At The Daily News Source, the privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance to us (See this article to learn more about Privacy Policies.). This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by The Daily News Source and how it is used.
Log Files
Like many other Web sites, The Daily News Source makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user"s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.
Cookies and Web Beacons
The Daily News Source does use cookies to store information about visitors preferences, record user-specific information on which pages the user access or visit, customize Web page content based on visitors browser type or other information that the visitor sends via their browser.
DoubleClick DART Cookie
Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on The Daily News Source.
Google"s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to users based on their visit to The Daily News Source and other sites on the Internet.
Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following URL - http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html.
These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on The Daily News Source send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.
The Daily News Source has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.
You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. The Daily News Source"s privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.
If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browser"s respective websites.
BANGUI (Reuters) – President Francois Hollande flew to Central African Republic on Friday to tell its leaders and French forces stationed there that France will work to stop the country splitting in two.
A lawmaker in the Central African Republic’s interim parliament was murdered in the capital Bangui Sunday by unidentified assailants, according to the Central African League of Human Rights.
The MP who was killed was identified as Jean-Emmanuel Ndjaroua, representative of the southeast region of Haute Kotto, by the League’s chief Joseph Bindoumi.
No group claimed responsibility for killing Ndjaroua a day after he made a speech denouncing recent violence and calling for Christian militias to be confined to barracks.
Government officials said attackers followed the lawmaker, and shot him several times outside his house.
Red Cross country director Antoine Mbao Bogo said his organization had been called to collect the body.
Lynchings of minority Muslims
A weekend of violence and looting in Bangui has left at least 10 people dead, according to witnesses and a humanitarian official who spoke to AFP Sunday. The violence included two gruesome lynchings of minority Muslims.
Fighting broke out Saturday evening between Christian vigilantes and Muslims in the west of Bangui where many buildings were torched, they said.
A resident told AFP that the Muslim killer of a Christian woman was lynched and killed before his body was burned and deposited in front of the local town hall, where it could be seen early Sunday.
A suspected Christian militiaman killed another Muslim civilian, and was about to burn the body when Rwandan soldiers of the African peacekeeping force MISCA shot him dead, a witness who gave his name as Innocent told AFP.
The shooting prompted an angry crowd to shout slogans against the Rwandan soldiers, whom they mistakenly believed to be Muslim. “Death to the Rwandans,” one shouted, according to Innocent.
Five other people were killed in unclear circumstances, the witnesses said.
Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch confirmed the witness reports and said another Muslim was lynched early Sunday near Bangui’s central market.
The former French colony has been engulfed in violence for nearly a year since the Seleka rebel group installed Michel Djotodia as the country’s first Muslim president in a coup in March 2013.
The following months saw rogue Seleka fighters unleash a wave of atrocities against the Christian majority, prompting the emergence of vigilante groups.
The violence has raged unabated even after Djotodia stepped aside and the parliament appointed interim President Catherine Samba Panza last month, and Muslims have been fleeing the violence in their thousands.
A man was lynched Friday after he fell off a lorry in a convoy of terrified Muslims fleeing Bangui. Residents hacked him to death and dumped his body on the roadside.
‘The French won’t fire at us’
Meanwhile looting was rampant in the capital, where young people could be seen removing furniture and equipment from buildings and shops — some still smoldering from fires set on Saturday — despite the heavy presence of French and African peacekeepers as a French helicopter gunship circled above.
The peacekeepers went from door to door to try to rout the looters, who simply moved on to other targets, pushing their carts and wheelbarrows between French armored cars.
“The French won’t fire at us,” one young looter said, laughing.
The mayhem came as French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian began an African tour on Sunday in the Chadian capital N’Djamena mainly focused on the Central African conflict.
Chad, the impoverished country’s neighbor to the north, has 850 troops in MISCA and is also home to 950 French troops — Paris’s largest concentration of soldiers abroad after Djibouti.
Le Drian is to meet Chad’s President Idriss Deby, often described as the kingmaker of Bangui politics, before heading to Brazzaville for talks with President Denis Sassou Nguesso, a mediator in the conflict.
On Wednesday Le Drian will begin his third visit since the French operation codenamed Sangaris was launched two months ago.
Muslim Central Africans and foreigners have been fleeing Bangui for several months to escape killings, looting and harassment by armed Christian militias.
The International Criminal Court said Friday it had opened an initial probe into war crimes in the Central African Republic.
Atrocities, the fear of attacks and a lack of food have displaced almost a quarter of the country’s population of about 4.6 million, while the United Nations and relief agencies estimate that at least two million people need humanitarian assistance.
The landlocked country has been prone to coups, rebellions and mutinies for decades, but the current sectarian conflict is unprecedented.
At Alternate Viewpoint, the privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance to us (See this article to learn more about Privacy Policies.). This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by Alternate Viewpoint and how it is used.
Log Files
Like many other Web sites, Alternate Viewpoint makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user"s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.
Cookies and Web Beacons
Alternate Viewpoint does use cookies to store information about visitors preferences, record user-specific information on which pages the user access or visit, customize Web page content based on visitors browser type or other information that the visitor sends via their browser.
DoubleClick DART Cookie
Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on Alternate Viewpoint.
Google"s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to users based on their visit to Alternate Viewpoint and other sites on the Internet.
Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following URL - http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html.
These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on Alternate Viewpoint send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.
Alternate Viewpoint has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.
You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. Alternate Viewpoint"s privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.
If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browser"s respective websites.
1 of 6. Personnel from the African Union peacekeeping mission to Central African Republic (MISCA) control a fighting crowd near the airport, in the capital Bangui December 28, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Andreea Campeanu
BANGUI (Reuters) – Hundreds of people tried to flee inter-religious violence in Central African Republic on Saturday aboard emergency flights to neighboring Chad, while nearby countries appealed for help to rescue their citizens from the mounting humanitarian crisis.
Tit-for-tat violence between Muslim Seleka rebels, who seized power in March, and Christian self-defense militias have killed more than 1,000 people this month in the riverside capital Bangui and displaced hundreds of thousands more.
Fighting in the former French colony has surged in recent weeks despite the presence of 1,600 French peacekeepers and nearly 4,000 African Union troops deployed under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians. Bangui was calm on Saturday.
The ‘anti-balaka’ militia have targeted Muslims they say have supported Seleka during months of looting and killing since March. With many Seleka gunmen coming from Chad, its citizens in particular have been singled out, prompting their government to charter flights this week to bring them home.
However, many of those who waited in the heat at Bangui airport were Muslim Central Africans who said they were fleeing their majority-Christian homeland for fear of reprisals.
“We have never known violence as barbaric as this,” said Aishatou Abdelkarim, 31, who said she was married to a Chadian. “The devil has taken control of our country.”
Chad’s Foreign Minister Moussa Faki said some 4,000 Chadians had been transported home so far, many of whom had lived in Central African Republic their whole lives. That is just a fraction, however, of the hundreds of thousands of Chadians living in landlocked Central African Republic.
More than 800,000 people have fled their homes during this month’s fighting, with about half of them seeking refuge in Bangui, the United Nations says. It appealed on Friday for $ 152 million to help meet emergency humanitarian needs such as drinking water and sanitation in makeshift camps.
Tens of thousands of people have sought safety at the international airport, where French peacekeepers have a base. Women and children waited beside piles of suitcases and bags.
Cameroon flew home 214 of its citizens on Friday, bringing the number evacuated this month to 926, state radio there reported. Senegal and Niger, meanwhile, have asked the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) for urgent help in extracting hundreds of their own expatriates.
CONGOLESE KILLED
Many say the bloodshed has little to do with religion in a nation where Muslims and Christians have long lived in peace. Instead, they blame a political battle for control over resources in one of Africa’s most weakly governed states.
“We used to live in perfect harmony with the Christians but it is Seleka and the anti-balaka who are trying to divide us,” said Issa Baro, a 35-year-old Muslim trader from Chad, waiting to catch a flight home.
Chad’s Foreign Minister Faki said toppled President Francois Bozize was responsible for the surge in violence in recent weeks and was using the anti-balaka to undermine interim President Michel Djotodia, Seleka’s leader.
French President Francois Hollande told U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-moon by telephone on Friday he wanted greater U.N. involvement in Central African Republic. Ban is preparing a proposal for a possible U.N. peacekeeping mission.
Two Congolese peacekeepers were killed when they were attacked by unidentified gunmen late on Thursday, a day after six Chadian peacekeepers were killed, a spokesman for the African Union’s MISCA peacekeeping mission said.
Two French soldiers were also shot dead in early December.
(Additional reporting by Serge Leger Kokpakpa; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Erica Billingham)
BANGUI (Reuters) — Mariam watched in horror as militiamen burst through the gate of her home in Central African Republic’s capital Bangui and demanded her husband say whether he was Muslim. When he said yes, they shot him dead.
“They killed him just like that in front of our child,” said Mariam, who fled through the back door. “Then they hacked and clubbed our neighbors, a husband and wife, to death.”
The two-day frenzy of violence in Bangui this month — in which militia killed 1,000 people, according to Amnesty International — fed fears that Central African Republic was about to descend into religious warfare on a scale comparable to Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.
The slaughter — a response to months of atrocities by mostly Muslim fighters from the Seleka rebel group who seized power in March — prompted France to immediately deploy 1,600 troops under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians.
Religious leaders had sounded the alarm over abuses by the Seleka after they burned churches, looted and killed during their southward march on the capital early this year. The violence has displaced some 700,000 people so far.
Many in the country insist that the origins of the bloodshed have little to do with religion, in a nation where Muslims and Christians have long lived in peace. Instead, they blame a political battle for control over resources in one of Africa‘s weakest-governed states, split along ethnic faultlines and worsened by foreign meddling.
“We carried out these attacks because we have been invaded by foreigners by Chad and Sudan,” said Hercule Bokoe, a member of the militia, known as “anti-machete” and set up for self defense before the Seleka rebels arrived. He said his group’s aim was purely political: it would fight on until Seleka leader Michel Djotodia, installed as interim president, left power.
“We said to ourselves that the country cannot continue to be held hostage by foreigners,” Bokoe told Reuters.
“POLITICAL CONFLICT”
Rich in diamonds, timber, gold, uranium and even oil, Central African Republic has been racked by five coups and numerous rebellions since independence from France in 1960 as different groups fought for control of state resources.
That — and spillover from conflicts in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Chad — have destroyed the rule of law, leaving a phantom state with an ill-disciplined army, corrupt administration and a lawless interior.
Djotodia and other Seleka leaders launched their uprising to gain access for northern peoples to resource wealth — particularly oil being exploited in their northern homeland by the China National Petroleum Corporation.
Djotodia says his northern Gula tribespeople — Muslim pastoralists neglected both under French colonial rule and post-independence governments — were betrayed by former President Francis Bozize, who sought their aid for a 2003 coup but surrounded himself with his Gbaya tribe once in power.
With support from battle-hardened Chadian and Sudanese fighters, many of them also Gulas, Seleka swept southward, overrunning not only Bozize’s poorly equipped troops but also a South African peacekeeping force in March.
Once in Bangui, unable to speak French or the local Sango language, Seleka fighters sought out Arabic-speaking Muslims and stayed with them, often hoarding looted goods in their homes.
Non-Muslims equated this with complicity, said Archbishop of Bangui Diedonne Nzapalainga, with the devastating effects seen in the early December violence.
“To non-Muslim locals, Muslim now equals Seleka and Seleka equals Muslim,” said Nzapalainga, who for months has worked with Muslim clerics to try to calm rising religious tensions. “We came out early and declared that this conflict was not a religious conflict but a political one.”
“CHAD IS THE MASTER”
Djotodia, 64, waged an unsuccessful uprising against Bozize in the late 2000s using a network of Sudanese and Chadian support he had established during his time as consul in Nyala in Sudan’s southern Darfur region earlier that decade.
But a rift between Bozize and his main military backer, Chadian President Idriss Deby, shifted the balance of power in Djotodia’s favour. Deby, who had helped install Bozize as president in the 2003 coup, withdrew his Chadian presidential guard last year.
Witnesses said Chadian peacekeepers simply stood aside when Seleka troops — led by a former member of Deby’s own presidential bodyguard — marched on Bangui. As Bozize’s replacement in the presidential palace, it is now Djotodia who enjoys the protection of Chadian bodyguards.
Many in the capital say ethnic ties between the Seleka and Chadian soldiers participating in a 3,700-strong African Union peacekeeping mission (MISCA) are complicating efforts to resolve the crisis.
Residents in Bangui have accused Chadian troops of supplying Seleka fighters, turning a blind eye to their activities, and even attacking Christians themselves. Olivier Domanga, a resident of northern Bangui, said Chadian troops distributed dozens of weapons to Muslim inhabitants of his neighborhood.
“Chad is the master of Seleka and Seleka is its attack dog,” said Philomon Dounia, another Bangui resident.
Chad says its peacekeepers are neutral and denies supporting Seleka or distributing weapons to Muslims.
After opposition politicians and civil society activists demanded the Chadians’ withdrawal, MISCA’s commanding officer, Cameroon’s Martin Tumenta Chomu, said on Tuesday they would be moved outside the capital to northern Central African Republic.
WORST EVER LOOTING
Even in a country inured to rebellions, Seleka’s atrocities have proved shocking. It has been exacerbated the lack of a command structure in the loose coalition, whose name means ‘alliance’ in Sango. Warlords carved up territory where they had the power of life and death as they sought to extort money, particularly from non-Muslims.
Acknowledging he was powerless to control the fighters in a country the area of France, Djotodia announced the official dissolution and disarmament of Seleka following outcry from the international community, but this had little effect.
As Seleka torched villages and massacred entire populations, the “anti-machete”, or “anti-balaka” — initially local militias paid to defend crops and cattle against robbers and highwaymen due to the absence of state security — began seeking revenge.
According to local animist beliefs, members of the militia have magical powers that protect them, and amulets they wear make them invincible.
“The anti-balaka have nothing to do with the church or Christianity. Calling them a Christian militia is wrong,” said Nzapalainga, who said the ranks of the militia were swollen by people who had lost belongings or loved ones to Seleka.
“To them, it is revenge. I have heard people say this is the ‘return match’,” he said.
Louisa Lombard, an anthropologist specializing in Central Africa Republic, said tensions between Muslims and Christians had increased over the past decade but this was due largely to the success of Muslim traders with contacts in Chad and Sudan, rather than a rise of religious extremism.
“It is more an issue of the Muslims being considered foreigners by the Christians,” she said.
Despite these tensions, many Central Africans are proud of their tolerance and tradition of cohabitation and inter-marriage.
Imam Oumar Kobine Layama, leader of the country’s Muslims, was offered refuge at St. Paul’s church in Bangui by Nzapalainga after his family was threatened. In the capital’s northern PK5 neighborhood, Muslim youths guarded the St. Mathias Catholic church and protected Christians.
Helen Tofio, one of 40,000 people who fled to Bangui airport to seek safety near a French camp, voiced concern that ongoing tit-for-tat violence would sow the seeds of religious strife.
“We used to live in harmony with Muslims before the arrival of the Seleka,” she said. “But their abuses, and the attitude of some Muslims who seem to be supporting them, have given rise increasingly to religious conflict.”
Over at the Huffington Post, I interview Chris Coyne, professor of economics at George Mason University and author of the recent book Doing Bad By Doing Good: Why Humanitarian Action Fails, on the humanitarian interventions in Central African Republic.
Here’s an excerpt:
Q: What was your reaction to the Obama administration’s decision to increase support to French and African troops in CAR?
Chris Coyne: Given what I know, it is very predictable. For the past several months the U.S. has been pushing back on UN intervention because of the cost of UN peacekeeping missions. I believe the U.S. would have to pay somewhere in the range of 27 percent of the costs of the peacekeeping mission based on the formula the UN uses. This push back occurred despite the fact that violence was already in full effect and well known. So one way to read the U.S. commitment of resources is as a relatively cheap way to placate the growing push for the UN to intervene. Making a lump sum payment to “support” French and African troops is cheaper than paying a percentage of a very costly peacekeeping mission. People keep pointing out how the U.S. has no strategic or economic interests so that this is purely a morally-based assistance. But in my review the push back by the Obama administration over the past several months shows that it is not about some higher moral principle, but responding to political incentives (cost of UN peacekeeping mission vs. lump-sum payment).
Q: This is an extremely limited intervention compared to other recent actions (Balkans, Libya, etc.). What difference might this make?
CC: Well, the U.S. has limited exposure right now. The worst case scenario is that $ 100 million is lost or wasted. In the scheme of things this is not much money and U.S. citizens won’t even know about it. Best case some kind of peace is established and then the U.S. government can take partial credit for supporting the effort. More broadly, beyond the U.S., right now the goal of the intervention seems to be to achieve some semblance of peace. But from everything I have read it isn’t that easy. Like most conflicts similar to this this there are no clear “good” or “bad” sides. Further, both sides have weaponry. So there are no clear victims and criminals. In my view, the worst case would be if mission creep sets in and peacekeeping becomes nation building.
Q: Have humanitarian interventions of this sort worked in the past? What does the record say?
CC: The record is mixed. A big problem with the attempts to “measure” success is that different people have different definitions of success. There is an existing academic literature that looks at peacekeeping missions and judges success based on whether there is a reoccurrence of conflict. In the literature these are referred to as “traditional peacekeeping” missions since they are relatively narrow and not focused on things like nation building, elections, etc.
The empirical literature finds that traditional peacekeeping missions are effective in preventing conflict if they take place after a ceasefire has already been negotiated by the parties involved. “After” is the key word because there is evidence that peacekeeping missions that take place before a ceasefire is negotiated has no effect (or a negative effect). Since there is no preexisting ceasefire in CAR, the existing empirical literature would seem to indicate that achieving sustainable peace will be difficult.
Q: What do you expect to come out of the increasingly interventionist approach from the U.S., France, neighboring African countries, and the international community?
CC: I can only speculate, but I predict continued violence and continued “outrage” by the international community. I believe the UN is calling for a peacekeeping force in the range of 7,000-9,000 troops. Right now there are about 1,600 French troops there. Some humanitarian aid will be delivered but this isn’t surprising — if you spend $ 100 million, some aid is bound to get there, right? More broadly, I expect lots of “discussion” by the “international community” about the need for “political will” to respond not just to the CAR situation, but future situations as well.
Central African Republic’s President Michel Djotodia sits during a conference in Bangui December 8, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Herve Serefio
BANGUI (Reuters) – Central African Republic’s interim leader is weighing a possible amnesty for militias involved in Christian-Muslim violence that has killed hundreds of people, most of them civilians, in exchange for their disarmament.
The majority-Christian country has been paralyzed by cycles of killing, torture and looting since Michel Djotodia’s mainly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power in March.
Djotodia has since lost control of his former fighters, whose abuses have led to the emergence of militias, known as the anti-balaka, meaning anti-machete in the local Sango language, opposing them.
In a sign of continued instability within the transitional administration, Djotodia dismissed three members government on Sunday, including Security Minister Josue Binoua whose home was raided by police during the violence last week.
More than 1,600 French troops deployed this month to try to stop the violence that has displaced more than 680,000 people – nearly one-seventh of the country’s inhabitants – according to the United Nations.
The former rebel leader said in a state radio address late on Saturday that he had been contacted by a representative of the mainly Christian and animist anti-balaka, who were demanding inclusion in the transitional government he leads.
Elections are due to take place in 2015, however the government in Bangui exerts little control even within the capital.
“The anti-balaka sent us an emissary and said they want to lay down their weapons and leave the bush, but they fear for their security. They gave preconditions … They asked for an amnesty and entrance into government,” Djotodia said.
“Contacts are already established and we will pursue these exchanges in the interest of peace for all Central Africans,” he added. “We don’t see the harm, because this is the price of peace.”
The anti-balaka, along with gunmen loyal to ousted President Francois Bozize, attacked Bangui last week, triggering more killings and reprisals that have deepened inter-religious conflict. More than 500 people were killed and 189,000 have been displaced in the capital alone.
A government spokesman said that Djotodia was not ruling out any of the demands made by the anti-balaka and was planning to reach out to other groups for similar talks – which might also mean the Seleka rebels.
“The president will consider anything that will lead to peace in Central African Republic,” Guy-Simplice Kodegue said.
In a handwritten press statement seen by Reuters on Sunday, an anti-balaka group calling itself the Youth of the Anti-Balaka Revolution called upon its members to observe an immediate ceasefire to give peace talks a chance.
It was unclear how many fighters the group represented.
Rights groups expressed skepticism over whether an agreement with the loosely affiliated militias could bring peace.
“I think the question is whether there is enough structure among the anti-balaka to deliver on promises to lay down arms” said Peter Bouckaert, emergency director at New York-based Human Rights Watch.
MINISTERS FIRED
Central African Republic is rich in diamonds, gold and uranium, but it has seen little stability and, since independence in 1960, France has intervened there more than in any other former colony.
The firing of the three ministers on Sunday risks worsening tensions because it was not carried out under the terms of an accord that led to the formation of the transitional government.
Government spokesman Kodegue said a number of crates of weapons of all calibers and some military material were found at the security minister’s house.
“Minister Binoua always claimed not to have weapons for the gendarmes and police. Where did these arms crates come from?”
Binoua could not immediately be reached for comment.
Finance Minister Christophe Mbremaidou, who Kodegue said had been unreachable during the crisis, was also sacked, along with Rural Development Minister Joseph Bedounga, who was accused of criticizing the government during the violence.
A senior government official, however, told Reuters that Prime Minister Nicolas Tiangaye had not signed off on the dismissals as required under the terms of the country’s transitional administration.
“He was not even consulted and only heard about it like everyone else over the radio,” the official said, calling Djotodia’s changes to the cabinet “null and void”.
(Additional reporting by Nicholas Vinocur in Paris; Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Alison Williams and Mohammad Zargham)
CAPE TOWN (Reuters) – A South African court sentenced a man to two years in prison on Friday after he pleaded guilty to helping transport 3,243 abalone as part of an international criminal ring that poached tons of the gourmet mollusk.
Rampant poaching has decimated the abalone population in South Africa’s coastal waters to feed demand for the high-priced delicacy in Asia, where the mollusks have also been over harvested, forcing buyers to look elsewhere.
Accused Peter Jansen appeared with more than 20 other suspects facing some 530 charges, including illegal possession of abalone, racketeering and corruption in what officials said was the biggest abalone criminal bust in the country’s history.
The alleged mastermind, Chinese national Ran Wei, has fled South Africa after police caught members of the syndicate last year and he is being charged in absentia.
In Jansen’s plea bargain, he admitted to hiring the car that transported 3,243 shucked abalone — also known locally as “perlemoen” — with an estimated value of 300,000 rand ($ 30,200)to South Africa’s commercial hub Johannesburg.
“The seized abalone was clearly not for own consumption but for commercial purposes of exporting and selling,” his guilty plea statement said.
Eleanor Yeld Hutchings, a manager at World Wide Fund’s marine program, said the abalone industry was an extreme example of a fishery with high levels of illegal, unregulated and unreported catch.
Some researchers estimate that the illegal harvest in South Africa for 2008 was 860 tonnes, more than 10 times the legal total allowable catch (TAC) of 85 tonnes for that year. Comparable levels are believed to have been since then.
“If poaching continues at its current level, and the TAC remains stable for the legal commercial catch, abalone could reach commercial extinction by 2030,” said Yeld Hutchings.
Besides poaching in its waters, South Africa, famed for its biodiversity, is also facing a dire threat to its rhino population which are being killed in their hundreds for their valuable horns.
(Reporting by Wendell Roelf, editing by Gareth Jones)
U.S. President Barack Obama, left, makes a toast during an official dinner with Senegalese President Macky Sall at the Presidential Palace on Thursday, June 27, 2013, in Dakar, Senegal. Obama is visiting Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania on a week long trip. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
U.S. President Barack Obama, left, makes a toast during an official dinner with Senegalese President Macky Sall at the Presidential Palace on Thursday, June 27, 2013, in Dakar, Senegal. Obama is visiting Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania on a week long trip. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
U.S. President Barack Obama, center, takes a tour during a food security expo on Friday, June 28, 2013, in Dakar, Senegal. Obama met with farmers, innovators, and entrepreneurs whose new methods and technologies are improving the lives of smallholder farmers throughout West Africa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
USAID administrator Raj Shah, left, looks on as U.S. President Barack Obama, center, talks to Nimna Diayte, president of the Farmers Federation, front, during a food security expo on Friday, June 28, 2013, in Dakar, Senegal. Obama met with farmers, innovators, and entrepreneurs whose new methods and technologies are improving the lives of smallholder farmers throughout West Africa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
U.S. President Barack Obama looks out to sea through the ‘Door of No Return,’ at the slave house on Goree Island, in Dakar, Senegal, Thursday, June 27, 2013. Obama is calling his visit to a Senegalese island from which Africans were said to have been shipped across the Atlantic Ocean into slavery, a ‘very powerful moment.’ President Obama was in Dakar Thursday as part of a weeklong trip to Africa, a three-country visit aimed at overcoming disappointment on the continent over the first black U.S. president’s lack of personal engagement during his first term. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
U.S. President Barack Obama looks at rice crops during a food security expo on Friday, June 28, 2013, in Dakar, Senegal. Obama met with farmers, innovators, and entrepreneurs whose new methods and technologies are improving the lives of smallholder farmers throughout West Africa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Buy AP Photo Reprints
CENTURION, South Africa (AP) — President Barack Obama is receiving the embrace you might expect for a long-lost son on his return to his father’s home continent, even as he has yet to leave a lasting policy legacy for Africa on the scale of his two predecessors.
Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush passed innovative Africa initiatives while in the White House and passionately continue their development work in the region in their presidential afterlife. Obama’s efforts here have not been so ambitious, despite his personal ties to the continent.
His first major tour of Africa as president is coming just now, in his fifth year, while Bush and Clinton are frequent fliers to Africa. Bush even will be in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, next week at the same time as Obama, although they have no plans to meet. Instead, their wives plan to appear together at a summit on empowering African women organized by the George W. Bush Institute, with the former president in attendance.
For Obama, one potentially memorable aspect of this trip — a meeting with former South African president and anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela — remained in doubt. Mandela is hospitalized in Johannesburg in critical condition. Obama arrived in South Africa Friday after visiting Senegal.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Obama said it was uncertain whether he would get an opportunity to see the 94-year-old Mandela, a personal hero to the president.
“I don’t need a photo-op, and the last thing I want to do is to be in any way obtrusive at a time when the family is concerned about Nelson Mandela’s condition,” he said.
In French-speaking Senegal, Africa’s westernmost country, spirited crowds greeted Obama on his visit, with revelers frequently breaking into song and dance at the sight of the first African-American president. However thrilled they were to see him, many said they wish his visits weren’t so rare.
“Two visits in five years, it’s not enough,” said Faye Mbissine, a 30-year-old nanny who took an early morning bus to come see Obama on Thursday outside the presidential palace. “We hope that he can come more.”
Manougou Nbodj, a 21-year-old student, said he hopes Obama will bring American resources like jobs and health care. “If Obama can work with Macky Sall the way that George Bush worked with Africa before him, then we will be happy,” he said, referring to the Senegalese president.
One of Bush’s chief foreign policy successes was his aid to Africa, including AIDS relief credited with saving millions of lives and grants to reward developing countries for good governance. Bush followed on momentum on African policy that began under Clinton, who allowed several dozen sub-Saharan countries to export to the U.S. duty-free.
Obama has continued the Bush and Clinton programs during tough economic times. But his signature Africa policy thus far has been food security, through less prominent programs designed to address hunger with policy reforms and private investment in agriculture.
On Friday, Obama toured displays in small thatched booths at his hotel grounds on a bluff overlooking the ocean, meeting with farmers and entrepreneurs who are using new methods and technologies to advance the cause of food security.
“This is a moral imperative,” he said. “I believe that Africa is rising and it wants to partner with us not to be dependent but to be self-sufficient.
Witney Schneidman, former deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said Obama’s efforts are not like Bush’s AIDS initiative “where you put people on a medicine to save their lives — very, extremely important. This is more of a structural change, and I think that’s going to take time.”
Under Clinton and Bush “you had this major funding, major attention, major initiatives going to Africa, and then President Obama came in, and there was a sense of stall, in a way,” said Jennifer Cooke, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She said that’s understandable as he grappled with wars and an economic crisis, and she gave Obama credit for working diplomatically with African governments in his first term.
But, she said, “they weren’t big, splashy initiatives that got peoples’ attention either in Africa or here at home, and no big money and no big ideas that really helped define what Obama was about in Africa.”
That’s a disappointed those who were expecting more from the first African-American president, especially after his speech during a brief stopover in Ghana his first summer in office, in which he spoke personally of his father’s life in Kenya and declared “a new moment of great promise” in Africa. “I have the blood of Africa within me,” Obama said.
Schneidman argued that Obama’s personal connection may also have been an impediment to deeper engagement in his first term. “The whole birther movement here in the U.S. that was sort of questioning his place of birth to begin with … I think it was a real constraint on dealing with Africa,” Schneidman said.
Mwangi Kimenyi, a Kenyan who directs the Brookings Institutions’ Africa Growth Initiative, said Obama may be a victim of misplaced sky-high expectations on the continent when he was first elected.
“Africans still consider Clinton their president,” Kimenyi said. “If you go to Africa and mention Clinton — I mean, he is a hero, even today. I don’t think President Obama is going to approach the level of President Clinton at all, in terms of respect, in terms of what they feel, and it’s partly because, as one whose family is from Africa, the expectations were rather high.”
“There is not that feeling that, you know, we have our son there,” Kimenyi said. “There’s probably more reference of a prodigal son than a, you know, son.”
Clinton first drew extensive attention to Africa in 1998 when he made the longest trip ever by a U.S. president, with stops in six countries that had never before been visited by any occupant of the Oval Office.
Bush’s trip this week is his third in 19 months to promote his Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon partnership to combat breast and cervical cancer in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. On this visit, he and his wife, Laura, plan to help renovate a cervical cancer screening and treatment clinic in Zambia before heading to Tanzania for the African First Ladies Summit advocating investment in programs for women and girls.
“Frankly, Africa is a place that we had not yet been able to devote significant presidential time and attention to,” Obama foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes said. “And there’s nothing that can make an impact more in terms of our foreign policy and our economic and security interests than the president of the United States coming and demonstrating the importance of our commitment to this region.”
___
Associated Press writer Robbie Corey-Boulet contributed to this report.
___
Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nedrapickler
U.S. President Barack Obama, left, makes a toast during an official dinner with Senegalese President Macky Sall at the Presidential Palace on Thursday, June 27, 2013, in Dakar, Senegal. Obama is visiting Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania on a week long trip. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
U.S. President Barack Obama, left, makes a toast during an official dinner with Senegalese President Macky Sall at the Presidential Palace on Thursday, June 27, 2013, in Dakar, Senegal. Obama is visiting Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania on a week long trip. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
U.S. President Barack Obama, center, takes a tour during a food security expo on Friday, June 28, 2013, in Dakar, Senegal. Obama met with farmers, innovators, and entrepreneurs whose new methods and technologies are improving the lives of smallholder farmers throughout West Africa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
USAID administrator Raj Shah, left, looks on as U.S. President Barack Obama, center, talks to Nimna Diayte, president of the Farmers Federation, front, during a food security expo on Friday, June 28, 2013, in Dakar, Senegal. Obama met with farmers, innovators, and entrepreneurs whose new methods and technologies are improving the lives of smallholder farmers throughout West Africa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
U.S. President Barack Obama looks out to sea through the ‘Door of No Return,’ at the slave house on Goree Island, in Dakar, Senegal, Thursday, June 27, 2013. Obama is calling his visit to a Senegalese island from which Africans were said to have been shipped across the Atlantic Ocean into slavery, a ‘very powerful moment.’ President Obama was in Dakar Thursday as part of a weeklong trip to Africa, a three-country visit aimed at overcoming disappointment on the continent over the first black U.S. president’s lack of personal engagement during his first term. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
U.S. President Barack Obama looks at rice crops during a food security expo on Friday, June 28, 2013, in Dakar, Senegal. Obama met with farmers, innovators, and entrepreneurs whose new methods and technologies are improving the lives of smallholder farmers throughout West Africa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Buy AP Photo Reprints
CENTURION, South Africa (AP) — President Barack Obama is receiving the embrace you might expect for a long-lost son on his return to his father’s home continent, even as he has yet to leave a lasting policy legacy for Africa on the scale of his two predecessors.
Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush passed innovative Africa initiatives while in the White House and passionately continue their development work in the region in their presidential afterlife. Obama’s efforts here have not been so ambitious, despite his personal ties to the continent.
His first major tour of Africa as president is coming just now, in his fifth year, while Bush and Clinton are frequent fliers to Africa. Bush even will be in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, next week at the same time as Obama, although they have no plans to meet. Instead, their wives plan to appear together at a summit on empowering African women organized by the George W. Bush Institute, with the former president in attendance.
For Obama, one potentially memorable aspect of this trip — a meeting with former South African president and anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela — remained in doubt. Mandela is hospitalized in Johannesburg in critical condition. Obama arrived in South Africa Friday after visiting Senegal.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Obama said it was uncertain whether he would get an opportunity to see the 94-year-old Mandela, a personal hero to the president.
“I don’t need a photo-op, and the last thing I want to do is to be in any way obtrusive at a time when the family is concerned about Nelson Mandela’s condition,” he said.
In French-speaking Senegal, Africa’s westernmost country, spirited crowds greeted Obama on his visit, with revelers frequently breaking into song and dance at the sight of the first African-American president. However thrilled they were to see him, many said they wish his visits weren’t so rare.
“Two visits in five years, it’s not enough,” said Faye Mbissine, a 30-year-old nanny who took an early morning bus to come see Obama on Thursday outside the presidential palace. “We hope that he can come more.”
Manougou Nbodj, a 21-year-old student, said he hopes Obama will bring American resources like jobs and health care. “If Obama can work with Macky Sall the way that George Bush worked with Africa before him, then we will be happy,” he said, referring to the Senegalese president.
One of Bush’s chief foreign policy successes was his aid to Africa, including AIDS relief credited with saving millions of lives and grants to reward developing countries for good governance. Bush followed on momentum on African policy that began under Clinton, who allowed several dozen sub-Saharan countries to export to the U.S. duty-free.
Obama has continued the Bush and Clinton programs during tough economic times. But his signature Africa policy thus far has been food security, through less prominent programs designed to address hunger with policy reforms and private investment in agriculture.
On Friday, Obama toured displays in small thatched booths at his hotel grounds on a bluff overlooking the ocean, meeting with farmers and entrepreneurs who are using new methods and technologies to advance the cause of food security.
“This is a moral imperative,” he said. “I believe that Africa is rising and it wants to partner with us not to be dependent but to be self-sufficient.
Witney Schneidman, former deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said Obama’s efforts are not like Bush’s AIDS initiative “where you put people on a medicine to save their lives — very, extremely important. This is more of a structural change, and I think that’s going to take time.”
Under Clinton and Bush “you had this major funding, major attention, major initiatives going to Africa, and then President Obama came in, and there was a sense of stall, in a way,” said Jennifer Cooke, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She said that’s understandable as he grappled with wars and an economic crisis, and she gave Obama credit for working diplomatically with African governments in his first term.
But, she said, “they weren’t big, splashy initiatives that got peoples’ attention either in Africa or here at home, and no big money and no big ideas that really helped define what Obama was about in Africa.”
That’s a disappointed those who were expecting more from the first African-American president, especially after his speech during a brief stopover in Ghana his first summer in office, in which he spoke personally of his father’s life in Kenya and declared “a new moment of great promise” in Africa. “I have the blood of Africa within me,” Obama said.
Schneidman argued that Obama’s personal connection may also have been an impediment to deeper engagement in his first term. “The whole birther movement here in the U.S. that was sort of questioning his place of birth to begin with … I think it was a real constraint on dealing with Africa,” Schneidman said.
Mwangi Kimenyi, a Kenyan who directs the Brookings Institutions’ Africa Growth Initiative, said Obama may be a victim of misplaced sky-high expectations on the continent when he was first elected.
“Africans still consider Clinton their president,” Kimenyi said. “If you go to Africa and mention Clinton — I mean, he is a hero, even today. I don’t think President Obama is going to approach the level of President Clinton at all, in terms of respect, in terms of what they feel, and it’s partly because, as one whose family is from Africa, the expectations were rather high.”
“There is not that feeling that, you know, we have our son there,” Kimenyi said. “There’s probably more reference of a prodigal son than a, you know, son.”
Clinton first drew extensive attention to Africa in 1998 when he made the longest trip ever by a U.S. president, with stops in six countries that had never before been visited by any occupant of the Oval Office.
Bush’s trip this week is his third in 19 months to promote his Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon partnership to combat breast and cervical cancer in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. On this visit, he and his wife, Laura, plan to help renovate a cervical cancer screening and treatment clinic in Zambia before heading to Tanzania for the African First Ladies Summit advocating investment in programs for women and girls.
“Frankly, Africa is a place that we had not yet been able to devote significant presidential time and attention to,” Obama foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes said. “And there’s nothing that can make an impact more in terms of our foreign policy and our economic and security interests than the president of the United States coming and demonstrating the importance of our commitment to this region.”
___
Associated Press writer Robbie Corey-Boulet contributed to this report.
___
Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nedrapickler
JOHANNESBURG – Anglo American Platinum said on Saturday operations at its Thembelani mine in South Africa were back to normal after a “group of employees” on Friday prevented 2,400 workers from going above ground.
“The situation at the mine is normal, people came above ground yesterday evening,” Amplats spokeswoman Mpumi Sithole said.
The industrial action followed the dismissal of four union shop stewards for “inappropriate behavior”.
(Reporting by Olivia Kumwenda; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
The Lagos taxi driver roars across the biggest bridge in Africa at 110 mph. Buffeted by the night wind, it feels as if we’re riding a motorbike.
I am with two South Africans and a guy from Silicon Valley. We’re all swilling from a bottle of so-called whisky, including the man behind the wheel. (When your taxi driver says his name is “Success,” things can’t possibly go wrong.)
Lagos, Nigeria seems like an unlikely place for Africa’s major tech hub. The city’s estimated population is 21 million people, and 30,000 more Africans are arriving every day.
Ten years ago, architect and author Rem Koolhaas co-wrote Mutation. After studying Nigeria’s biggest city, he says, “Lagos is not catching up with us; rather, we may be catching up with Lagos.” He may have been right.
It seems fanciful to equate Lagos with a 21st century New York, as Koolhaas does. For all intents and purposes, the city should not operate at all. Its chaos outstrips that of Cairo or New Delhi.
But within the insanity, a new type of region is emerging.
In a city gridlocked by traffic after 6 a.m. and rampant with crime, Lagos offers non-mobile Internet. Wi-Fi is gut-wrenchingly slow. But despite its weak infrastructure, it stands because of its innovative residents and their hunger to succeed in the most competitive of environments.
May’s Mobile Web West Africa sold out its Lagos conference, bringing together companies, startups, inspiring investors and developers. The three-day event was the background to the emerging economic and inspired power of the region, and Lagos’s aspiration to be the city at the center of that universe.
Across Victoria Island to the “mainland” and over the bridge my taxi crossed, the city’s Co Creation Hub (CcHub) is a collaborative work space for young entrepreneurs and coders. It’s close to the University of Lagos. Like similar spaces in Palo Alto, London, Berlin or Moscow, individuals converge in one space to share ideas. They even have the chance to meet VCs and angels looking for promising investments. It’s an amazing place.
But such meetup hubs compete with others around the continent. Nairobi has the iHub, a similar space, supported by companies like Google, Intel and Samsung. And the government recently announced plans for Konza Techno City — the finished project will reside 40 miles south of Nairobi, with aims to create 100,000 tech jobs by 2030.
Closer to Nigeria, the neighboring country of Ghana recently announced Hope City, a $ 10 billion hub in capital Accra that will see Africa’s tallest building emerge from shrubland. By 2016 Hope City will house 25,000 residents and will have created some 50,000 jobs.
Not to be outdone, South Africa has the JoziHub in Johannesburg, launched in February 2013, while Cape Town is attempting to brand itself as Silicon Cape by creating a non-profit, community-owned infrastructure that supports startups with capital and expertise.
Alas, Africa is replete with stories about great ambitions and grandiose projects that never see the light of day. Nigeria is no different.
Tinapa Resort, the planned shopping and commerce “paradise” in the Cross Rivers state, is a warning to all who believe that investment necessarily creates cities and jobs. More than $ 350 million was ploughed into the project, thought to boost business and tourism before it opened in 2007, based on a deep sea port in the city of Calabar, which did not exist or materialize. The resort gathered dust, becoming a ghost town — another African disaster.
That is, until the newly elected regional government announced the rehabilitation of Tinapa in the form of Tinapa Knowledge City, a private sector-driven investment to serve as an alternate ICT hub to Lagos.
The government, privately-owned Covenant University and oil company OANDO will create a campus and gas plant that will ultimately employ 10,000 people. Legendary Nigerian investor and influencer Harry Tomi Davies finds the new scheme one that costs a lot of money but is ultimately a burden, in other words, a “white elephant turned black by technology,” he says.
Time will tell whether Tinapa emerges as a phoenix rather than a pachyderm. But in Nigeria, there is a sense that anything is possible — especially in Lagos, where the infrastructural impediments to success are driving entrepreneurship.
Nairobi, Accra, Johannesburg and Cape Town are all vying with Lagos to claim ownership of Last Frontier Africa, the continent of the 21st century.
Just ask my speeding taxi driver. He knows Success when he sees it.
