14, April 2018
Koffi Olomide secures Kenya concert after 2016 deportation over assault 0
Congolese music star Koffi Olomide is due back in Kenya to perform for the first time in two years since he was deported from the country on the orders of the police chief Joseph Boinnet.
In July 2016, Kenya detained and subsequently deported the 61-year-old to his country, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where he was slapped with assault charges.
On Friday, he announced that he will be back in Kenya to perform on April 24 at a devolution event, a national conference involving Kenya’s 47 county heads. The event is to be held at Kakamega, he thanked the organizers for inviting him to return to Kenya.
In a video announcing his return to Kenya Olomide said he loved his Kenyan fans so much and had missed them.
In the 2016 incident, a video of him kicking a female dancer in his group went viral on social media sparking outrage. He was at the time scheduled to hold a concert in Nairobi, but was arrested in front of television cameras outside the premises of a television station where he was granting an interview.
He was deported and the schow he was bill to attend went ahead without him. He initially denied the assualt claims and insisted that he was protecting his crew from an unspecified person who was threatening their security.
He has since apologized for the incident and even sang a song praising women and womanhood at a show in Congo Republic. Olomide in August 2012, was slapped with a three-month suspended prison sentence in Kinshasa for assaulting his producer.
Source: Africa News
18, April 2018
Zimbabwe dismisses thousands of striking nurses 0
Zimbabwe has fired all nurses who went on strike to demand higher salaries, in a hardline response by the country’s new leadership to growing labor arrest.
Several thousand nurses were sacked in a terse statement issued on Tuesday evening by Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, who accused the strikers of being “politically motivated.”
Patients were turned away from major hospitals after the nurses began their industrial action on Monday, shortly after doctors ended their own weeks-long strike earlier in the month.
“Government has decided in the interest of patients and of saving lives to discharge all the striking nurses with immediate effect,” Chiwenga said in a statement.
He said unemployed and retired nurses would be hired to replace those fired.
Chiwenga was the military general who led the ousting of Robert Mugabe in November when the army briefly took control and ushered Emmerson Mnangagwa into the presidency.
Chiwenga described the nurses’ strike as “deplorable and reprehensible” as the government had released $17 million (14 million euros) to boost their pay and allowances.
He said the funds would now be used to employ new nurses.
Zimbabwe’s nurses association said they “noted” Chiwenga’s statement but added that they remained on strike.
After Mugabe’s 37-year rule, Mnangagwa has vowed to revive the country’s moribund economy and attract foreign investment to fund better public services.
“Government has done everything to comply with the demands of the striking nurses,” Mnangagwa said, according to state-owned media. “This leaves us with no option but to dismiss them.”
More than 90 percent of Zimbabwe’s budget is spent on government wages.
Teachers at public schools have threatened to go on strike if their pay is not increased.
Zimbabwe is due to hold elections in July or August, the first since the shock fall of Mugabe, who ruled since independence from Britain in 1980.
Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s former deputy, is a veteran loyalist in the ruling ZANU-PF party.
(Source: AFP)