South Africa’s ex-leader turns himself in for prison term

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Written by alib

Category: Africa

Published: 08 July 2021

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By MOGOMOTSI MAGOME

NKANDLA, South Africa — Former South African president Jacob Zuma turned himself over to police early Thursday to begin serving a 15-month prison term.

Just minutes before the midnight deadline for police to arrest him, Zuma left his Nkandla home in a convoy of vehicles. Zuma handed himself over to authorities to obey the country’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, that he should serve a prison term for contempt.

“President Zuma has decided to comply with the incarceration order. He is on his way to hand himself into a Correctional Services Facility in KZN (KwaZulu-Natal province),” said a tweet posted by the Zuma Foundation.

Soon after South Africa’s police confirmed that Zuma was in their custody.

Zuma’s imprisonment comes after a week of rising tensions over his sentence.

Zuma, 79, was ordered to prison for contempt because he defied a court order for him to testify before a judicial commission investigating widespread allegations of corruption during his time as the country’s president, from 2009 to 2018.

The Constitutional Court ordered that if Zuma did not voluntarily hand himself over to the police then the police should arrest the country’s former president by the end of the day Wednesday.

In a last-minute plea to avoid going to prison, Zuma’s lawyers had written to the acting chief justice requesting that his arrest be suspended until Friday, when a regional court is to rule on his application to postpone the arrest.

Zuma’s lawyers asked the acting chief justice to issue directives stopping the police from arresting him, claiming there would be a “prejudice to his life.”

Zuma had also launched two court proceedings to avoid arrest after his sentence last week.

He applied to the Constitutional Court to rescind his sentence and that application will be heard on July 12.

On Tuesday, his lawyers were in the Pietermaritzburg High Court seeking to stop the minister of police from arresting him until the Constitutional Court rules on his application. The regional court will rule on that application on Friday.

Political tensions have risen in KwaZulu-Natal province as a result of Zuma’s conviction, sentence and pending arrest. Hundreds of his supporters gathered at his home over the weekend and vowed to prevent his arrest, but they left on Sunday.

The judicial inquiry into corruption during his term as president has heard damning testimony from former Cabinet ministers and top executives of state-owned corporations that Zuma allowed his associates, members of the Gupta family, to influence his Cabinet appointments and lucrative contracts. Zuma refused to comply with a court order to appear before the commission, which brought the Constitutional Court to convict him of contempt and sentence him to prison.

In a separate matter, Zuma is standing trial on charges of corruption related to a 1999 arms deal, where he allegedly received bribes from French arms manufacturer Thales. His financial adviser has already been convicted and imprisoned in that case.

Zuma has had other legal woes. In 2005, he was charged with rape but was acquitted in 2006 after the court found the sexual intercourse was consensual.

Zuma bounced back from that to become president in 2009. But by 2018 mounting evidence of rampant corruption in his administration brought his party, the ruling African National Congress, to force him from office.

Although tarnished by scandal now, Zuma had built up a reputation as a staunch opponent of apartheid, South Africa’s previous regime of harsh white minority rule. He was jailed for 10 years at the Robben Island prison where political prisoners including Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu were held.

When he was released in 1973, Zuma left the country to continue his work in the African National Congress, traveling through countries like Swaziland, Zambia and Mozambique.

By the time South Africa legalized the ANC in 1990, Zuma was a high-ranking official in the party and was part of negotiating the political settlement that led to the country’s first democratic elections in 1994.

Zuma’s reputation in the new South Africa was further enhanced when he was deployed to his home province of KwaZulu-Natal where he helped to resolve political violence that was threatening to derail the country’s progress toward a democratic and non-racial society.

Zuma’s political reputation will be marred by the corruption scandals surrounding him, said Lesiba Teffo, lecturer in politics at the University of South Africa.

“It is very disappointing to see a man who has done so much for the country, a liberation hero, now reduced to zero,” said Teffo. “This is a man who fought hard for the liberation of this country, but like many African leaders in our continent, he fell at the altar of money.”

IS-linked group says Boko Haram leader in Nigeria is dead

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 10 June 2021

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By HARUNA UMAR and SAM OLUKOYA, AP 09 June 2021

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — The leader of Nigerian extremist group Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, has killed himself, according to a jihadi organization linked to the Islamic State group.

An audio recording purportedly from Abu Musab al-Barnawi, the leader of the Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP, said Shekau detonated explosives killing himself after a battle between the two groups.

The audio message follows media reports last month that Shekau, one of Africa’s most wanted men, blew himself up to evade capture by ISWAP fighters.

Neither Nigerian authorities nor Boko Haram have confirmed Shekau’s death.

There had been several false reports about Shekau’s death in the past, with Shekau later appearing in videos to refute them.

Al-Barnawi, a son to the founding leader of Boko Haram, the late Mohammed Yusuf, made the statement in an audio message heard this week by The Associated Press in the native Kanuri language.

The audio message, which last about 28 minutes, had what is reportedly al-Barnawi’s voice, lacing his speech with quotes from the verses of the Quran. The audio was obtained from a former jihadist who provides intelligence to the government and is familiar with al-Barnawi’s voice.

“He never thought this would happen to him even in his dream, but by the power of God we destabilized him; he became confused and fled to forest where he spent five days, wandering and stranded,” he said. “We followed him again where we faced him with heavy fire. He ran away, then our troops called on him to surrender so that he would be punished.”

Shekau was asked to surrender in order to be pardoned or reinstalled as a leader.

“We kept assuring him that we were not out to kill him, but he refused. To him it’s better to die than to surrender,” he said.

He went out to describe Shekau as “a defiant and corrupt leader” whose fighters were celebrating instead of mourning his death.

“This was someone who committed unimaginable terrorism. How many has he wasted? How many has he killed? How many has he terrorized?” he said.

ISWAP broke off from Boko Haram in 2016 following a dispute between Shekau and al-Barnawi. Both jihadi groups have also been fighting each other over territory since they fell out.

The Nigeria-based Boko Haram has been waging a bitter war against Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad since 2009.

Boko Haram under Shekau’s leadership has carried out numerous suicide bombings targeting markets, crowded bus stations, churches, mosques and media houses. A Boko Haram bombing in 2011 at the U.N. building in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, killed 21 people and wounded 60 others.

Boko Haram attacks on towns and villages mainly in northeast Nigeria have left tens of thousands of people dead and displaced more than 2.3 million others.

In February 2014, Boko Haram killed 59 male students in an attack at the Federal Government College Buni Yadi. Two months later, the group shocked the world when it abducted 276 teenage schoolgirls from the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State. Shekau appeared in a video saying that the girls would be forced into marriage because girls as young as 9 are suitable for marriage. While many of the girls have either escaped or been released, 112 of them are still missing.

The Boko Haram leader was notorious for using underage boys as child soldiers, while underage girls and young women have been used as suicide bombers in recent years.

Some gruesome Boko Haram videos have shown captives, including security personnel, aid workers and others, executed — sometimes by beheading.

Shekau had bounties on his head, with a reward of up to $7 million offered by the United States in 2012.

If indeed Shekau, the driving force behind Boko Haram, has died, that will likely weaken Boko Haram and make it possible for ISWAP to take over vast territories under Boko Haram control in Nigeria’s northeastern states of Yobe, Borno and Adamawa.

A stronger ISWAP will be bad news for the Nigerian military, as the group appears to constitute a greater threat against the Nigerian army, carrying out attacks on highly fortified military bases.

Many attribute ISWAP’s recent successes to new tactics of buying over the local population with food and money.

Grave concerns over 'dire' and deteriorating situation in war-torn Tigray region

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 29 May 2021

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NEW YORK - UN humanitarians expressed deep concern on Friday about serious and ongoing abuses carried out against displaced civilians who are also facing dire food insecurity in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, after months of conflict.

In an alert, the UN sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA, said that it was aware of “gross violations”, including gender-based violence in the war-torn north.

Vile attacks

“The situation of women and adolescent girls in Tigray and border areas of Amhara and Afar remains dire”, said UNFPA Executive Director Natalia Kanem. “We see alarming levels of sexual violence, and thousands of women lack access to health and protection services.”

In a related development, the Office of the High Commissioner for refugee agency (UNHCR) condemned the reported abduction of “at least several hundred” youths from camps for displaced people in Tigray earlier this week.

This echoed prior comments by the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Ethiopia, Catherine Sozi, who condemned the reported arbitrary arrests, beatings and ill-treatment by soldiers of more than 200 people during night-time military raids on internal displacement camps in the region on Monday.

Ms. Sozi noted that the affected sites of Tsehaye and Adi Wonfito in Shire town were home to 12,000 internally displaced persons in total.

Trauma and distress

“The situation is traumatic and distressing, not only for the relatives of the missing, but for all the displaced communities residing in Shire”, UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch told journalists in Geneva, adding that the agency was in contact with the Ethiopian authorities on the issue. “It is crucial that all parties to the conflict recognize the civilian and humanitarian character of these sites hosting displaced people”.

Fighting began in Tigray on 4 November last year between national Government forces and regional power brokers loyal to the former national ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

Needs are growing

Some parts of the war-torn region have remained accessible but overall, “grave” needs are outstripping capacity, with most rural areas “cut from communications and electricity”, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The Central Area – which is the most populated, with some 1.8 million people –remains largely inaccessible, Ms. Sozi’s team noted.

If nothing is done to improve aid access immediately, UN humanitarians believe that there is a high risk of mass severe acute malnutrition looming in the next few months.

Characterizing the situation as “complex and unpredictable”, OCHA said that civilians, who continue to bear the brunt of the conflict, have been forced to move to towns including Shire, Axum and Adwa.

“The main road between Adigrat and Axum was blocked from 10 to 22 April due to hostilities, impacting several humanitarian convoys, including emergency food aid, as well as the provision of medical supplies to Axum and Adwa Hospitals”, the UN humanitarian body reported.

Release call

In her appeal for the immediate release of those arbitrarily arrested from Shire’s displacement camps, Ms. Sozi said that serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law must be promptly investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice.
“We, along with our partners, are ready to engage with military commanders to ensure the protection of civilians”, the Humanitarian Coordinator said on Thursday.