South Africa’s last apartheid president F. W. de Klerk dies

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 11 November 2021

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By ANDREW MELDRUM

JOHANNESBURG — F.W. de Klerk, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela and as South Africa’s last apartheid president oversaw the end of the country’s white minority rule, has died at the age of 85.

De Klerk died after a battle against cancer at his home in the Fresnaye area of Cape Town, a spokesman for the F.W. de Klerk Foundation confirmed on Thursday.

De Klerk was a controversial figure in South Africa where many blamed him for violence against Black South Africans and anti-apartheid activists during his time in power, while some whites saw his efforts to end apartheid as a betrayal.

It was de Klerk who in a speech to South Africa’s parliament on Feb. 2, 1990, announced that Mandela would be released from prison after 27 years. The announcement electrified a country that for decades had been scorned and sanctioned by much of the world for its brutal system of racial discrimination known as apartheid.

With South Africa’s isolation deepening and its once-solid economy deteriorating, de Klerk, who had been elected president just five months earlier, also announced in the same speech the lifting of a ban on the African National Congress and other anti-apartheid political groups.

Amid gasps, several members of parliament members left the chamber as he spoke.

Nine days later, Mandela walked free.

Four years after that, Mandela was elected the country’s first Black president as Black South Africans voted for the first time.

By then, de Klerk and Mandela had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for their often-tense cooperation in moving South Africa away from institutionalized racism and toward democracy.

Sudan braces for fresh protests against bloody coup

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 30 October 2021

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KHARTOUM - Sudanese anti-coup protesters plan to flood the streets Saturday to demonstrate against a military takeover that has derailed the country's transition to civilian rule and triggered deadly clashes.

The military on Monday detained Sudan's civilian leadership, dissolved the government and declared a state of emergency, leading to a chorus of international condemnation.

Street protests erupted against the coup, triggering a crackdown by the security forces that has left dead at least eight demonstrators and wounded around 170.

Despite the bloodshed, the protesters remain defiant, with organisers hoping to stage a "million-strong" march against the military's power grab on Saturday.

"We will not be ruled by the military. That is the message we will convey" at the protests, said Sudanese rights activist Tahani Abbas.

"The military forces are bloody and unjust and we are anticipating what is about to happen on the streets," Abbas said. "But we are no longer afraid."

Monday's takeover was led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan - Sudan's de facto leader since the 2019 ouster of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir after huge youth-led protests.

Several pro-democracy activists have been arrested.

On the eve of Saturday's rallies, a US official put the death toll at between 20 and 30, adding the protests would be a "real test" of the intentions of Sudan's military.

"We call on the security forces to refrain from any and all violence against protesters and to fully respect the citizens' right to demonstrate peacefully," the official in Washington said on condition of anonymity.

Phone lines were largely down by Saturday morning, as security forces deployed in large numbers on the streets and blocked bridges connecting the capital, Khartoum, with neighbouring cities.

Security forces set up random checkpoints on main roads, randomly frisking passers-by and searching cars.

Britain's special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan Robert Fairweather urged Sudan's security forces to "respect freedom and right of expression" for protesters.

"Peaceful protest is a fundamental democratic right. The security services and their leaders will bear responsibility for any violence towards any protesters," he said on Twitter.

'Grave setback'

Sudan has been led since August 2019 by a civilian-military ruling council, alongside Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok's government, as part of the now stalled transition to full civilian rule.

Hamdok himself was briefly detained before he was released and placed under effective house arrest. Other civilian leaders and ministers are still being held.

Days of unrest have rocked Khartoum and other cities.

Protesters have barricaded roads with rocks, debris and burning tyres.

Shops have largely been shuttered, and government employees have refused to work as part of a campaign of civil disobedience.

"The Sudanese people are determined to... win back the gains of the December 2018 revolution" against Bashir, said Abdelgelil al-Basha from the capital's twin city of Omdurman.

Burhan, a senior general under Bashir's three decades of iron-fisted rule, has insisted the military takeover "was not a coup" but only meant to "rectify the course of the Sudanese transition".

The move triggered a wave of international condemnation and several punitive measures, with the World Bank and the United States freezing aid - a heavy blow to a country already mired in a dire economic crisis.

US President Joe Biden has called the coup a "grave setback", while the African Union has suspended Sudan's membership for the "unconstitutional" takeover.

On Friday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on the military to show restraint as he reaffirmed his "strong condemnation" of the coup.

"People must be allowed to demonstrate peacefully," Guterres said.

Monday's power grab was the latest coup to hit impoverished Sudan, which has enjoyed only rare democratic interludes since independence in 1956 and spent decades riven by civil war.

France kills Islamic State leader

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 17 September 2021

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France says that the leader of ISIL (ISIS)-affiliated Islamic State in Greater Sahara (ISGS) group, known for its deadly attacks in the so-called tri-border region of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, has been killed by French forces.

“[Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi], leader of the terrorist group Islamic State in the Greater Sahara was neutralised by French forces,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a tweet on Thursday.

“This is another major success in our fight against terrorist groups in the Sahel,” Macron added, without providing details or location of the operation.

Rumours of the ISGS leader’s death had circulated for weeks in Mali, though authorities in the region had not confirmed it.

In another tweet, French Defence Minister Florence Parly said al-Sahrawi died following a raid by France’s Barkhane force – a 5,100-man operation active in the Sahel region for more than eight years.

“It is a decisive blow against this terrorist group,” she tweeted. “Our fight continues.”

The armed group’s leader was behind the killing of French aid workers in 2020 and was also wanted by the United States over a deadly 2017 attack on US troops in Niger.

ISGS, formed by al-Sahrawi in 2015, has been blamed for most of the attacks in recent years on civilians and soldiers in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

The flashpoint area has frequently come under attack by ISGS and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM).

The US had offered a $5 million reward for information on the whereabouts of al-Sahrawi, who was wanted over an October 4, 2017 attack in Niger that killed four US Special Forces and four Niger troops.

On August 9, 2020, in Niger, the ISGS head personally ordered the killing of six French aid workers and their Niger guides and drivers.

In late 2019, the group carried out a series of large-scale attacks against military bases in Mali and Niger.

A former member of Western Sahara’s Polisario Front independence movement, al-Sahrawi joined al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and had also co-led the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa or Mujao, a Malian armed group responsible for kidnapping Spanish aid workers in Algeria and a group of Algerian diplomats in Mali in 2012.

The French military has killed several high-ranking members of ISGS under its strategy of taking out fighters since the start of its military intervention in Mali in 2013.

In June this year, Macron announced a huge scaling back of France’s Barkhane force in the Sahel after more than eight years of military presence in the vast region to refocus on supporting local forces.

“The nation is thinking this evening of all its heroes who died for France in the Sahel in the Serval and Barkhane operations, of the bereaved families, of all its wounded,” Macron added in another tweet after al-Sahrawi was killed.

“Their sacrifice is not in vain. With our African, European and American partners, we will continue this fight.”