Africa

South Africa's wheelchair tennis star Kgothatso Montjane is aiming for a medal at the Tokyo Paralympics.

Finding solutions based on peace and development is crucial for the future of the nearly seven million forcibly displaced people from Sudan and South Sudan, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said following a three-day visit to the two countries.

A resurgence of Bubonic plague in Ituri province in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is putting young lives at risk, the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, warned on Tuesday. 

Long-suffering politicians hope to copy Hakainde Hichilema, who was elected at his sixth time attempt.

Cesar Kimbirima fled Angola after being shot four times and spending five months in a coma.

Barakat, or blessing, is the first film in Afrikaaps - a dialect of Afrikaans spoken in Cape Town.

All wildlife on land and sea is being counted to help Kenya's conservation plans and tourism.

Despite a huge military budget, oil-rich Algeria is ill-equipped to tackle annual fires.

President Buhari's son marries the daughter of a religious leader in one of Nigeria's events of the year.

In the south of Madagascar, known as the Grand Sud, hundreds of thousands of people are suffering from one of the worst droughts in the region in 40 years, the most senior UN official in the country has said, warning that the population is facing a severe humanitarian crisis.

Islamist groups appear emboldened by the fall of Afghanistan, sparking concern in African countries.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has strongly condemned an armed attack on a convoy near the town of Arbinda, in the north of Burkina Faso, on Wednesday, which has reportedly led to the death of some 80 people. 

For decades, Africa has imported 99% of its vaccines. So how could it jumpstart local vaccine manufacturing?

A selection of the best photos from the African continent and beyond.

Blue helmets from Thailand working with the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) are not only doing their bit to repair and rehabilitate critical infrastructure but are also helping support the mission’s COVID-19 response and training local communities about growing their own food.

The information minister says Nigeria is winning the war against insecurity and is negotiating with Twitter over the ban.

Roemello Shembe, 21, is building a business in one of Johannesburg’s most challenging townships.

By Steve Paterno

In South Sudan, where just about everyone has access to guns (tons of them), and almost every ambitious politician is a potential warlord, any slight destabilization of the country provides an opportunity to lead straight to a nation run by pockets of small warlords. In such a case of slight destabilization of the country, those small warlords would be controlling their small enclaves, by the power of their guns.

This is exactly a scenario, which is being advocated by the much-hyped and dramatized mass demonstration by a group known as People Coalition for Civil Action (PCCA), in their miscalculated efforts in trying to overthrow the government. This particular group calls for non-military civil actions against the government, but yet, contradictorily, they brag that they get the backing of armed elements from the National Security Service (NSS), South Sudan People's Defense Force (SSPDF), and South Sudan Police Service (SSPS). In militarized South Sudan, the coalition knows that they need the backing of armed groups to secure the overthrow of the government. Therefore, there is no need for the coalition to emphasize much on civil actions, when in fact that they are banking on the armed elements, to secure them a victory.

In a practical sense, the way the coalition is laying out its strategy in taking over the government looks like this. Check it out: They will send the demonstrators, pouring on the streets, perhaps with some armed elements disguised in the middle of the demonstrators. This will automatically draw in the overzealous state's security forces, to disperse the demonstrators. In the process, deadly confrontations will ensue, leading to shootouts. In the chaotic scene of the shootouts, no one will be sure of who is shooting who, because both groups are armed. This potentially will spread the shootouts beyond the vicinity of the demonstration. Then, the opportunistic ambitious politicians would turn into their weapons, ostensibly, becoming small warlords in their small enclaves. And out of necessity, the rest would automatically pick up their weapons as well, in order, to protect themselves and their properties amidst the ensuing chaos.

In such a scenario, the coalition would at least achieve one thing, causing the destabilization of the government and country as a whole. Here, it would then depend on the capacity and strength of the government, whether it would succeed in pulling the country out of the chaos to restore peace and order, or else, the country would be left to be run by small warlords, perhaps perpetually. It is then that South Sudan will be Somalia on steroids, worse than it was.

At the current state of affairs, South Sudan does not need any slight destabilization, whereby it would be plunged into perpetual chaos of a country run by warlords. South Sudan needs a gradual transformation. Such transformation could best be ensured by a national armed security force. This national armed security force must be of a national character in ensuring the security of all citizens and safeguarding the country's territorial integrity. This will ultimately eliminate any room for the proliferation of warlords, who thrive in chaos.

This national armed security force oversees civil political democratization in the country that the citizens of South Sudan are yearning for.

As of now, there is no way democratic elections are feasible or could succeed in South Sudan. Even the much-awaited and talked about democratic elections at the end of the transitional period of the peace agreement is not feasible or practical. For one, you have armed groups masquerading as political parties, gearing to compete in elections. The practice is that in such undemocratic elections, a candidate is running with two options on the plate: (i) either wins and takes up the position in government or (ii) loses and then jumps to the bush, kills few people and causes some destruction, then, eventually negotiates away in government to pick up even a better position than the one he or she was competing for. Both options of winning and losing are attractive, with losing is an even more lucrative endeavour for the ambitious competing politicians who or also potential warlords. We have witnessed such with the likes of Gen Athor. Heck, even a mere civilian like David Yauyau could lose an election, pick up arms, kill, destroy, and then gain national prominence as a result.

So, let's go slowly, starting with the national armed security force as the first national institution to be firmly founded. The current relative stability in the country, with the exercise of possible screening of militias in forming unified national armed forces, provides the platform for establishing a strong and capable national armed security force.

August 18, 2021 (JUBA) - South Sudan's Investment minister has denied reports of his alleged involvement in holding private discussions with the United Nations mission in Abyei (UNISFA) over the status the existence of their base in his area.

Map showing the lcoation of the contested Abyei region in relation to Sudan and South Sudan

Minister Dhieu Mathok Diing Wol denied in a statement on Wednesday that he held private discussions with the leadership of the interim force for Abyei at which asked them to remain in the area despite public protest demanding the peacekeeping troops to pull out of the area with immediate effects.

“South Sudanese in general and Aweil communities in particular were well aware that I was in the frontline with the rest of compatriots, who came out in defense of 14 miles in 2012. I made my position clear before the African Union team of experts by presenting the circumstances behind the creation of 14 miles and why we think it was not a boundary”, Dhieu wrote in a statement obtained by Sudan Tribune.

He was reacting to a social media post accusing him of backtracking local demand protesting the continuous stay of the troops in the area.

Public demonstrations have been held in recent days in the counties of Aweil North and East whose areas were included in the map at the insistence of the Government of Sudan (GoS) during the talks facilitated by the African union high-level implementation Panel. Sudan feared an exclusion of the area in the Safe Demilitarize Buffer Zone amounts to a concession of the territory to South Sudan.

The latter asserts ownership of the area and pledge to provide access to grazing and water points to areas Sudanese nomads from Darfur and in Kordofan regions at the border with neighboring South Sudan.

The fear held by the Sudanese government at the talks led to designation of the area as a demilitarized zone, monitored by a Joint Border Verification and Monitoring Mechanism (JBVMM), to be composed of international observers from UNISFA and representatives of both countries. Within this area, ‘join tribal mechanisms' are supposed to resolve disputes.

The area is mainly occupied by the Malual Dinka. The Rizeigat, one of the Sudanese nomads from Darfur annually accesses the area south of the Kiir River for grazing.

The local and national authorities say disputes over grazing in this area are not new. They stretch back to the 20th century. They cite clashes in 1918 which persuaded Patrick Munro, the British colonial governor of Darfur to create a new grazing boundary for the Rizeigat, some 40 miles south of the Kiir.

This decision sparked protest and vociferous complaints from the Malual Dinka, resulting in 1924 a compromise between Munro and Mervyn Wheatley, the governor of Bahr el Ghazal. The two British officials created a zone of Rizeigat grazing that extended to a line 14 miles south of the River Kiir. This line is known today as the Munro-Wheatley line, and the zone that it demarcates is referred to as the 14-Mile Are

(ST)

August 18, 2021 (KHARTOUM) - Sudanese doctors resigned from an autopsy committee to protest the burial of bodies of people killed during the protests without identification.

In a resignation letter seen by the Sudan Tribune sent to Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok and Mohamed al-Faki a member of the Sovereign Council representing the civilian component, the four forensic doctors denounced the meddling of the general prosecution in their activities.

"We fear of not being able to perform our work impartially," said the resigned doctors from the autopsy committee.

We discovered, "change in the pins of the bodies in the mortuary, this means the possibility of replacing these bodies with missing persons to be buried outside the framework of the law," reads the letter handed over on Wednesday.

They went further to say that a committee appointed by the interim Attorney General had buried 23 bodies on July 11, "without performing the identification process," despite the recommendations of forensic reports not to bury that bodies.

The resignation letter said that Prosecutor Mohamed Abdallah who is appointed by the interim general attorney, "insisted on burying the 23 bodies before completing the identification."

"Also, he replaced the pin numbers of the bodies in a way that created mistrust, and led to questioning his intentions."

Families of the victims killed by the security forces accuse the military component of the Sovereign Council and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militiamen of seeking to cover the crimes committed against the pro-democracy protesters since April 2019.

They are hostile to the interim general attorney appointed by the RSF Commander and Deputy Head of the Sovereign Council during al-Burhan's presence in Paris last to participate in a conference on Sudan.

The ruling coalition of Forces for Freedom and Change this week met with members of the Sovereign Council to urge the appointment of a new General Attorney.

(ST)