States, Portugal and Turkey were hit, travelers said.  

On Thursday, a court in Senegal suspended the call to strike by air traffic controllers in Senegal and Ivory Coast, ASECNA said. 

ASECNA said it has developed a contingency plan to allow airlines to take alternative routes when certain airports are impacted by temporary staff shortages, in case the strike should drag on.  
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Sudan is facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis because of poor harvests, skyrocketing prices, political instability and lack of financial support, U.N. agencies warn.

Nearly one-third of Sudan’s roughly 45 million people do not have enough to eat. And the World Food Program, or WFP, warns the number of hungry people is likely to rise to 18 million by the end of the month if donors do not come up with the money to feed them.

WFP Sudan Representative and country director Eddie Rowe said Sudan imports about 80 percent of its wheat from Ukraine. He said the war in Ukraine has sent the price of food, fuel and other basic commodities soaring, and is making it more difficult to get the money needed for humanitarian operations.

Rowe said the WFP is broke and has been forced to cut food rations in half for 2.4 million beneficiaries in Sudan. This includes 600,000 refugees who are completely dependent on international aid.

“We are on the verge of suspending or halting critical other activities,” he warned. “For example, we plan to reach 2 million students with school meals, and this seems to be a far-fetched reality given that we do not have funding.”

UNICEF’s representative in Sudan, Mandeep O’Brien, said Sudan is facing a malnutrition crisis as well as a hunger crisis.

“Three million children under 5 years of age are acutely malnourished in Sudan,” O’Brien said. “As we speak today, 650,000 kids are suffering from severe acute malnutrition. If not treated, half of them will die.”

She noted that tens of thousands of children have missed out on lifesaving vaccines because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and 7 million children are out of school.

U.N. agencies warn the time to provide lifesaving assistance for 10.9 million of Sudan’s most vulnerable people is fast running out. They note only 36 percent of the U.N.’s $1.9 billion Humanitarian Response Plan for this year is funded.
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Aid groups say more than 37 million people in the Horn of Africa are struggling with hunger fueled by a deadly record drought that has killed nearly 9 million animals. The worst situation may be in Somalia, where more than 700 children have died of malnutrition this year.

Exacerbated by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine, the global hunger situation is getting worse by the day, according to experts.

Dr. Deepmala Mahla, vice president for humanitarian affairs at CARE International, said the world “is facing a devastating global hunger crisis, and this is happening in this world of abundance. We are talking about 50 million people just being one step away from starvation.”

The crisis has grown especially dire in the Horn of Africa, which is now dealing with a fifth consecutive failed rainy season and a prolonged drought that began in October 2020.

In Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, over 36 million people are dealing with chronic hunger, according to CARE International. Experts say Somalia’s humanitarian crisis will further deteriorate in the coming months as famine is already projected in two regions of the country.

Alinur Aden, executive director of Gargaar Relief and Development Organization, a humanitarian organization in Somalia, said the “COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, locust invasion and four years [of] consecutive failure of rain have contributed to all these problems.”

Women and children are bearing the brunt of hunger. According to the World Food Program, 942,000 children under age 5 and 135,000 pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers are acutely malnourished and in need of treatment in arid and semiarid regions that are under drought in Kenya.

“We do see already alarming rates of mortality and malnutrition occurring in all the three countries,” said Abyan Ahmed, global humanitarian nutrition adviser at CARE. “We have seen increased admission rates across those countries in the first quarter of 2022, and the number of severe cases has increased by up to 15% in the last five months, which basically means that in every minute, one extra child is becoming malnourished, severely malnourished and has an increased risk of dying without any intervention.”

Mahla said urgent interventions are needed, “so we call upon world leaders, international communities, governments, to step up. Allocate immediate, flexible, multiyear resources so that we can deliver a humanitarian response to help people now, because the people in the Horn of Africa need for us to act right now and not later.”

The U.S. Agency for International Development has provided nearly $1.3 billion in humanitarian assistance in the Horn since 2020.

During his speech to the U.N. General Assembly this week, President Joe Biden pledged $10 billion to fight global hunger, but it was not clear how much of this will go to the Horn of Africa.
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Cameroon’s military says three members of its airborne battalion this week attacked civilians and killed two mothers in Nylbat, an English-speaking village in Andeck district.

A statement signed Wednesday by military spokesperson Serge Cyrille Atongfack says the troops were dispatched to fight separatists in the troubled Northwest region.

The troops violated orders from military hierarchy and started shooting indiscriminately on civilians, the military says, adding that one shooter killed two harmless mothers.

The government says family members of the killed mothers rushed to the scene and collected corpses when the government troops left.

Dianne Ngeka, a relative of one victim, said civilians sealed their businesses and refused to go to their farms for three days as a sign of protest against Monday’s killings.

“It is disturbing that the military, which is supposed to protect us, is against us women,” Ngeka said. “It is not safe anymore for anybody. When you see the military, you run, whether you are innocent or not. You just need to run helter skelter.”

Ngeka spoke via the messaging app WhatsApp from Andeck. She said business activity resumed timidly on Thursday. The government said it had arrested the three troops that fired upon unarmed civilians.

Eyong Tarh, an official with the Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, says rights groups in Cameroon will continue exerting pressure until the military punishes all of its troops who have committed atrocities.

“I have a worry whether the culprits will be brought to book, because similar cases have taken place but we don’t know what has happened to the perpetrators,” Tara said. “And that is why the others are still doing the activity, because they know that they may not actually be punished as deserved.”

Tarh did not give details about the type of pressure rights groups intend to exert.

Activist groups also accuse Cameroon government troops who were deployed to secure schools when the academic year opened on September 5 of killing scores of villagers in western towns and villages, including Andeck, Wum, Boyo, Bamenda and Kumba.

The military describes the accusations as unfounded but promises to punish troops who killed civilians in Andeck. The government has not said what the punishment will be, and the accused soldiers’ whereabouts remain unknown.

In April, Cameroon’s government also acknowledged that soldiers had killed three women and 10 children in a February massacre that they then tried to cover up by torching houses and blaming rebels.

Rights groups have repeatedly accused both Cameroon’s military and anglophone separatists of killing civilians and torching their homes during their five years of fighting. Each side rejects the accusations as intended to tarnish its image.
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One person was killed and two others wounded in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday during a demonstration against the M23 rebel group, local officials said.

Civil society groups staged the rally in the town of Rutshuru in North Kivu province to protest the army’s perceived inaction against the M23 — which has captured swathes of territory since the summer.

A mostly Congolese Tutsi group, the M23 first leapt to prominence in 2012 when it briefly captured North Kivu’s capital of Goma before being driven out.

M23 rebels resumed fighting in late 2021 after lying dormant for years. They have since seized territory across North Kivu, including the strategic town of Bunagana on the Ugandan border.

Congo has repeatedly accused its smaller central African neighbor Rwanda of backing the M23, although Kigali denies the charge.

On Thursday, protesters gathered outside the office of the military administrator in Rutshuru on the 100th day of the M23’s occupation of Bunagana.

Police officers shot at demonstrators, killing one and wounding two, according to Justin Bin Serushago, a spokesperson for a local civil society group.

“We will not move until military operations have resumed against the M23,” he told AFP.

An official at Rutshuru general hospital who requested anonymity confirmed that one person — a young man — had died after he was shot in the chest.

A senior police officer in Rutshuru told AFP that several people had been wounded in the protest, without offering further details.

The front between the army and the M23 has remained relatively calm in recent weeks, with soldiers and rebels observing each other from their positions without engaging.

The protest in Rutshuru comes after Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi met his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame on Wednesday in New York, in a meeting brokered by French President Emmanuel Macron in a bid to calm regional tensions.
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