South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has cut short his visit to Britain by a day to return home to deal with protests in the country’s North West Province, his office said on Thursday.

Protesters seeking jobs, better housing, roads, and hospitals frequently clash with police in a country faced with weak economic growth and near-record unemployment — but these are the first big demonstrations since Ramaphosa took power in February.

The unrest, dubbed “service delivery protests,” has mounted over the years.

The latest protests erupted on Wednesday, with residents demanding that the province’s Premier Supra Mahumapelo, a member of Ramaphosa’s ruling African National Congress Party, step down.

Ramaphosa called for calm, ordered police to exercise maximum restraint, and urged the aggrieved parties to express their grievances without resorting to violence.

He was due to return to South Africa on Friday from London, where he is leading a delegation to a Commonwealth summit.

“The president will return to Pretoria today, Thursday,” the president’s office said in a statement.

South African media reported that a bus was set alight, vehicles stoned, and roads blockaded by protesters calling for Mahumapelo to quit because of a failure to adequately deliver services.

Police fired teargas to disperse the crowds.

Botswana’s government said on Thursday it had closed exit points to South Africa’s North West Province, where the two countries share a border. The troubled province lies 300 km west of South Africa’s commercial hub Johannesburg.

(Source: Reuters)

US President Donald Trump has denied firing FBI director James Comey last year over the agency’s investigation of Russia’s alleged collusion with Trump’s election campaign before the 2016 US presidential election, contradicting the explanation he offered in the days after Comey’s firing was first announced.

“Slippery James Comey, the worst FBI Director in history, was not fired because of the phony Russia investigation where, by the way, there was NO COLLUSION (except by the Dems)!” Trump said via Twitter early Wednesday.

Trump’s comments follow a new book by Comey which intensifies the allegations that Trump may have engaged in criminal obstruction of justice when Comey was fired in May 2017.

In an interview with NBC News two days after the firing, Trump suggested that the Russia probe was behind the firing.

“Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey,” he said then.

“In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, you know, this thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election.”

In his interview with ABC News that aired Sunday night, Comey suggested Russians have information they could use to blackmail Trump and said there is evidence the president obstructed justice in the ongoing Russia investigation.

Comey’s memoir released on Tuesday, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership,” includes conversations he had with Trump before he was fired in which he implies the president pressured him over the Russia investigation.

When Comey was fired last year, the former FBI chief quickly became the chief prosecution witness for Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigating the Russian meddling in the 2016 US election.

In an interview with National Public Radio on Tuesday, Comey said that he did not have the full picture of Mueller’s probe to be able to make that judgement.

Comey’s written records of several troubling encounters with the president are at the heart of Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump sought to obstruct justice in his attempts to shut down the inquiry.

Source: Presstv

Why are we asking this question now? Because Southern Cameroons declared itself to be the world’s newest country under the leadership of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe some two decades after President Biya’s dissolution of the United Republic of Cameroon – and after a ghastly cavalcade of gruesome atrocities, forced expulsions and a genocide that has killed some 1000 with no international intervention – the people of Southern Cameroons have declared themselves independent and are now known as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

For 57 years Southern Cameroonians have lived as a French Cameroun protectorate while its citizens rely on remittance from the Diaspora. When talks broke down between the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium and the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime, the Southern Cameroons Interim government unilaterally declared independence as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. Now the creators of the world’s newest independent country were abducted by the Buhari administration in the Federal Republic of Nigeria and extradited to Yaounde. Before this dubious process the Ambazonian Interim Government had sent hundreds of letters to governments around the world seeking formal recognition of their independence.

What do the Francophones think?

They are very unhappy. They regard Southern Cameroons as the heart of their state since the early 60s, even though both territories have two different political settings and history. French Cameroun political elites have described Ambazonia as a “fake country”.

So who’s on what side?

The Nigerian regions harboring Southern Cameroonian refugees fleeing the conflict have in a way recognized Southern Cameroons as an independent state and the much anticipated departure of President Buhari in 2019 will make matters even clearer.  So will most of the big African nations – Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Morocco  – and the Ecowas countries are moving toward recognising Southern Cameroons, pronouncing developments in line with President Biya’s continued stay in power, the on-going genocide and the Southern Cameroons refugees crisis in Nigeria.

The CEMAC members – Gabon, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Congo Brazzaville and the Central African Republic have said they will not. Other countries opposed to an independent Southern Cameroons include France and the Ivory Coast. European states are also divided. Germany and the UK are maintaining a kind of deliberate silence including Belguim and Italy. Other EU states, like Holland and Norway, want Southern Cameroon’s future be decided at the UN.

Where is the international community?

For almost two years, Southern Cameroons has been reduced into a slaughter house with government troops killing innocent citizens as if they were not human beings. In many parts of Southern Cameroons, many young men, many of whom are innocent and have nothing to do with the ugly fighting that is playing out over there, have been arrested and taking to unknown destinations. Many have been buried alive, while others have been used by the country’s trigger-happy soldiers as shooting targets.

A recent video that has gone viral online speaks to the accusation that the Yaounde government is committing gross human rights violations in the country’s English-speaking regions. The video, which has shocked many across the globe, is being documented as evidence of human rights abuse by many rights groups which have been seeking to draw the world’s attention to the genocide that is unfolding in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.

A crisis that started as protests by lawyers, teachers and students in Buea and Bamenda was allowed to spiral out of control due to the government’s firm belief in tough and violent means to address issues. The government’s decision to slaughter hundreds of Southern Cameroonians on October 1, 2017, has turned out to be a very bad mistake. Many Southern Cameroonians who have been victims of the government’s marginalization program simply wanted to express their grievances and frustration. But wont to violence and dictatorial ways of doing things, the government resorted to its legendary violence which has transformed an entire region into a huge killing field.

After October 1, 2017, a date many Southern Cameroonians consider as their independence day, the country has been pushed into a spiral of violence. Southern Cameroonians hold that it behooves them to protect themselves as their protector- the government – has decided to mow them down. Many Southern Cameroonians have unfortunately been sent to an early grave and this is what is making any dialogue or reconciliation impossible.

Today, there are many armed groups in the two English-speaking regions of the country. Over the last four months, many innocent civilians have met their death as the government pursues its policy of collective punishment. Many civilians have seen their homes burnt down by government forces which have opted for a “scotch-earth” policy that is hurting many vulnerable people who have nothing to do with the conflict.

What are the arguments?

The European Union, the African Union and the Commonwealth of Nations believe that genuine dialogue by the French Cameroun political leadership is essential for Cameroon to become stable.  In reality, a negotiated solution will not be possible if Mr. Paul Biya stays on as Head of State.

The French for their own selfish interest have blocked every Southern Cameroons action deep within the African Union and the United Nations and have countered with high-minded arguments about the inviolability of national sovereignty.  The French diplomatic missions in both Nigeria and Cameroon have been quoted as saying that France will not recognize Southern Cameroons because this does not respect international law.

But it is perhaps significant that those countries including Spain, France and Nigeria opposing recognition of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia mostly have problems with their own separatist or secessionist movements. Lawmakers on the tiny French overseas territory of New Caledonia voted recently to hold an independence referendum on November 4 to break from France. Spain is presently in chaos over the crisis in Catalonia and mighty Nigeria is bracing with the Biafra uprising.

There is fear that after South Sudan, Southern Cameroons independence could create an unmanageable precedent in the conduct of international relations and the established global order of sovereign states. But Southern Cameroons is however a unique African situation which deserves a unique response from both the United Nations and the European Union.

What is likely to happen?

There will of course be political upheavals in Nigeria in 2019 and the PDP dominated states and governors will openly support the Ambazonia Interim Government and by extrapolation back Southern Cameroons’s independence. But France and the Fulanis in the APC Buhari administration will not. The CEMAC countries will block all Southern Cameroons moves in the African Union. Chad’s chief diplomat heading the African Union will use all diplomatic means at his disposal to block Southern Cameroon’s recognition – and will probably block Southern Cameroon’s access to the UN and the EU.

The real questions are less glamorous and more profound. Unemployment in Southern Cameroons has reached crisis level, corruption and organized crime orchestrated by the ruling CPDM crime syndicate is bad, and more than 40,000 have fled to Nigeria. The troubles are far from over yet.

Is independence for Southern Cameroons a good thing?

Yes...

* 99 per cent of its people are Anglo-Saxon and democratic in nature and should be allowed to determine their own fate

* French Cameroun has effectively lost Southern Cameroons through its own actions in the atrocities and massive killings going on now for two years

* Southern Cameroons independence is the logical working out of the collapse of a failed French policy in Africa

No…

* Southern Cameroons has formed the heart of the state of French Cameroun since independence in 1961

* It sets a dangerous precedent for other parts of Africa such as the Congo and Uganda where rebels want to break away

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Chairman, Editor-in-Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group

The recent unrest in the English-speaking region of Western Cameroon caught the attention of the world media as well as that of the UN, EU and other international agencies. It is threatening to become part of what Wole Soyinka famously termed “the open wound of a continent”. Cameroon is a low-income country with a population of 23.4 million people. It has a GDP of US$30 million and per capita income of US$1,217. It belongs to the Central African Economic Community, one of the weakest in the continent, alongside shambolic countries such as DRC, Central Africa and Chad.

I am often grateful to the ancestors that we were colonised by the British rather than by the French or Portuguese. While they were all bastards, the British were more enlightened bastards. They were more interested in stealing our natural resources while leaving us to our devices; the French, by contrast, were not content to steal our patrimony but also to rob us of our very humanity.

Cameroon was first colonised by the Germans, who ruled from 1884 to 1916. Their historic defeat in what Lenin termed the First Imperialist War forced them to hand-over their colony to the French and the British. The French took the lion-share in the East while the British had a third of the territory in the West. The approaches to colonial administration in both territories sowed the seeds of some of the problems of nationhood that have afflicted modern Cameroon.

The French ruled through the policies of direct rule and assimilation. They introduced a system of forced labour. They also gave preference to catholic missionaries who established schools and clinics. The colonial legal system was anchored on the civil law tradition which limits the prerogatives of judges to what is codified, with more investigative and prosecutorial powers given to the magistracy. Everything was geared to glorify France as the acme of human civilisation. Both the elites and the masses have remained the mental slaves of their French masters. By contrast, the British introduced the indirect rule system in their territory. Protestant missionaries predominated. They also built schools and clinics. British colonial law accorded respect and dignity to the Africans. Forced labour was abolished in preference for wage labour.

Many Africans sought colonial jobs in the plantations and colonial infrastructures as an opportunity for higher income and greater upward mobility. When Cameroon became nominally independent from France on 1st January 1960, a plebiscite was carried out to determine if the Westerners wanted to be in Nigeria or in Cameroon. The north opted to join Nigeria, thanks to the indefatigable campaigns waged by Sir Ahmadu Bello, late premier of the Northern Nigeria. The south, on the other hand, opted to rejoin Cameroon. My Cameroonian friends have told me that their parents recounted to them tales of humiliation and arrogance by the Igbo of Eastern Nigeria. They did not need to be persuaded to rejoin Cameroon. Following the plebiscite Cameroon under its first president Ahmadou Ahidjo adopted a federal constitution in 1972. The new constitutional arrangement accorded a special autonomous status to the English-speaking region. When Paul Biya succeeded Ahidjo in November 1982, he abolished the federal constitution and replaced it with a unitary system; centralising power and revoking the regional autonomy arrangement that the English-speaking region had enjoyed.

The current crisis in Cameroon should not be reduced to an “Anglophone-Francophone” problem. It is far deeper than that. It touches on the anatomy of dictatorship in a corrupt, rapacious, incompetent, extractive neo-colonial apparatus that has treated its citizens with such contumely. The grievances of the English-speaking Cameroonians centre on the fact that they have been deprived of opportunities for advancement while infrastructures and public goods are largely concentrated on the French-speaking East. The two largest cities in Cameroon are Yaoundé, the political capital, and Douala, the commercial capital, in the coast. The main national rail line links Douala and Yaoundé, while the seaports are in Douala, Kribi and Limbé. The bulk of administrative and economic power is thus concentrated on the French-speaking side. While Cameroon is constitutionally a bilingual country, the government has barely tolerated the use of English in preference for French in all matters of public administration.

I recently watched a news clip of English-speaking barristers demonstrating against imposition of French language in the courts. The westerners are gradually being reduced to the status of servitude as “drawers of water and hewers of wood”. I have visited Cameroon several times. I love the country and its people. On the surface, it appears to be a tranquil place. Beneath, there is a seething volcano. Ask the Bamileke who have been hounded and persecuted for decades — ask the intellectuals and professionals who have fled abroad in droves. It is, in reality, a wretched country under the stranglehold of Paul Biya and his French Masonic brethren who have ruled with an iron hand for 35 years.

We are told that the man lives mostly in Switzerland and hardly ever convenes cabinet meetings; an absentee-landlord whose misrule has crippled this great country and its wonderful people. Not too long ago he was alleged to have taken 43 rooms for himself and his entourage at the five-star L’Hérmittage Barrière resort at La Baule in southern France. It was rumoured to cost US$35,000 per night. Recently, English-speaking dissidents unilaterally declared an independent “Ambazonian Republic”. The state responded with such violence that the EU was compelled to plead with the authorities to apply only “proportionate force” as a rule of engagement.

The government also blocked internet accessibility for several months, crippling business and communications. More than 50,000 Cameroonian refugees are in our country. The federal government has been careful not to rock the boat. Cameroon under Ahidjo staunchly stood with the Gowon administration, refusing to aid secessionist Biafra. They helped us win the war. But there has also always been the sticky issue of Bakassi; an international complot to cede off a huge chunk of our coastal territory to sinister French oil and commercial interests. Cameroon, like many so-called “Francophone” countries, is a satellite of a Leviathan that calls itself France-Afrique. France controls their money, their economies, their banking system and their infrastructures and public administration.

When the Bakassi case came up for hearing at the international Court of Justice in The Hague, the fact that the presiding judge was a Frenchman meant we had lost the case ab initio. Under the Green Tree Agreement, the indigenes of Bakassi are supposed to be free to live and pursue their livelihoods as they have done since time immemorial. Alas, the regime in Yaoundé has observed the agreement more in the breach than anything else. The gendarmes have moved in, killing people, pillaging, capsizing boats and extorting humongous amounts for fishing rights. They have shown that it was never theirs in the first place. In a judgement that is unenforceable and whose terms have been violated, we have a duty to revisit it. Winston Churchill warned that borders are never negotiated – they are only defended. It would be rather premature to accord recognition to the soi-disant Republic of Ambazonia, but we should provide humanitarian succour to the people of west Cameroon. Enough is enough. Silence at this stage amounts to complicity in genocide.

We should engage with the regime in Yaoundé and compel them to restore the federal constitution and the autonomy that the westerners had enjoyed hitherto. We should also push for a consociational arrangement that ensures that western Cameroonians are represented at all echelons of leadership, government and the administration. Cameroon is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. If the regime continues to violate the rights of its citizens in such a callous and flagrant manner, we must take steps to ensure that they are expelled from the Commonwealth.

Source: www.vanguardngr.com

The UK participated in recent attack on Syria because it was the right thing to do and because US President Donald Trump asked us to, says British Prime Minister Theresa May.

May made the remarks while addressing parliament on Monday, where she stressed that the strikes were carried out to “further prevent the use of chemical weapons.”

“We have not done this because President Trump asked us to do so,” she added.

Early on Saturday, the US, Britain and France carried out a string of airstrikes against Syria over a suspected chemical attack against Douma. Washington and its allies blamed Damascus for the suspected assault.

The Syrian government has strongly denied the allegation, calling on Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to send a fact-finding mission for investigations.

‘May accountable to parliament not US’

Meanwhile, UK opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has reiterated his stance that British premier is “accountable to the parliament – not to the whims of the US president.”

Corbyn further stressed that the attacks were illegal and violated UN Security Council’s charter.

“There is no more serious issue than the life and death matters of military action,” he added.

“It is right that parliament has the power to support or stop the government from taking planned military action,” he further noted.

Russia rejects evidence tampering claims in Syria

Also on Monday, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov rejected accusations that Moscow is tampering with evidence of the alleged chemical attack.

“I can guarantee that Russia has not tampered with the site,” said Lavrov.

He further stressed that no chemical weapons had been used in Douma.

“I cannot be impolite with the heads of other states, but you quoted the leaders of France and the UK and US and, frankly speaking, all the evidence they quoted was based on media reports and social media,” he said.

“What did take place was the staged thing,” he added, while questioning the US,UK , and France over the timing of the strikes which were carried out before Inspectors from the OPCW even arrived in the country.

OPCW to arrive in Douma on Wednesday

Meanwhile, Russian officials have announced that the OPCW team would arrive in Douma on Wednesday.

“Tomorrow (Tuesday) the security services of the United Nations … will test the routes. And on Wednesday is when we plan the arrival of the OPCW experts,” said a senior Russian official.

Source: Presstv