A group supporting victims of crime in South Africa says it will legally challenge a controversial Foreign Ministry decision to grant immunity to Grace Mugabe, a move which allowed the wife of Zimbabwe’s president to leave the country without standing trial for an alleged assault on a young model.

AfriForum’s chief Kallie Kriel said Monday that the civil rights organization was preparing a court injunction to set aside the decision to grant diplomatic immunity to Grace Mugabe after she reportedly assaulted Gabriella Engels, a 20-year-old model, with an electrical extension cord at a hotel in Johannesburg.

“We are going to ask the court to say that the decision to grant immunity is unlawful because our legislation says that diplomatic immunity cannot apply in serious crimes, and violence is part of that,” said Kriel.

The rights campaigner also said that Grace, the wife of Zimbabwe’s ailing leader Robert Mugabe, was in South Africa for medical assistance, adding that she could not enjoy diplomatic immunity during the stay.

“We believe that the diplomatic immunity should not have been granted,” Kriel said, adding, “She had been here for medical assistance with regards to her foot and therefore diplomatic immunity does not apply.”

Grace flew out of South Africa in the early hours of Sunday despite being sought by police for the assault on Engels, which left the young model with cuts on her forehead and on her head that required stitching. That had prompted the model to file an assault charge against Mugabe.

South Africa’s Foreign Ministry said later on Sunday in a statement that it had granted Grace Mugabe immunity, although it acknowledged that the decision “was not an easy one to make” and came after “careful consideration of all the relevant factors.”

AfriForum said, however, that seeking diplomatic immunity for Mugabe was an “afterthought” and that the Foreign Ministry’s decision was in line with a regional “culture of impunity.”

The group vowed to help Engels seek justice, adding that even if the court did not accept to overrule the immunity, the effort would still be positive as it could stop Grace Mugabe from visiting South Africa again.

“In the worst case scenario, if we get to a situation where she cannot come to the country any more, I think that will be a positive step,” said Kriel, adding, “But the first prize is to make sure she is being prosecuted.”

Source: Presstv

Susan Namondo Ngongi, outgoing Country Director for UNICEF Ghana, has been appointed as the new UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative for Eritrea. The Cameroonian born UN official was recently appointed to head Eritrea’s UN office and is due to take up her new post this August.

Prior to her coming to Ghana, Susan Namondo Ngongi, has worked with UNICEF across Africa spanning over a decade. She started her UNICEF career in 2000 as an emergencies specialist in Sudan before moving into a co-ordination role with UNICEF’s regional office for Eastern and Southern Africa and UNICEF headquarters in New York.

Susan supported programme development, monitoring and evaluation as Deputy Representative in Liberia in 2008. She then moved to the Comoros as Representative in 2010, three years later she took the post of UNICEF Representative in Ghana.

Ms Ngongi has a Master’s in Public Administration from Columbia University, USA and a Masters in Animal Health from the University of Reading, UK. She has and continues to be celebrated as one of the leading women making Cameroon and the African continent proud through her service to humanity.

Source: Journal du Cameroun

Livestock are dying in parts of Ethiopia that are overwhelmingly reliant on their milk as deepening drought pushes up the number of districts in need of life-saving aid by 19 percent, according to a report.

At least 8.5 million people in 228 districts of Ethiopia need urgent food aid in the second half of the year, up from 5.6 million in January, according to the study published on ReliefWeb, a website run by the United Nations.

Ethiopia’s eastern Somali region is one of the country’s worst affected zones and is home to a quarter of the country’s cases of severe acute malnutrition, UN agencies said.

Severe acute malnutrition is a condition that kills up to half of sufferers under five years old.

“The number of districts requiring immediate, life-saving intervention increased to levels not seen since the height of the El Niño drought impacts in 2016,” said the joint report, which was compiled by the UN and the Ethiopian government.

A strong aid response almost halved the number of Ethiopians needing food aid to 5.6 million since mid-2016. But the devastating drought was followed by poor spring rains this year in the southern and eastern parts of the country.

Since the end of last year, about 2 million animals have died in Somali region, which is home to many herding communities, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“For livestock-dependent families, the animals can literally mean the difference between life and death, especially for children, pregnant and nursing women for whom milk is a crucial source of nutrition,” FAO said in a statement last week.

The UN agency is helping the worst hit communities to protect their remaining livestock with vaccinations, supplementary feed and water, and improved fodder production.

“It is crucial to provide this support between now and October – when rains are due – to begin the recovery process and prevent further losses of animals,” said Abdoul Karim Bah, FAO’s deputy representative in Ethiopia.

(Source: Reuters)

Boko Haram terrorists have stepped up attacks on vulnerable people including those living in camps in northeastern Nigeria pushing the displaced from “one hell into another,” a leading international aid agency says. The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said on Friday that the terrorists were looking for softer targets, including camps hosting the displaced, following the intensification of offensive by the Nigerian military against the militants.

Latest data from the NRC showed that civilians were affected by violence on about 200 occasions last month – three times more than the total for June. It also indicated that at least 32 attacks were carried out on camps and sites for those uprooted by the conflict since July.

“Camps sheltering innocent families fleeing war should be places of refuge but instead they are turning into death traps,” the head of programs for NRC in Nigeria, Ernest Mutanga, said in a statement. “Armed groups in this conflict are pushing people from one hell into another,” he added.

Terrorists have killed and injured dozens of civilians in recent months in a spate of attacks on camps and areas sheltering the displaced that bore the hallmarks of Boko Haram. Eight years of militancy by Boko Haram has so far killed more than 20,000 people and forced more than 2.7 million to flee their homes.

Last year, the Nigerian army seized large swathes of territory from the terrorists; however, the militants have struck back with renewed zeal since June and killed at least 170 people and weakened the army’s control in the northeast. Many aid agencies, including the NRC, have been forced to temporarily suspend their aid work in Maidiguri, the capital of Borno state, due to threats from Boko Haram.

“We are worried that if these attacks continue, a very bad situation will grow even worse when it comes to aid access and delivery,” Jackie Okao, protection and advocacy adviser at the NRC in Nigeria, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

The United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) says about 5.2 million people are expected to need food aid by the end of this month – an increase of 500,000 from the start of 2017 – in a region threatened with famine. According to aid agencies, the situation could be far worse with many areas cut off from help due to the threat of Boko Haram and the arrival of the rainy season restricting access.

Culled from Presstv

Grenade attacks on two cafes killed at least three people and wounded 27 others in the Burundian capital of Bujumbura, police and hospital sources said on Friday.

Police spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye told reporters on Friday that one person died at the scene and 29 others were rushed to hospital after grenades were thrown into two bars in the Buyenzi district on Thursday night. Hospital sources said two people died of their injuries later.

One survivor, who asked not to be named, said the attackers had not attempted to rob the bars or the patrons.

Burundi has suffered from periodic low-level violence since 2015, when President Pierre Nkurunziza decided to seek a third term in office. Opponents said his candidacy violated the constitution and a peace agreement that ended a civil war in 2005. The opposition mostly boycotted the polls and Nkurunziza won a third term.

A wave of unrest followed. The International Criminal Court said it left about 450 people dead and forced hundreds of thousands to flee. Since then, political violence has continued to simmer. Earlier this month, attackers targeted another bar in the same district, causing two deaths and wounding four.

(Source: Reuters)

At least 312 people have been killed and more than 2,000 left homeless when a mudslide and heavy flooding hit Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, leaving hospitals struggling to cope. Red Cross spokesman Patrick Massaquoi told AFP the toll could rise further as his team continued to survey disaster areas in Freetown, where heavy rains have caused homes to disappear under water and triggered a mudslide.

An AFP journalist at the scene on Monday saw bodies being carried away and houses submerged in two areas of the city, where roads were turned into churning rivers of mud and corpses washed up on the streets. Bodies were spread out on the floor of a morgue, Sinneh Kamara, a coroner technician at the Connaught Hospital mortuary, told the national broadcaster.

“The capacity at the mortuary is too small for the corpses,” he told the Sierra Leone National Broadcasting Corp. Kamara urged the health department to deploy more ambulances, saying his mortuary only has four.

Sierra Leone’s national television broadcaster interrupted its regular programming to show scenes of people trying to retrieve their loved ones’ bodies. Others were seen carting relatives’ remains in rice sacks to the morgue. Military personnel have been deployed to help in the rescue operation currently ongoing, officials said.
“It is likely that hundreds are lying dead underneath the rubble,” Vice President Victor Foh told Reuters at the scene of the mudslide in the mountain town of Regent, adding that a number of illegal buildings had been erected in the area.

“The disaster is so serious that I myself feel broken,” he added. “We’re trying to cordon (off) the area (and) evacuate the people.” People cried as they looked at the damage under steady rain, gesturing toward a muddy hillside where dozens of houses used to stand, a Reuters witness said. Mudslides and floods are fairly common during the rainy season in West Africa, where deforestation and poor town planning put residents at risk.

(Source: Agencies)

Zambia plans to drop treason charges against the country’s main opposition leader and free him from prison on Monday under a deal brokered by the Commonwealth secretary-general, government and legal sources told Reuters. The United Party for National Development (UPND) leader Hakainde Hichilema and five others were arrested in April and charged with treason after Hichilema’s convoy failed to make way for President Edgar Lungu’s motorcade.

Hichilema’s trial had been due to begin on Monday in the capital Lusaka but two sources said the prosecution would apply to the court to discontinue the case. The case has stoked political tensions in Zambia, seen as one of Africa’s more stable and functional democracies, following a bruising election last year.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland visited Zambia last week and told reporters she had met Lungu and Hichilema separately and that the two leaders had agreed to a process of dialogue facilitated by her office.
“That process of dialogue, which the Commonwealth Secretary-General Baroness Patricia Scotland is leading with the help of Catholic bishops, starts with the release of the opposition leader from prison,” a government source told Reuters on Sunday, referring to local religious leaders.

“The state will discontinue the treason case in the public interest as both the opposition leader and the head of state are committed to burying their past and starting dialogue envisaged to help address some of the issues the opposition raised after the 2016 elections so that the 2021 elections are better held.”

A spokesman for the UPND said the party was unaware of any plan to release Hichilema. “We don’t have anything on that. We are not privy to the agreement that was entered into between the two leaders and therefore can only wait for tomorrow,” UPND spokesman Charles Kakoma said.

The UPND later said that Hichilema and his co-accused were transferred from Mukobeko Maximum Prison – about 130 km (81 miles) north of the capital – to Lusaka Central Prison.

“They were airlifted this morning and have arrived safely in Lusaka,” the party said. The government source said Lungu is committed to all aspects of the dialogue agreed between the president and the opposition leader, which include promoting peace, stability and public good.

“An overt act serious enough to warrant prosecution exists but the public interest seems to be the overriding consideration, so a nolle prosequi will be entered,” a public prosecutor told Reuters, using the legal term for the discharge of a case.

The southern African country has always been relatively stable but relations between the government and the opposition have been fraught since August when Lungu’s Patriotic Front (PF) beat the UPND in a presidential election marred by violence and which the opposition says was rigged.

It was the second time that Lungu beat Hichilema, an economist and businessman popularly known by his initials “HH”, in a presidential election by a razor-thin margin. Lee Habasonda, a political science lecturer at the University of Zambia, said Hichilema’s release would ease political tension, improve Zambia’s image with investors and end mounting international pressure on Lungu’s government.

“In the face of Zambia seeking international assistance, it is time to make such a move because the state does not lose anything by releasing the opposition leader and dealing with him in other ways,” Habasonda told Reuters.
In June, church leaders including those from the influential Catholic Church, called for Hichilema’s release. Last month Lungu invoked emergency powers to deal with “acts of sabotage” by his political opponents, after fire gutted the country’s biggest market.

Under emergency laws police can prohibit public meetings, detain suspects longer than usual, search without a warrant, close roads, impose curfews and restrict certain people’s movements. The UPND has said Lungu’s use of emergency powers is unnecessary and a ploy to make it easier for police to arrest its supporters.

On Thursday police freed another opposition leader, United Progressive Party leader Saviour Chishimba, after holding him in detention for a week on accusations of defaming Lungu, an offence that carries a maximum five-year prison term. Chishimba hit the headlines in July after criticizing Lungu’s decision to impose emergency powers and suggesting the president should go to hospital for mental tests.

When he invoked the emergency powers, Lungu said the measure would safeguard investments in the country, which is Africa’s second-biggest copper producer and is currently in talks with the International Monetary Fund over a financial aid package. The president said the IMF was free to terminate the negotiations if it considered his actions were wrong.

(Source: Reuters)

A train collision near Egypt’s coastal city of Alexandria has killed 36 people and injured 123 others, Egyptian officials say. The two trains collided head on –one was coming from the capital of Cairo, to the south of Alexandria, and the other was coming from the city of Port Said, located on the northern tip of the Suez Canal.

The head of the ambulance services in the Alexandria’s western sector, Dr. Mohamed Abu Homs, said the collision took place in the district of Khorshid, southeast of the city.

Abu Homs said he fears the death toll and the number of injured could rise further. Egypt’s railway system has a poor safety record, mostly blamed on decades of badly maintained equipment and poor management. Footage from the scene broadcast on state television showed dozens of people crowding around the damaged train cars, with dead bodies strewn on the ground.

State television, citing transport ministry officials, reported that the crash was probably caused by a malfunction in one of the trains that brought it to a halt on the rails. It was the deadliest train accident in the North African country since a November 2013 collision between a train and a bus killed 27 people south of Cairo.

(Source: Agencies)

The UN aid chief has voiced alarm over possible genocide in the Central African Republic (CAR), which has been hit by a fresh wave of clashes between armed groups in recent months. At a UN briefing on Monday, the world body’s Under-Secretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien said renewed fighting in the CAR are “the early warning signs of genocide” there.

He was speaking following his recent trip to the CAR and the Democratic Republic of Congo. “We must act now, not pare down the UN’s effort, and pray we don’t live to regret it,” he said. Some 180,000 people have been driven from their homes this year, bringing the total number of the displaced in the Central African Republic to well over half a million, he said.

O’Brien said it was time to authorize an increase in troops and police serving in the UN peacekeeping force in the CAR, known as MINUSCA, to enable the mission to “deliver on its critical protection mandate.” UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix last week said he was considering sending a request to the UN Security Council for more troops for MINUSCA.

In 2013, the country fell into chaos when then President Francois Bozize was ousted by the mainly Muslim Seleka rebel alliance. The ouster caused a series of deadly reprisal attacks between the Seleka rebels and the Christian militia known as anti-Balaka.

The United Nations has 12,350 troops and police on the ground to help protect civilians and support the government of President Faustin-Archange Touadera, whose election last year helped significantly contain the inter-communal violence.

In recent months, the country has, however, witnessed a fresh wave of fighting between the armed groups. In May, some 300 people were killed and 100,000 displaced in the CAR in the worst flare-up since Touadera’s election. Locals say MINUSCA forces have failed to help stop the violence and provide security in the conflict-torn country.

Nine MINUSCA peacekeepers have been killed in the CAR since the beginning of this year, raising alarm that the country is sliding back into chaos. “The risk of a relapse into another large-scale humanitarian crisis is imminent,” said O’Brien.

Source: Presstv

Minister Dion Ngute was forced to flee from the building hosting the Cameroon embassy in South Africa during a town hall forum decreed by President Biya. Dion Ngute who was representing the 84 year old French Cameroun dictator had traveled to the Republic of South Africa to explained the so-called actions taken by the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime towards resolving the Southern Cameroons crisis.

The Francophone regime’s action was interpreted by many Southern Cameroonians in South Africa as a pretentious and mocking endeavor to tilt the situation back home and instead engage in a diplomatic mission to convince Cameroonians in the Diaspora to support the ruling CPDM crime syndicate. Dion Ngute who moonlights as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in charge of the Commonwealth and his CPDM gang had a handful of people and other invited individuals in the hall.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands protesting Southern Cameroonians who came massively in their numbers were prevented from entering into the embassy. However, some forced their way into the embassy after bringing down the embassy gate, chanting songs of freedom and marched into the hall where the meeting was scheduled to take place.

(Southern Cameroons interim leader)

The junior Anglophone cabinet minister who hails from the oil rich Ndian constituency in West Cameroon, Bakassi Peninsula included was told to go back home, seek dialogue, free Southern Cameroons political prisoners and ensure school resumption in Southern Cameroons.

A sister publication Cameroon Info.Net reported that there was total chaos in the hall as the food, drinks and other entertainment items that were reserved for the Cameroonian delegation and their guests were completely destroyed by the angry crowd.

A frustrated Dion Ngute, attempted to engage the protesters in a conversation but was almost lynched. The humiliation suffered by the French Cameroun delegation was complete and total. He reportedly escaped unable to resist the mounting anger and pressure from Southern Cameroonians.

Culled from Cameroon Intelligence Report