Celebrated South African anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Kathrada, a Robben Island prisoner and one of Nelson Mandela’s closest colleagues in the struggle against white rule, died early Tuesday aged 87.

Kathrada was among those tried and jailed alongside Mandela in the Rivonia trial in 1964, which drew worldwide attention to the brutalities of the apartheid regime. He died in hospital in Johannesburg after a short illness following brain surgery, his charity foundation said.

Kathrada spent 26 years and three months in prison, 18 of which were on Robben Island, the notorious jail off the coast of Cape Town.

After the end of apartheid, he served from 1994 to 1999 as parliamentary counselor to President Mandela in the first African National Congress (ANC) government.

Retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu described Kathrada as “a man of remarkable gentleness, modesty and steadfastness,” hailing him a moral leader of the anti-apartheid movement.

“These were people of the highest integrity and moral fibre who, through their humility and humanity, inspired our collective self-worth -– and the world’s confidence in us,” Tutu said in a statement.

Culled from Concisenews

Descendants of two Namibian tribes who suffered one of the most horrific genocides under Germany’s colonial rule more than a century ago have now lodged a complaint against Berlin in a New York court. Lawyers representing Namibia’s Herero and Nama tribes and an American non-profit association on genocide were to appear in the court on Thursday as part of a class-action lawsuit, which seeks reparations from Germany for the mass killing of tens of thousands of people and other crimes by German settlers and troops from 1904 to 1908.

Germany has admitted that genocide took place but it has yet to make an official declaration. Berlin also refuses to pay direct reparations, saying it has generously supported Namibia’s development programs since the country’s independence from South Africa in 1990 through paying hundreds of millions of euro. The original lawsuit was brought against Germany in January under the Alien Tort Statute that allows investigations of international law violations against non-US citizens by American courts. Besides seeking reparations, the plaintiffs also demand that they be represented in negotiations between Germany and Namibia on the genocide. They say their exclusion from the talks is a violation of the UN declaration on the indigenous people.

The lawsuit claims that German colonial authorities explicitly consented to settlers’ seizure of a quarter of Herero and Nama lands — about thousands of square miles — from 1885 to 1903. Historic documents suggest that around 65,000 Herero people were massacred in the bloody Battle of Waterberg in August 1904. Around 10,000 people from the Nama tribe were also killed after they sought to rebel against the Germans during the conflict. Germany and Namibia have been in talks over the massacres but Berlin is yet to release any details of the deal being negotiated.

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Moussa Faki Mahamat, the new chair of the African Union Commission (AUC), takes office in mid-March as the continent faces its worst spate of humanitarian crises since the 1990s. The most alarming is in the Lake Chad basin where more than eleven million people need emergency aid. In Somalia, 6.2 million (almost half the population) face acute food shortages and in South Sudan, where the UN recently declared a famine, nearly 5 million are severely food insecure. The suffering is largely man-made: the effects of drought have been exacerbated by prolonged wars and mass displacement.

More promisingly, Gambia’s peaceful transition, negotiated by the Economic Community of West African States with AU support, is one of the steps toward democracy and rule of law being taken in much of the continent. Whether these gains can be multiplied across Africa depends on how well Mr Faki, Chad’s former foreign minister, will use the tools at his disposal to persuade member states to address the triggers and longer-term drivers of conflict: fraught electoral processes; leaders who refuse to leave office as scheduled; corrupt, authoritarian or repressive governments; population growth; joblessness and climate change. These same forces precipitate two other major continental challenges, migration and the threat from religious extremists and other violent non-state groups.

International Crisis Group

The death toll from a landslide at Ethiopia’s largest rubbish dump reached 82 on Tuesday as the country’s parliament declared three days of national mourning, a government minister said. Communications Minister Negeri Lencho said, rescuers are still searching for survivors and victims’ bodies.

Part of the largest hill at the Koshe rubbish dump in the capital Addis Ababa gave way on Saturday, swallowing up a slum that had been built on the trash and burying families alive in their homes. Most of the dead are women and children. Rescuers on Tuesday pulled a woman alive from the rubble more than two days after the disaster, said Dagmawit Moges, a spokeswoman for the Addis Ababa city administration. Starting Wednesday, flags in Ethiopia will fly at half-mast as the country observes three days of mourning for the victims.

The Koshe landfill has for more than 40 years been the main garbage dump for Addis Ababa. Hundreds of people lived at the landfill on the outskirts of the capital, collecting recyclables trucked in from neighborhoods around the city of about four million people. The government tried last year to close the dump and move it to a different location, but opposition from residents at the new site forced the authorities to back down.

Residents blamed the landslide on the construction of a new biogas facility on top of the rubbish. Lencho rejected that claim, saying slum dwellers had caused the collapse by digging into the soil to find rubbish to sell.

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An attack on a police post west of Niger has left at least four officers dead. A security source said Monday that the attack, which took place a day earlier, struck Wanzarbe, a town located in the western region of Tillaberi.

“The provisional toll is four police officers killed in a clear terrorist attack on Sunday night,” said the source, adding that the assault targeted a police station. The government of Niger on Saturday declared a state of emergency in Tillaberi and other areas near the country’s border with Mali and Burkina Faso.

Tillaberi and neighboring Tahoua region have witnessed several deadly attacks by militants from MUJAO, a terror outfit mainly operating in West Africa region. Most of those attacks have targeted army posts and refugee camps, including a late February assault in Ouallam, Tillaberi, which killed 16 soldiers and wounded 18 others.

Last October, a daring attack on a refugee camp in Tahoua also left 22 soldiers dead. Officials say at least 43 people were killed in militant attacks in Tillaberi and Tahoua between October 2016 and February this year. Niger is a northern neighbor to Nigeria, where the Boko Haram Takfiri terror group launched bloody militancy against the government seven years ago.

More than 20,000 people have been killed in the insurgency, which has also spread to neighboring countries of Niger, Chad and Cameron.

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Police in South Africa have used rubber bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas to scatter people clashing at rival rallies by locals and refugees.

Hundreds of nationals and non-nationals were rallying in separate marches in the capital, Pretoria, on Friday. Police forces had formed lines to keep the two crowds apart. Clashes erupted nevertheless.

The refugees were from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Somalia, and Pakistan. Violence has emerged against refuges in South Africa in recent weeks. Locals have looted and torched houses and shops belonging to the refugees.

President Jacob Zuma said in a statement on Friday that there had been “threats of violence and acts of intimidation and destruction of property directed at non-nationals.”

“Residents in some communities blame non-nationals for the escalating crimes especially drug trafficking,” the president said, calling on South Africans not to blame migrants for the country’s widespread crime problems, but said the government would crack down on drug-dealing and illegal immigrants.

According to reports, local citizens targeted more than 20 shops in Atteridgeville, outside Pretoria, over the last week. Residents in Rosettenville, south of Johannesburg, also attacked at least 12 houses.

“We have decided to not to leave the house [during the anti-migrant march],” said Alain Bome, 47, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who has been in South Africa for 14 years. “We know very well there have been attacks. We are scared because we know South Africans.”

The rise in violence prompted the Nigerian government this week to call for the African Union to step in to stop the “xenophobic attacks” on its citizens in South Africa. Nigeria says at least 20 of its nationals were killed in South Africa last year.

South African authorities, however, rejected the number, saying many violent deaths in the country had occurred due to victims’ own criminal activity. South Africans blame refugees for the country’s near-record unemployment, accusing them of taking jobs from citizens and engaging in crimes.

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Human Rights Watch (HRW) has revealed details of the execution of at least 32 civilians by an armed group in the lawless heart of the Central African Republic late last year. The HRW said in a report on Thursday that militants from the Union for Peace in the Central African Republic (UPC), a splinter group from a rebel force in neighboring Chad, had killed 32 civilians and captured fighters in the town of Bakala in December 2016.

The New York-based rights group said 25 people had been killed after they were called to a school for an alleged meeting, while seven other men were executed as they were returning from a nearby gold mine. “Accounts of the incidents were provided by a survivor and eight witnesses, including five men who were forced to help dispose of the bodies,” said the HRW in a statement.

A representative of the rights group in the Africa region also denounced the killing as “brazen war crimes by UPC fighters who feel free to kill at will.” In January, the UPC denied that its militants had been involved in any form of killing in Bakala region. “Soldiers in the UPC cannot execute civilians or prisoners … What you have heard about the UPC are lies,” said Ali Darassa, UPC’s commander since the formation of the group in September 2014.

Experts from the United Nations had earlier warned that armed groups were using the lawlessness in tracts of the CAR to maintain their interests, ranging from control of gold and other mines, cattle rustling and highway robbery. “They have taken the place of the judicial apparatus and [they] terrify the population,” Marie-Therese Keita-Bocoum, an independent UN expert on human rights in the CAR said, adding that “armed groups reign as masters over more than 60 percent of the territory, benefiting from total impunity.”

France and the UN’s mission in the CAR, known as MINUSCA, have intervened militarily in the African country to end large-scale massacres and restore relative order to the capital, Bangui. However, insecurity continues to grip swaths of the territory.

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At least 11 people have been killed in a series of violent clashes between the army and fighters loyal to a slain militia chief in central Democratic Republic of the Congo, a local activist says.

Jean Rene Tshimanga, a local activist, said that the clashes took place between the DR Congo soldiers and the militia loyal to a traditional chief killed in fighting with security forces last year. He added that the violence occurred near the town of Tshimbulu in Kasai-Central Province on Monday.

“This morning, we learned again that (the militia) attacked the men in uniform [who] repelled them,” Tshimanga, the president of the Civil Society of Kasai-Central Province, said. The activist  did not specify how many of the dead were militia members and how many army soldiers.

The town, where the army killed more than 60 militia members in fighting last Friday, has been the scene of constant clashes between the soldiers and armed groups over the past few months. Similar clashes in recent months have killed hundreds and uprooted thousands across the troubled region.

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Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has ordered a probe into the cause of a deadly stampede at a football stadium during a match that left at least 17 people dead and nearly 60 more injured. The presidential decree was issued late on Friday following the stampede that occurred earlier in the day at a stadium in the northern city Uige where hundreds of fans rushed towards the stadium’s gates.

“I express my solidarity with the families of the deceased and have instructed the Provincial Government of Uige to provide all necessary assistance to the injured,” he said in a statement.

Dos Santos said he had given “guidance to the competent authorities to open an inquiry that will establish the cause of this serious incident.” Panic spread through a crowd of fans during a match between Santa Rita de Cassia and Recreativo de Libolo football clubs in Angola’s domestic league season, local media said. “There was a blockage at the entrance to the January 4 stadium… this obstruction caused multiple fatalities — 17 deaths, and there are 56 injured in the hospital,” police spokesman Orlando Bernardo told AFP.

There were an unknown number of children among those killed in the stampede, and that hospitals were still treating those wounded, he added. Police authorities said hundreds of fans had attempted to gain entry into the already-packed stadium to watch the match, leading to a crush that pushed some people to the ground. Many of those killed were reportedly trampled to death or had suffocated. According to a statement published on the website of the Recreativo de Libolo club, “while the players were on the field, outside fans were trying to get into the stadium.”

“A gate probably gave way to the pressure of the crowd causing several people to fall who were literally trampled on by the crowd,” it added. The Portuguese news agency Lusa cited the president of the Uige-based host team Santa Rita de Cassia as saying that local security forces were to blame for lack of crowd control.

Pedro Nzolonzi cited serious police error in letting the people so close to the field.  “Many of them did not want to pay and those who had tickets could not get in. Then the confusion began,” he said.  “It is all the fault of the police. It was easy to avoid. They just need to extend the safety cordon,” he added. The country’s sports ministry also called on the local football association as well as provincial officials to conduct investigations into the tragic incident, according to state news agency Angop.

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A terrorist attack by the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab militants on a hotel in Somalia’s port city of Bosasso has left four guards and two assailants dead.

“Three al-Shabab fighters stormed the International Village Hotel this morning. Four guards and two of the attackers died in the fighting,” said Bari region Governor Yusuf Mohamed on Wednesday.

According to the governor, none of the guests at the hotel, which is popular with foreigners, were hurt in the armed assault. He said one of the assailants fled the scene and remained at large.

“Fortunately, the attackers did not enter the rooms. The fighting took place inside the compound. A third fighter escaped and we are pursuing him. All the people in the hotel are safe,” Mohamed said.

The development came as Somalia’s legislators are set to elect the country’s next president in the capital of Mogadishu later in the day.

Somali authorities have enforced a security lockdown of Mogadishu in order to step up safety across the capital ahead of the planned legislative process.

Somalia’s Police Commander Mohamed Sheikh Hassan Haamud announced on Tuesday that security forces had blocked main roads and barred vehicles from driving near the secure airport compound.

“Police forces will secure the election scene and streets, and the vote will take place peacefully as planned,” the police chief added.

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