Africa - Page 8

JOHANNESBURG — A nighttime fire ripped through a rundown five-story building in Johannesburg that was occupied by homeless people and squatters, killing at least 73 people early Thursday, emergency services in South Africa’s biggest city said.

Russian officials on Monday appointed Gen. Andrey Averyanov, head of covert offensive operations for Russian military intelligence, to supervise the mercenary Wagner Group’s valuable operations in Africa following the reported death of its founders, Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, in a plane crash last week.

President Emmanuel Macron said that France’s ambassador is staying at his post in Niger despite being asked to leave by the ruling junta.

The slaughter of Christians has become a regular occurrence in sub-Saharan Africa, the Barnabas Fund reports on Saturday, and the “cause is Islamism.”

Two tankers carrying oil products and gas collided in the Suez Canal, disrupting traffic through the globally important waterway.

Former OPEC president Diezani Alison-Madueke has been charged with bribery offences, the UK National Crime Agency said on Tuesday.

Genocidal communist dictator Xi Jinping landed in South Africa in the early morning hours of Tuesday to a personal welcome from President Cyril Ramaphosa, a traditional dance troupe, and the nation’s armed forces in anticipation of this week’s BRICS summit.

General Abdourahamane Tchiani, the leader of the Niger military coup, announced that he would not remain in power for over three years.

The 2023 BRICS summit is scheduled for Tuesday through Thursday this week, bringing together the five member nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa to lay the groundwork for a world of post-American “inclusive multilateralism.”

The United Nations said on Tuesday that the situation in Sudan is “spiraling out of control” as food and medicine run out.

Two powerful Libyan militia groups called a cease-fire after the arrest of a militia commander sparked a day of deadly violence.

Dozens of African migrants bound for Europe are missing and believed dead after a shipwreck off the coast of west Africa.

Tuesday marked the second anniversary of the fall of Kabul, certainly the worst of President Joe Biden’s unforced errors in foreign policy and arguably among the worst in the history of the American presidency.

Terrorists reportedly identified as “Fulani militia” stormed two villages in central Plateau state overnight Thursday, killing 21 people and making a mockery of government checkpoints set up after police received tips that local “bandits” were organizing an attack.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni defiantly stood by his country’s harsh new law against homosexuality on Wednesday after the World Bank suspended new loans to Uganda. Museveni accused the World Bank of using financial pressure to force Ugandans to abandon their values.

The New York Times has published a sympathetic article about Kill The Boer, a violent chant popular with South Africa’s extreme leftist “Economic Freedom Fighters” (EFF) party, after South African born tech mogul Elon Musk called on the country’s president to condemn it.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a coalition led by Nigeria, agreed during an emergency meeting on Thursday to order its military leaders to “activate” its armed forces “immediately” to prepare for an invasion of Niger.

Dr. Kar Hao Teoh, a renowned British orthopedic surgeon, was murdered last week in Cape Town after taking a wrong turn near the airport and driving into a poor neighborhood wracked by violent protests against the local government’s new taxi regulations.

Forty-one migrants including three children are feared dead after being shipwrecked last week in the Mediterranean, UN agencies said.

The leaders of the “National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland,” a group of soldiers who staged a coup in Niger on July 26, failed to allow diplomats representing the United Nations and African Union from entering the country on Tuesday, claiming public “anger” made it unsafe for them to land.

Rhissa Ag Boula, a former leader in Niger’s Tuareg uprisings three decades ago, announced on Wednesday he is forming a Council of Resistance for the Republic (CRR) to oppose the ruling junta and restore President Mohamed Bazoum to power.

Flaming cars, violent clashes, dozens detained. Festivals held the diaspora have been attacked by exiles that the regime calls “asylum scum.”

South African media reported on Sunday that brutal attacks on white farmers have intensified since the left-wing radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party and its leader, Julius Malema, sang a song about killing Boers (whites) and farmers in a packed stadium on July 29.

The Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) called an emergency meeting for Thursday this week after the passage of an ultimatum it issued to coup organizers in Niger to restore the democratically elected government or face a potential military invasion.

The military junta in control of Niger since July 26 announced on Sunday that, in response to a threat of invasion by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), it would shut down the country’s airspace and issue an “energetic and instant response” to any unauthorized flights over its territory.

The coup in Niger will undermine the fight against resurgent terror groups in Africa’s Sahel region, France’s defence minister said.

Niger’s junta asked the Wagner group for help as the deadline nears for it to free the ousted president or face military intervention.

President Mohamed Bazoum of Niger, deposed by a military coup d’etat last week and believed to be trapped in his presidential residence, declared himself a “hostage” and in a Washington Post column published on Thursday asked for American intervention on his behalf.

The State Department announced on Wednesday that it would begin evacuating “non-emergency” American personnel from its embassy in Niamey, Niger, where a group calling itself the “National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland” claimed to have overthrown President Mohamed Bazoum last week.

The Senegal government blocked access to the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok on Wednesday as part of a general crackdown on dissent following the arrest of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko.

The U.S. Department of Defense confirmed on Tuesday that American troops remain in Niger and have no imminent plan to leave, though they remain in “clearly a not-normal situation” following the head of the presidential guard staging an attempted coup d’etat against President Mohamed Bazoum.

The governments of Burkina Faso and Mali issued statements on Monday defending the military coup in Niger last week, stating that any military intervention by democratic neighbors to oust the coup leaders in Niger would be a “declaration of war” against them, as well.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Alfred Mutua said Sunday that his government will lead the long-discussed multinational intervention force in Haiti and send a thousand police officers to “train and assist the Haitian Police to restore normality in the country and protect strategic facilities.”

Julius Malema, the left-wing radical leader of the third-largest South African political party, led a massive stadium crowd on Saturday in a vicious “liberation” chant of “Kill the Boer! Kill the farmer!” — in other words, an explicitly racist call for massive violence against the white population of South Africa.

Elon Musk, the South African-born CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter (now X Corp) called on the President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, to condemn a racist chant used by one of the country’s political leaders, that encourages the murder of white Boer farmers.

A message claiming to be from the head of the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC), Yevgeny Prigozhin, published on social media on Monday suggested that the mercenary organization would continue to remain active only in Africa for the time being – mere days after another claiming to be Prigozhin praised the coup against a pro-Western president in Niger.