Category: General

Journalist Tesfalem Waldyes, the founder and editor-in-chief of Ethiopia Insider, an Ethiopian news and analysis website, is in police custody, according to media reports.

Tesfalem’s colleagues and friends said his whereabouts hadn’t been known since Saturday, but federal police confirmed his detention to the BBC, saying there is nothing to be concerned about.

Police didn’t give additional details. Shortly after the detention, Befeqadu Hailu, the executive director of the Center for Advancement of Rights and Democracy, said Tesfalem went missing after covering the Irreecha festival in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. Irreecha is a cultural event celebrated by Ethiopia’s ethnic Oromo community.

Befeqadu also said via Twitter that Tesfalem’s plan for Sunday was to report on the festival, which also took place at a second location, Bishoftu.

The annual event is traditionally held in Bishoftu, a town located in the Oromia region, about 40 kilometers south of Addis Ababa.

After covering the event in Addis Ababa, Tesfalem posted a video on Ethiopia Insider’s Facebook page that showed attendees expressing their criticism of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s administration.

Attendees also demanded the release of political prisoners, chanting, “Jawar, Jawar!”

Jawar Mohammed, an Oromo activist and opposition leader, has been imprisoned, charged with terrorism and other crimes alongside other prominent Oromo politicians.

In 2014, Tesfalem was among three journalists and six bloggers, who became known as the “Zone 9 Bloggers” and were arrested for inciting violence among other charges, including terrorism. He spent more than one year in prison and was later released. Zone 9 Bloggers were recipients of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award in 2015.

The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists says at least seven journalists are imprisoned in the country.

Separately, Prime Minister Abiy was sworn in for a second term on Monday.

The event comes as the national government remains engaged in a nearly year-old armed conflict with rebels in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.

Source: Voice of America

As Desmond Tutu turns 90 on Thursday, he remains indisputably the moral voice of South Africa. But age is catching up with him.

The jovial emeritus archbishop retired in 2010 and rarely speaks in public, in a country that sometimes feels adrift without the leadership of its anti-apartheid liberation icons.

Even though South Africa has eased its COVID-19 precautions, the birthday festivities will be muted and largely online.

Renowned for his radiating energy and infectious laughter, Tutu is expected to attend a special service Thursday at St George’s Cathedral, where he once held the pulpit as South Africa’s first black Anglican archbishop.

Later that day, the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation will host an online lecture by the Dalai Lama, Ireland’s former president Mary Robinson, rights activist Graca Machel and South Africa’s ex-ombudswoman Thuli Madonsela, respected for her courageous exposure of corruption.

The line-up of speakers is a reminder of Tutu’s values, surrounding himself with rights advocates at a time when South Africa’s current leaders are better known for lavish lifestyles and billion-dollar bank accounts.

An online auction of his memorabilia last month raised $237,000 for the foundation named after him and Leah, his wife of 66 years.

The last time Tutu himself was seen in public was in May, when he and Leah went to receive their COVID-19 vaccinations.

He smiled and waved from a wheelchair outside a hospital, but didn’t speak to journalists waiting outside — a far cry from the buoyant personality who captivated the world with his strident opposition to apartheid, which won him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

‘Rainbow nation’

Knowing him now as a towering figure on the world stage, it’s hard to remember that when he returned from his studies in Britain in the 1960s, he was subjected to the same humiliations as any other black South African.

His daughter Mpho Tutu-van Furth, with whom he has authored two books, remembers driving cross-country with her family to bring her siblings to boarding school.

“I have a memory of stopping at a place along the way, and my dad going into the store to go and buy ice cream for us, because it was just sticky hot,” Tutu-van Furth told AFP.

“And the person saying to him that they don’t serve kaffirs inside the shop, that you have to go around to the window. And my dad just kind of slammed out of there.

“We weren’t going to get ice cream that day.”

Kaffir is South Africa’s worst racial slur, and the utterance today can lead to criminal charges.

He eventually grew his leadership in the Anglican Church, creating a path towards reconciliation. He coined the term “rainbow nation”, and deeply believed that the South African experiment could show the world a new way to overcome conflicts.

His ideas of forgiveness have fallen out of favor with some younger South Africans, who feel that black people surrendered too much in the transition to democracy, without holding apartheid criminals to account.

What endeared Tutu to the nation was that he didn’t stop speaking out after democracy arrived.

He confronted homophobia in the Anglican Church, challenged Nelson Mandela over generous salaries for Cabinet ministers and stridently criticized the endemic corruption that mushroomed under ex-president Jacob Zuma.

“He played such a unique role,” said William Gumede, of the Democracy Works Foundation. “We were fortunate during the transition that we had him and we had Mandela, these two statesmen who were moral leaders.”

But that era is over.

“We’re entering a period where we’re not going to have those really big moral leaders,” Gumede said. “So how do we build the society that we want?”

Source: Voice of America

Malawi has deployed soldiers to distribute fuel at gas stations after a strike by fuel tank drivers this week led to shortages. The drivers are pressuring the government for a minimum wage increase and to ensure local drivers get contracts they say are dominated by foreign transporters.

Tanker drivers started the strike Monday in the country’s major cities of Lilongwe, Blantyre and Mzuzu.

On Wednesday they blocked the road in the capital Lilongwe, resulting in some arrests.

Government spokesperson Gospel Kazako told a press conference Thursday that the strike is surprising, considering that government officials already addressed all the demands the drivers raised during a similar strike in November 2020.

He said among the demands was that the government should review the minimum salary for drivers, which was at about $60 per month.

“Government had to go all out listening to their problems,” Kazako said. “Government made directives and this was made into law that there shouldn’t be any international truck driver who should be paid less than MK140,000.”

That figure is equivalent to about $170 per month.

But drivers have yet to receive the increased salaries. This, they said, is largely because their employers are going through financial difficulties due to lack of business from the government.

They said the strike is also aimed at pushing the government to award their employers local fuel supply contracts they say are dominated by foreign transporters.

This spurred truck owners to join the strike on Wednesday.

Kazako, also Minister of Information, said he believes the strike is a ploy to sabotage government operations.

George Khaki, president of the Employers Consultative Association of Malawi, said the strike is baseless.

“If they wanted to have industrial action, that industrial action should have been against their employers. Not against the government, because the government is not a party to the employment contract,” he said. “This is where they are getting it wrong and it is unfortunately an unlawful strike.”

The strike led to panic buying this week at the few Malawian gas stations which had fuel.

Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority said the country has enough gas to last for a month, but the problem is the failure to supply the pump stations because of the strike.

To address the problem, Kazako said the government has deployed the military to help distribute fuel.

Starting Thursday night, soldiers began escorting fuel tankers to pump stations and, in some cases, are driving the tankers themselves.

In a statement Thursday, Acting Public Information Officer for the Malawi Defense Force, Major Emanuel Kelvin Mlelemba, said the move is in line with its constitutional role in assisting civilian authorities to maintain essential services in times of emergency.

Meanwhile, the striking drivers maintain they will not resume work until their demands are met.

Source: Voice of America

NAIROBI— A Kenyan police officer has woken up from a nine-month coma to find he had been sacked for desertion.

Neither the family nor the police force had any idea where Constable Reuben Kimutai Lel was – they thought he was dead.

But it turns out that he had been the victim of a road accident and had been in one of the country’s biggest hospitals all along.

He only regained consciousness last week.

His niece Joan Jeptoo recalled of the family’s horror as they searched for his body in morgues after they had given up on his chances of being alive.

At one point they almost collected a decomposing body from a morgue that was said to be him.

“We thought he was dead because his phone was off. Early this year we went to collect a body that we were told resembled him, but the fingerprints didn’t match,” she said.

The police officer was admitted on Dec 21, 2020 as an unknown person at the main referral hospital in the capital, Nairobi. He had no identity documents with him.

Meanwhile, he was sacked from his job, charged in absentia with desertion and a warrant was issued for his arrest. The case was later withdrawn after police failed to find him.

He regained consciousness last week, and although he has still not regained his full memory, he was able to identify himself by name and that he was a police officer – and so the search for his relatives began.

His niece was contacted by police last Wednesday and was told to go and identify him at hospital.

“I found him at Kenyatta National Hospital. He could not recognise me and he could not recognise names of members of his family,” she said.

The police officer was discharged from hospital last Friday and is recuperating at his home in Koibatek, Baringo county, under the care of his wife and family.

According to the Daily Nation news site, arrangements are being made to reinstate him to the police force.

However, his niece said the constable, in his late 50s, was looking forward to his retirement.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

ALGIERS— The Algerian presidency said the country has closed its airspace to all Moroccan civil and military aircraft amid an escalating diplomatic row, the official APS news agency reported.

The decision was made after Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune chaired a meeting of the High Security Council on Wednesday, which dealt with the “developments at the borders with the Kingdom of Morocco,” APS quoted the Algerian presidency as saying in a statement.

The council decided to “immediately close” the Algerian airspace to “all Moroccan civilian and military aircrafts as well as those with Moroccan registration numbers,” according to APS.

Algeria cut diplomatic relations with Morocco in August citing what it described as the latter’s “hostile” policies.

Morocco later expressed regret over Algeria’s “completely unjustified” decision to sever diplomatic ties between the two countries.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

NAIROBI, Sept 22 (NNN-KBC) — Two passengers were confirmed dead, while eight others are still missing after a boat they were sailing capsized in Lake Victoria.

Six people were rescued during the incident near Pier Beach within Homa-Bay town when travelling to Ndhuru beach in Mbita Sub County Tuesday evening.

The boat is said to have capsized 400 meters away from the beach due to suspected overloading.

According to Homa-Bay town Chief Joshua Ochogo, the two bodies include that of a woman and a one and half year old minor who were retrieved during the rescue mission by fishermen who responded to the passengers distress call.

Ochogo said the six passengers who were rescued were taken to Homa-Bay county Referral Hospital for treatment while the two bodies were moved to the mortuary at the same facility.

He called for calm saying a search mission for the eight other passengers is ongoing amid fears that they could have drowned.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

JOHANNESBURG— Three cities – Johannesburg, Durban and Lagos – have been confirmed as host cities for the inaugural Africa’s Travel and Tourism Summit, scheduled to take place from Sept 19 to 21.

The Sandton Convention Centre, the Inkosi Albert Luthuli Convention Centre and the Marriot Lagos Ikeja are the venues to host the event’s numerous panel discussions, workshops and talks.

A news brief said the event, centred on the theme, “Re-awakening Africa,” called on all tourism players throughout the continent and all the global tourism friends and partners to reflect, reimagine and reignite the sector in a world still ravaged by COVID-19.

It said the pandemic might have dented the sector in the last 19 months, but it presented tourism with an opportunity to create something new.

“In the case of the Summit, South African Tourism has organised a hybrid event, meaning it is held both physically and virtually and can be accessed from anywhere in the world.”

The news brief said the Summit included an eclectic mix of topics that ranged from how to ease travel across borders on the continent to packaging African travel in a post-COVID world, all with the overarching message that Africa was open for business.

Amanda Kotze-Nhlapo, Chief Convention Bureau Officer, South African Tourism, said the Summit presented Africa with the opportunity to create a platform that would demonstrate the continent’s tenacity in rebuilding the tourism sector through knowledge and partnerships.

“We must remember that African tourism belongs to all 54 nations on the continent. It means tourism stakeholders from each of these countries can come together to find ways of making travel to our continent easier and more inviting to global tourists.”

The United Nation’s World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) says the tourism industry is unlikely to return to pre-COVID levels until 2023 or later. Additionally, the World Travel and Tourism Council reported that Africa’s tourism sector experienced an exponential decrease of US$83-billion (R1.2-trillion) and a loss of 7.2-million jobs in 2020.

Despite these setbacks, Kotze-Nhlapo, remained upbeat about the sector’s future, saying, “Governments across Africa, as well as the African Union, are ensuring a steady rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations. In South Africa, government is implementing the Tourism Sector Recovery Plan that seeks to restore the tourism economy and recover lost jobs. These are signs that Africa is gearing up for tourism. The Summit will go a long way in showcasing to the world Africa’s readiness to welcome tourists within the continent and abroad”.

She said a novel feature of the hybrid Summit was that one could personalise the sessions they wished to attend in any of the three host cities and that delegates outside Africa could also design their schedules according to their time zone, so that they could also be a part of the Summit and benefit from all it had to offer.

Kotze-Nhlapo said delegates could choose to attend the Summit physically or virtually, however, physical attendance was limited and not guaranteed, and all venues would adhere to strict COVID-19 health and safety protocols.

“You can select sessions using the Business Matchmaking tool. It will also match you with the right delegates for one-on-one sessions based on the information you have provided in your profile, thus creating a great opportunity to connect and share knowledge with fellow industry stakeholders. Register now for Africa’s Travel and Tourism Summit and be a part of a new, reawakened Africa.”

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK