International

Unrest raged in South Africa yesterday for the sixth day running, stoking fears of food and fuel shortages as disruption to farming, manufacturing and oil refining began to bite. Seventy-two people have died and more than 1,200 people have been arrested, according to official figures, since former president Jacob Zuma began a 15-month jail term, sparking protests that swiftly turned violent. Looting has hit supply chains and transport links especially in the southeastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, sending a shockwave to goods and services around parts of the country. The government said 208 incidents of looting and vandalism were recorded yesterday, as the number of troops deployed doubled to 5,000. The country’s consumer goods regulatory body said more than 800 retail shops had been looted. President Cyril Ramaphosa met leaders of political parties and cautioned that parts of the country “may soon be running short of basic provisions following the extensive disruption of food, fuel and medicine supply chains.” State-owned logistics operator Transnet declared a “force majeure” yesterday – an emergency beyond its control – on a key rail line that links Johannesburg to the coast because of the unrest. In the port city of Durban, hundreds of people queued outside food stores hours before they opened, as lines of cars also formed outside fuel stations. The night before, the country’s largest refinery SAPREF shuttered its plant in Durban, responsible for a third of South Africa’s fuel supply. Some fuel retailers have begun rationing while others are starting to run dry. “It’s inevitable that we will have fuel shortages in the next couple of days or weeks,” the Automobile Association’s Layton Beard said. In Johannesburg’s Soweto township, bread was being sold from a delivery truck outside a major shopping mall as stores have either been looted or shut due to fears of vandalism. “With these lootings, it’s an inflection point...this has now seriously compromised our energy security and food security,” said Bonang Mohale, a professor of business and economics at the University of the Free State. The violence has also disrupted the coronavirus vaccine rollout and medicines deliveries to hospitals, said Mohale, echoing similar reports from hospitals. The country, which has recorded more than 2.2mn infections, is in the midst of a brutal virus third wave, with daily fatalities reaching 633 yesterday. Christo van der Rheede, executive director of the largest farmers’ organisation, AgriSA, said producers were struggling to get their crops to market because of the logistical “shambles”. He warned that if law and order were not restored soon, “we are going to have a massive humanitarian crisis.” Sugarcane fields were torched in KwaZulu-Natal, the main cane-growing region, while elsewhere cattle were stolen. President Cyril Ramaphosa deployed 2,500 troops at the start of the week to help the overwhelmed police force and the number had grown to 5,000 yesterday. But the boots on the ground are a small presence compared to the 70,000 troops sent to enforce last year’s coronavirus lockdown.

Fighting erupted Tuesday between rival forces in a refugee camp in Ethiopia's war-hit Tigray, after local rebels launched a new offensive to reclaim towns and territory in the region. A spokesman for the Tigrayan forces told AFP they had seized Alamata, the main town in southern Tigray, in a fresh assault two weeks after the federal government declared a unilateral ceasefire in the face of rebel advances. Getachew Reda said fighting was also taking place in western Tigray, an area where the United States has raised concerns about ethnic cleansing, and where clashes inside a refugee camp on Tuesday sent people fleeing. The rebel claims could not be independently confirmed as communications were largely down in the area. An Ethiopian military spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Tigray Defence Forces (TDF) last month swept across parts of Tigray and seized its capital Mekele, a turning point in the brutal eight-month conflict with federal troops. The fighting -- marked by massacres and sexual violence -- has killed thousands, while the UN says hundreds of thousands face famine. Security forces and officials from neighbouring Amhara region had moved in to southern and western Tigray in November to support the Ethiopian army after Tigrayan forces cleared out during the war's early phase. "We promised to liberate every square inch of Tigray," Getachew said, announcing the new offensive launched Monday. The TDF fighters "were able to absolutely rout federal defence forces and Amhara special forces divisions", he said, claiming they had taken most of southern Tigray including Alamata. Getachew said the TDF was "in hot pursuit" of pro-government forces, adding: "We don't want to give them a chance to regroup." A UN source reported the sound of artillery near the western Tigray town of Emba Madre and fighting around Mai Tsebri, 13 kilometres (eight miles) away. Humanitarian sources told AFP fighting also broke out inside the nearby Mai Aini camp housing Eritrean refugees, with Tigrayan rebels exchanging fire with Ethiopian soldiers and their allies in Amharan special forces. "There was fighting inside the camp," one source said. "Some refugees have started walking from the camps south." By midday the fighting seemed to have subsided, with Tigrayan forces controlling much of the area, the source said. There was no immediate word on casualties. Two camps for Eritrean refugees located further north, near the border with Eritrea, were destroyed earlier in the war. A local government office in the Amhara region to the south of Tigray had called Monday for a "mass mobilisation" of people with arms and food to Mai Tsebri. The rebel offensive was launched two days after results showed Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won by a landslide in June elections that went ahead despite the conflict. The TDF had described its seizure of Mekele and most of Tigray as a major victory and initially branded the government's unilateral ceasefire a "joke." Rebel leaders later said they accepted the ceasefire "in principle" but posed strict conditions including the withdrawal from the region of Eritrean and Amhara forces. Abiy and other officials have said federal forces executed a strategic pullback to focus on other threats. Abiy -- who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his peace deal with neighbouring Eritrea -- sent troops into Tigray last November to oust the region's once-dominant ruling party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). Abiy accused them of orchestrating attacks on Ethiopian military bases in Tigray, an important economic and industrial region. The war has badly damaged Abiy's international standing, and Western powers have demanded the ceasefire be accompanied by unfettered aid access. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Monday urged member states to consider sanctions, warning that a major humanitarian disaster loomed. The World Food Programme (WFP) said Monday that a 50-truck convoy carrying 900 tonnes of supplies had arrived in Mekele but was far from enough to help the hunger-stricken region. "We need double this number of trucks arriving daily, and we need them to take two days to reach Mekele instead of the four-day journey this time if we are to reach the millions of people in need of life-saving assistance," said WFP emergency coordinator Tommy Thompson. The US, a traditional ally of Ethiopia, reiterated Monday its finding that "acts of ethnic cleansing" had taken place in western Tigray, and warned that any effort to redraw internal boundaries by force was "unacceptable". "Any issue of such national importance, like borders, would be an issue for the Ethiopian people to decide through consensual dialogue, not through the barrel of a gun," said State Department spokesman Ned Price. Tigrayan officials in March accused Amharan forces of expelling thousands of people from land in western Tigray -- a part of the region that ethnic Amharas claim rightfully belongs to them. Many ethnic Amharas believe the once-dominant TPLF illegally incorporated the fertile territories after it came to power in the early 1990s -- and that they should fall under Amhara administration.

Sudan’s Foreign Minister Mariam al-Mahdi said during a visit to Moscow yesterday that lawmakers in the African country would consider an agreement brokered by its ousted leader to establish a Russian naval base there. Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with Sudan’s former president Omar al-Bashir in 2017 on establishing a naval base in Port Sudan, on Sudan’s Red Sea coast. But Bashir was overthrown in 2019, and Sudan has since moved closer to the United States. No announcement was ever made by the Sudanese side but Russia said it had signed a 25-year agreement with Khartoum in December last year to build and operate the base. Last month a top military official in Sudan said the country was reviewing the document after some clauses were found to be “somewhat harmful”. During a press conference with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov yesterday, Mahdi said the legislature will study the agreement. “We now have a government that is accountable to a new legislative mechanism,” she told reporters.  “The Sudanese legislature will discuss and consider this document,” Mahdi added. Sudan’s legislature has however not yet been set up. Since August 2019, Sudan been led by a transitional administration that has sought to end the country’s international isolation. The base deal was to allow Russia’s navy to keep up to four ships at a time at the base, including nuclear-powered vessels as well as up to 300 military and civilian personnel. Lawmakers will ultimately evaluate whether the agreement is a “benefit to Sudan itself and the strategic goals pursued by Russia and Sudan,” Mahdi said. For decades, the country was dependent militarily on Russia because of crippling sanctions imposed by Washington against the government of now ousted president Bashir. But the United States removed Khartoum from its blacklist last year.

South Africa deployed soldiers yesterday to quell violence that erupted in the wake of former president Jacob Zuma’s jailing, after days of riots left at least six people dead. Police said disturbances had intensified and 219 people arrested as the controversial ex-leader challenged his 15-month prison term in the country’s top court. Smoke from burning buildings swirled in the air as items from burgled shops lay strewn by the side of the road in Pietermaritzburg in Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN).The sporadic pro-Zuma protests that broke out when he handed himself over last week have quickly escalated into looting and arson, mainly in KZN but also in Gauteng where the biggest city Johannesburg is. Some Covid-19 vaccination sites and clinics in Gauteng and KZN were shuttered due to safety concerns, the Gauteng provincial government and an independent pharmacy association said, further delaying a sluggish immunisation campaign. Opportunistic criminals appear to be taking advantage of the anger some feel over Zuma’s incarceration to steal and cause destruction, police said. A statement from the military said “pre-deployment processes had started” following a request for assistance from a government intelligence body, but a Reuters cameraman in Pietermaritzburg saw armed soldiers already in the streets. The rand dropped sharply and was trading down 1.5% against the US dollar at 1830 local time. President Cyril Ramaphosa would address the nation about the violence later, his office said. Any confrontation with soldiers risks fuelling claims by Zuma and his supporters that they are victims of a politically-motivated crackdown by his successor Ramaphosa. Zuma, 79, was sentenced late last month for defying a constitutional court order to give evidence at an inquiry investigating high-level corruption during his nine years in office until 2018. The decision to jail him resulted from legal proceedings seen as a test of post-apartheid South Africa’s ability to enforce the rule of law, including against powerful politicians. In a virtual hearing yesterday, Zuma’s counsel asked the constitutional court to rescind his jail term, citing a rule that judgments can be reconsidered if made in the absence of the affected person or containing a patent error. But legal experts say Zuma’s chances of success are slim. Footage shot by Reuters in the Katlehong township in Gauteng showed police firing rubber bullets at looters to disperse them. At the Jabulani Mall in Soweto looters brazenly walked past TV cameras carrying armfuls of stolen goods. Liquor stores were among those affected, as the sale of alcohol is currently banned under Covid-19 restrictions designed to ease pressure on hospitals, as were shops of companies like pharmacy group Clicks, and food retailers Pick n Pay and Shoprite.

South Africa said Monday it was deploying troops to two provinces, including Johannesburg, after unrest sparked by the jailing of ex-president Jacob Zuma led to six deaths and widespread looting. Overwhelmed police are facing mobs who have ransacked stores, carting away anything from boxes of alcohol to beds, refrigerators and bath tubs. Six people have died, some with gunshot wounds, and 219 people have been arrested, according to a police tally issued before the army deployed. Troops will "assist law enforcement agencies deployed in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces... to quell the unrest that has gripped both provinces in the last few days," the armed forces said in a statement. President Cyril Ramaphosa, who at the weekend called for calm, is expected to addess the nation later Monday, his office said. The violence raged as the Constitutional Court was hearing an application to review its landmark decision to jail Zuma for contempt of court. An announcement is expected later. The country's top court on June 29 slapped Zuma with a 15-month term for snubbing a probe into the corruption that stained his nine years in power. Zuma began the sentence last Thursday but is seeking to have the ruling set aside. "This court made fundamentally rescindable errors," Zuma's lawyer Dali Mpofu argued in an on-line hearing before nine of the court's 11 judges. Zuma had been treated unfairly and his "right to mitigation was limited," he said. But one of the judges, Steven Majiedt, bluntly said Zuma had been convicted "because he disobeyed the order of this court." Mpofu responded that Zuma was being "punished for more than the disobedience" of a court order. Despite his reputation for graft and scandal, the 79-year-old former anti-apartheid fighter remains popular among many poor South Africans. The epicentre of the unrest is Zuma's home region, the southeastern province of KwaZulu-Natal. Shortly before the military's announcement, troops were seen on the streets of its capital Pietermaritzburg and smoke billowed from the roof of a large shopping mall. Banks, shops and fuel stations in the city were shut. A retail shop in Durban was looted Monday morning while in Eshowe, a town near Zuma's Nkandla home, police fired rubber bullets to disperse crowds after a supermarket was ransacked. In Johannesburg, in Gauteng province, an AFP photographer saw a corpse at one site, although the cause of the death was not immediately known. A police helicopter hovered over the Johannesburg suburb of Soweto, where looters casually made off with giant TV sets, microwave ovens, clothes and linen. A mall in Johanesburg's upmarket Rosebank suburb closed early following "a tipoff that the looters are on their way," a security guard told AFP. On the sidewalks, workers queued up to catch commuter mini-bus to go back home. The unrest began on Friday, taking the form of protests triggered by Zuma's detention. But looting swiftly took over, reflecting hardship in a country hit by catastrophic unemployment and a toughening of anti-Covid restrictions. Once dubbed the "Teflon president," Zuma started serving the jail term after handing himself in to authorities as a deadline for surrender loomed. On Friday he lost a petition at the Pietermaritzburg High Court to have his case thrown out. The court said Zuma's claims about his health were not "supported by any evidence." The anti-graft panel is probing the massive siphoning off of state assets that occurred during Zuma's 2009-2018 presidency. He testified just once, in July 2019, but then swiftly withdrew his cooperation. Under the terms of his sentence, Zuma could be back home long before Christmas as he would be eligible for parole in less than four months. He is due back in court on July 19 for a separate case where he faces 16 charges of fraud, graft and racketeering in an arms procurement scandal dating to 1999, when he was vice president.

An explosion has killed four people in a Sudanese Red Sea port city, officials said yesterday, the latest in a series of violent incidents in the area. Tensions have been simmering in recent days in Port Sudan, where anti-government protesters have reportedly blocked roads over rising insecurity. Local media have linked the unrest to rejection by a tribe of an October peace deal between rebel groups and the government. The tribe, the largest subdivision of the Beja people in the region, fear their tribe will be under-represented in regional legislative and executive bodies under the agreement. Saturday’s blast took place late in the evening at a busy sporting club in Port Sudan, the provincial capital of the Red Sea state and the country’s main port, and also involved an armed attack. “An explosive device went off at Al-Amir club...killing four people,” the Central Committee of Sudan Doctors said in a statement. Three others were wounded after being shot or stabbed, it added. Witnesses said the attack was carried out by armed men on a motorcycle, but it was not immediately clear what motivated it. Authorities said yesterday that one of the alleged perpetrators had been arrested. Dozens of people later gathered outside the public prosecutor’s office in Port Sudan demanding the assailants be brought to justice, witnesses said. Yesterday, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok held an emergency cabinet meeting in which demanded “strict security measures” to contain the violence. Saturday’s explosion was the latest in a series of violent incidents in Port Sudan, including an attack Friday by unidentified assailants on security forces. On Saturday, a man was killed during a fight on a public bus, and that same day there was a failed bid to attack a hotel with explosives, authorities said. A government statement said that five people were killed on Saturday alone, while six others were wounded in recent unrest. The doctors’ committee, an independent union of medics, called the violence “tribal strife”, and urged security forces to step in. Sudan has been led by a transitional civilian-military administration following the April 2019 ouster of president Omar al-Bashir, who ruled Sudan for 30 years. The country has since been undergoing a rocky period marked by a wrenching economic crisis and deepening political division.

A top Somali police chief yesterday survived an assassination bid by Al Shabaab militants in a powerful car bomb blast in Mogadishu that left five people dead and a trail of destruction. The bomber, using an explosives-laden vehicle, struck regional police commissioner Farhan Mohamud’s motorcade at a busy intersection in the capital, Somali police spokesman Sadiiq Dudishe said. The attack was claimed by the Al Qaeda linked Al Shabaab group, which has been fighting to topple Somalia’s federal government for years and has carried out waves of attacks. The blast tore through walls near the busy road, ripping off roof panels and leaving the area littered with shells of charred cars. Dudishe said five people died and nine others were wounded but the police commander – who headed the force in the Benadir region that encompasses Mogadishu – survived unscathed. “The objective of the terrorists was to get rid of the targeted police commander, other officers with him and any other civilian bystanders,” he said. Mohamud – who had previously led a special police unit carrying out anti-Shabaab operations – was in April promoted to the rank of general and nominated as the overall commander of police in Benadir. He replaced his former boss who had been sacked for trying to stop a parliamentary session. Al Shabaab claimed responsibility, saying in a statement the blast killed and wounded a “large number” of the police chief’s guards and destroyed multiple vehicles. Mire Adan, who was a few metres from the scene, said the explosion “caused huge devastation and casualties of both police and civilians”. “The whole area is messed up with smoke as the blast caused fire and I saw several dead bodies most of them civilians,” said another witness Osman Adan. Tuk-tuk driver Muktar Ganey said he only narrowly missed yesterday’s blast because he was held up in traffic. “I was transporting some clients to a shop close to the busy intersection when the blast occurred. I was very lucky that I was delayed in the traffic jam a few minutes before it occurred. Otherwise, I would be dead or wounded by now,” said Ganey. The group has been fighting to overthrow the federal government since 2007 and launches frequent attacks against government and civilian targets.

South African police said yesterday that 28 people had been arrested and one of the country’s biggest highways remained closed over violent protests linked to former president Jacob Zuma’s imprisonment. Protests erupted this week in parts of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), Zuma’s home province, after the ex-leader handed himself over to police to serve a 15-month jail term for contempt of court. On Friday, the high court dismissed Zuma’s application to have his arrest overturned in a case that has been seen as a test of the post-apartheid nation’s rule of law. An hour before the ruling, a Reuters photographer saw a group of protesters shouting “Zuma!” burning tyres and blocking a road. Zuma’s imprisonment has laid bare deep divisions in the governing African National Congress (ANC), as a party faction remains loyal to the former president and has been a potent source of opposition to his successor, Cyril Ramaphosa. KZN police spokesman Jay Naicker said the 28 arrests had happened since Friday on charges including public violence, burglary, malicious damage to property, and contravention of Covid-19 lockdown regulations. He said protesters had set alight some trucks near Mooi River, a town on the N3 highway that leads from Durban to Johannesburg, and shops had been looted in Mooi River and eThekwini, the municipality that includes Durban. Law enforcement officers had been deployed to all districts in the province but there had been no deaths or injuries so far, he added. As of lunchtime, the N3 was closed at Mooi River. Ramaphosa, whose allies engineered Zuma’s ouster in 2018, said in a statement that “criminal elements must be met with the full might of the law”. Asked about the protests by public broadcaster SABC, a spokesman for Zuma’s charitable foundation said: “The righteous anger of the people is because of the injustices that they see being dispensed to President Zuma”. Zuma was given the jail term for defying an order from the constitutional court to give evidence at an inquiry investigating high-level corruption during his nine years in power. He denies there was widespread corruption under his leadership but has refused to co-operate with the inquiry that was set up in his final weeks in office.

A suicide car bomb targeting a government convoy exploded at a busy junction in Somalia's capital on Saturday, killing at least eight people, an eyewitness told Reuters. The convoy was carrying senior police official Farhan Qarole, who survived the attack, the government news agency reported. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but al-Shabaab, which wants to overthrow the government, frequently carries out such bombings. "I have seen eight dead bodies at the scene including a woman," Hassan Sayid Ali, a driver of a three-wheeled motorised vehicle taxi told Reuters at the scene of the blast at Banadir junction in Mogadishu.

Rwanda said on Friday it will send a thousand troops to Mozambique to help the country battle extremist militants wreaking havoc in the north of the gas-rich nation. Islamic State-linked militants have been terrorising the impoverished Cabo Delgado province since late 2017, stoking fears that the violence could spill over into neighbouring countries. "The government of Rwanda, at the request of the government of Mozambique, will today start the deployment of a 1,000-person contingent of the Rwanda Defence Force and the Rwanda National Police to Cabo Delgado Province," Kigali said in a statement. The forces will "support efforts to restore Mozambican state authority by conducting combat and security operations, as well as stabilisation and security-sector reform", it added. Rwanda's deployment follows last month's decision by regional bloc the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to send forces to help quell the insurgency. The Rwandan contingent will work with the Mozambique Armed Defence Forces and those from SADC "in designated sectors of responsibility", said the statement from Kigali. Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi, himself a former defence minister, had for long shied away from asking for foreign military intervention to fight the militants, instead relying on private military companies. But last month he vowed to crush the militants with the help of regional allies as attacks escalated over the last year. Rwanda is a major contributor to the UN's peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic and last year sent hundreds of troops to the unstable country after an alleged attempted coup.

South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma, who has been in police detention since Wednesday night as he started a 15-month prison sentence for contempt, will be eligible for parole after around four months, the justice minister said. Zuma turned himself in to police to begin his jail term for defying a court order to give evidence at an inquiry into corruption while he was in power from 2009 to 2018. The inquiry is led by deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo. The ability of authorities to bring Zuma to book has been seen as a major test of the rule of law in post-apartheid South Africa. Zuma will be held in isolation for 14 days in line with Covid-19 protocols, Justice Minister Ronald Lamola said yesterday, outside Estcourt Correctional Centre, eastern South Africa, where Zuma was being held. “This is not a moment of celebration or triumphalism, it is a moment of restraint and to be human,” he said, promising to treat Zuma like any other inmate. Zuma, 79, has already launched legal challenges against his sentence, asking the court to cancel it on a number of grounds, including that he has been unfairly treated and that he might catch and die from Covid-19 in jail. “There are no grounds for such an application,” Lawson Naidoo, executive secretary of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution, said. Zuma’s efforts would only work, he said, “if there was an obvious error of fact in the judgment which is not the case (or) the applicant did not participate through no fault of their own, and in this case Zuma deliberately opted not to,” Naidoo said. The court will hear his application on Monday. Zuma denies there was widespread corruption and had thus far not co-operated with the legal process against him, maintaining that he was the victim of a political witch-hunt. But the ex-leader’s predicament represents a significant fall for one of the leading figures of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which struggled against white minority rule to establish equality before the law for all citizens. Zuma’s alleged tendency to flout that very law since becoming one of the ANC’s most powerful politicians alarmed many of his former comrades and triggered several court cases against him. The Zondo Commission is examining allegations that he allowed three Indian-born businessmen, Atul, Ajay and Rajesh Gupta, to plunder state resources and traffic influence over government policy. He and the Gupta brothers, who fled the country after Zuma was ousted, deny any wrongdoing. Zuma also faces a separate case relating to a $2bn arms deal in 1999 when he was deputy president. He denies the charges. Though he did eventually turn himself in, Zuma initially showed no signs of willingness to obey the courts, holing himself up in his home in the town of Nkandla surrounded by supporters, some of them armed with guns and spears. “It is tempting to regard Zuma’s arrest as the end of the road. But this is merely another phase in what we believe will be a long and fraught journey,” the Nelson Mandela Foundation said in a statement. “It is vital that Zuma and his supporters be held accountable every step of the way,” it added.

South African police yesterday warned they were prepared to arrest ex-president Jacob Zuma by a midnight deadline to enforce a jail sentence against him unless the country’s top court instructed otherwise. In a historic ruling, the Constitutional Court last week handed Zuma a 15-month term for snubbing anti-graft investigators. Zuma mounted a last-ditch legal defence and refused to turn himself in by Sunday night as the court ordered. Under the ruling, police were given three days to arrest him if he failed to surrender. “If we don’t hear anything from the Constitutional Court – which we haven’t heard so far – we have until midnight tonight to execute the (arrest) order,” said police minister’s spokeswoman, Lirandzu Themba. On Tuesday, police had appeared to give Zuma a breathing space, saying they would wait until the outcome of his legal battle – a process that culminates on July 12. Zuma’s first application to halt execution of his imminent arrest was heard on Tuesday but the judgement was reserved until tomorrow. Separately, he has pleaded with the Constitutional Court to reconsider and rescind its jail order. That challenge will be heard next Monday. The warning came after Police Minister Bheki Cele was quoted in local media as saying he would not take the blame if there was a failure to arrest Zuma. “I’m not prepared to be charged for contempt of court,” online site News24 quoted him as saying. Police officers were stationed in Empangeni, a town 115 kilometres from Zuma’s rural Nkandla home in southeastern Kwa-Zulu Natal province, according to local media. Zuma’s foundation tweeted yesterday that it was “very concerned about unfolding developments and (was) monitoring the situation very closely.”

South African police said Wednesday they were ready to arrest ex-president Jacob Zuma, who has been slapped with a 15-month jail term, unless ordered otherwise by the country's top court. On Tuesday, lawyers for the police wrote to the Constitutional Court seeking to pause an order to arrest Zuma given what they called the ‘unique situation.’ But on Wednesday, the police minister's spokeswoman, Lirandzu Themba, told AFP, ‘If we don't hear anything from the Constitutional Court -- which we haven't heard so far -- we have until midnight tonight to execute the order.’ The former head of state was convicted for contempt of court last week after he snubbed anti-graft investigators. He was told to turn himself in by midnight last Sunday, failing which police would be instructed to arrest him within the following three days. Police Minister Bheki Cele was quoted in local media on Wednesday as saying he would not take the blame if there was a failure to arrest Zuma. ‘I'm not prepared to be charged for contempt of court,’ online site News24 quoed him as saying. Zuma did not turn himself in on Sunday on the grounds that he had mounted a two-pronged defence against the jail ordeer. The Pietermaritzburg High Court on Tuesday heard a first application to halt execution of the imminent arrest. A ruling is expected on Friday. Attorney Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, on behalf of the anti-corruption panel, told the court ‘the order is manifest. All it needs to be done is to be enforced. Unless the police themselves obtain an order stopping themselves from executing’. Zuma has separately pleaded with the Constitutional Court to reconsider and rescind its jail order. That challenge will be heard next Monday. Zuma was found guilty after refusing to obey a court order to appear before a commission probing so-called state capture -- the siphoning off of national assets, which occurred on a massive scale under his nine-year tenure. Zuma has also been accused of involvement in a bribery affair dating back more than 20 years. He faces 16 charges of fraud, graft and racketeering relating to a 1999 purchase of fighter jets, patrol boats and military gear from five European arms firms for 30 billion rand, then the equivalent of nearly $5 billion.    

About 125 students were still missing on Wednesday but 28 others had been re-united with their families after an attack by armed men on a boarding school in Nigeria's Kaduna state, the head of the Kaduna Baptist conference said. Gunmen raided the Bethel Baptist High School overnight on Monday, the 10th mass school kidnapping since December in northwest Nigeria. Parents told Reuters that 180 students typically attend the school, and that pupils were in the process of sitting exams. Nigerian authorities have attributed the kidnappings to what they call armed bandits seeking ransom payments. "Search and rescue operations (are) ongoing and we strongly believe that these students will safely return to their parents soon," Reverend I.A.Jangado said in a statement. Humanitarian agencies warn that the rise in school kidnappings is disrupting the education of hundreds of thousands of Nigerian children. The United Nations children's agency UNICEF estimates that more than about 1,120 schools are closed across northwestern Nigeria. Even where schools are open, some parents are too afraid to send their children. Some 300,000-400,000 students in the region are out of school because of insecurity, UNICEF said. "The situation we have found ourself is indeed pathetic, particularly for the parents of the kidnapped students and the school community," said Jangado.

Jacob Zuma, once dubbed South Africa’s “Teflon president” for his ability to evade the verdict of justice, yesterday mounted the first round of a last-ditch bid to avoid jail for snubbing anti-graft investigators. Zuma has mounted a two-pronged legal attempt to avoid jail after the Constitutional Court, the country’s top judicial authority, slapped him with a 15-month term for contempt. The Pietermaritzburg High Court yesterday heard Zuma’s application to halt execution of an imminent arrest order as police gave him several days’ breathing space. They said they would not make any move to detain him until he had exhausted his legal options. In his petition to the court, Zuma’s lawyer Dali Mpofu argued that the former president would turn 80 on his next birthday, his “health condition is uncontestably precarious,” and he was not a flight risk as he was under the care and security of the state. That argument gained short shrift from the anti-graft panel that Zuma snubbed. “We are dealing with a repetitive and recalcitrant law breaker in the form of Mr Zuma,” attorney Tembeka Ngcukaitobi told judge Bhekisisa Mnguni. “He has now come to ask you to assist him to break the law further. You should reject that.” The court then went into recess, with the verdict expected on Friday. The jail term was handed down last week after Zuma refused to obey court orders to appear before the commission, which is headed by deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo. The panel is probing so-called state capture — the siphoning off of national assets, which occurred on a massive scale under Zuma’s nine-year tenure. Zuma was told to turn himself in by midnight last Sunday, failing which police would be instructed to arrest him within the following three days.

More than 60 migrants of sub-Saharan origin have been lost at sea off Tunisia since Saturday, after two Europe-bound vessels sank, local authorities and the Red Crescent have said. Tunisia and neighbouring Libya are key departure points for migrants who attempt the dangerous crossing from the North African coast to Europe, particularly Italy. So far this year more than 880 migrants have died trying to reach Europe from North Africa, according to the International Organisation for Migration. Since the start of the summer the number of crossings have increased as migrants take advantage of the good weather and calmer seas, but the numbers of those lost at sea has also risen. The Tunisian coastguard retrieved the bodies of 21 migrants after their boat was shipwrecked on Sunday off the port city of Sfax, authorities said yesterday. “Twenty-one bodies of migrants were recovered after their boat was shipwrecked on July 4, and 50 were rescued” off Sfax, National Guard spokesman Houcem Eddine Jebabli told AFP yesterday. He said the migrants, all from sub-Saharan Africa, had been trying to reach Europe. On Saturday, the Tunisian Red Crescent had reported that 43 migrants were missing when a boat carrying more than 120 sunk off the southeastern coast in waters near Zarzis. Tunisia’s defence ministry said eighty-four were rescued from that stricken vessel, which the Red Crescent said had set off from Libya’s coast. The National Guard said yesterday four boatloads of migrants had sunk since June 26 after setting off from Sfax, with the bodies of 49 people recovered and 78 rescued. The number of migrants departing Tunisia for European shores last year hit its highest level since 2011. During the first quarter of 2021, more than half of those arriving in Italy from Tunisia were citizens from sub-Saharan African countries, according to the Tunisian rights organisation FTDES. The number of migrants attempting to cross from neighbouring Libya rocketed to 11,000 between January and April this year, according to UN refugee agency UNHCR. The UNHCR says that “deteriorating” conditions of migrants in Libya and Tunisia are pushing many to risk the crossing. The migrant rescue ship Ocean Viking has rescued 203 people, including 67 minors, in recent days, its owner SOS Mediterranee said on Sunday. The migrants came from Egypt, Gambia, Libya, South Sudan, Syria and Tunisia, the non-governmental organisation said in comments posted on Twitter. A UN Human Rights Office report in late May urged Libya and the European Union to overhaul their search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean. It found that existing policies “fail to prioritise the lives, safety and human rights” of people attempting to cross from Africa to Europe.

In a case that has left the country agog, South Africa’s police minister yesterday said he was awaiting court instructions on whether to arrest ex-president Jacob Zuma, who has been given a 15-month jail term for contempt. The country’s top court last week convicted Zuma for contempt and ordered him to turn himself in by end of Sunday to start his sentence. If he failed to do so, the police would be told to arrest him within the following three days. But Zuma on Friday lodged a last-ditch application to halt the execution of the arrest order. The application will be heard in a high court today. “The police were given the timeline of Wednesday 12 midnight,” Police Minister Bheki Cele told reporters yesterday. “We hope that we will be getting the clarification, because when we were given the instruction there were no other legal activities taking place,” he said. In responding documents to the court, the investigators slammed Zuma’s move as a further bid to jam the judicial machinery. His application was “a continuation of a pattern of abuse of the court process,” they said. “Courts should not entertain such abuse any longer.” Zuma, 79, has separately pleaded with the Constitutional Court to reconsider and rescind its order to jail him. That challenge will be heard on July 12. Zuma’s case has transfixed South Africa, despite a raging coronavirus pandemic that has made it the worst-hit country on the continent. New daily infections hit record highs of 26,000 cases at the weekend, fuelled by the contagious Delta variant. Supporters have rallied outside Zuma’s rural home at Nkandla in Kwa-Zulu Natal, defying a nationwide ban on all gatherings. Hundreds of followers converged at his home on Sunday, dressed in the regalia of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party regalia or in traditional Zulu warrior costumes. Wearing a black shirt embroidered with ANC colours, a maskless Zuma defiantly addressed the crowd before breaking into his signature song, the liberation struggle anthem “Awlethu Mshini Wam,” which translates to ‘Bring me my machine gun.’ Despite the breach of Covid regulations, police did not intervene to disperse the crowd. Cele said they had decided to act cautiously, in the belief that as many as a hundred of the supporters had firearms, and there was a need to avoid “bloodshed”. A Zulu elder and opposition politician Mangosuthu Buthelezi, 92, lambasted the crowds congregating in the midst of a pandemic as “the greatest irresponsibility of all” adding what was going on in Nkandla was “treasonous”. “With all due respect for the sympathy people may have for Mr Zuma’s plight, challenging the state and risking lives is unacceptable,” said Buthelezi. Speaking from Nkandla on Sunday night, the defiant Zuma did not hold back, lashing out the judiciary once more. “I’m very concerned that South Africa is fast sliding back to apartheid-type rule,” he told the crowd. “I am facing a long detention without trial,” he said. “Sending me to jail during the height of a pandemic, at my age, is the same as sentencing me to death.” His nine years in power were stained by scandal and allegations of graft, ending disastrously in 2018 when he was forced out by the ANC and replaced as president by Cyril Ramaphosa. Despite his notoriety, Zuma commands support among many grassroots ANC members, who recall his sacrifice in the struggle against apartheid, in which he spent 10 years in prison on Robben Island. Fearing a deepening internal rift, the ANC’s national executive committee postponed a scheduled meeting at the weekend and was to hold special talks on the Zuma crisis yesterday. Analyst Oscar van Heerden, who is also deputy vice-chancellor of University of Fort Fare, said Zuma’s case will “deepen the cracks within the ANC. Currently there are many fractions, not just factions”. But he expects the party’s talks to conclude with a declaration along the lines of “we are all equal before the law,...we support the ruling of the Constitutional Court” and encourage Zuma to adhere to the prescripts of the law.

About 150 students are missing after armed men raided a boarding school in Nigeria’s Kaduna state, a parent and an administrator said yesterday, and police said they were in hot pursuit alongside military personnel. The attack on the Bethel Baptist High School is the 10th mass school kidnapping since December in northwest Nigeria, which authorities have attributed to armed bandits seeking ransom payments. Dozens of distraught parents gathered at the school compound, some weeping and crying out, standing in groups awaiting news. Discarded sandals lay strewn nearby. Dormitories containing metal bunk beds and cupboards were deserted. “May God take away their tears and the suffering that they will face in the hands of the kidnappers,” said a woman pointing at a hole in the school’s perimeter where the attackers entered. His voice breaking, parent John Evans said he had recently told his daughter that God would protect her while she studied at the school. “Just this morning at about 6, I received a phone call that they have entered the school...kidnappers, that all our children are packed (taken), including my daughter,” he said. “We rushed down here, we confirmed that they are all packed.” Police said gunmen shooting wildly attacked overnight and overpowered the school’s security guards, taking an unspecified number of students into a nearby forest. A police statement said 26 people including a female teacher had been rescued. Reverend John Hayab, a founder of the school, told Reuters about 25 students had managed to escape while the school’s other students remained missing. Roughly 180 students attended the school and were in the process of sitting exams, according to Hayab, whose 17-year-old son escaped, and parent, Hassana Markus, whose daughter was among those missing. Local residents who declined to be identified told Reuters that security officials had cordoned off the school after the attack, which took place between 11pm on Sunday and 4am yesterday morning. Armed men, known locally as bandits, have made an industry of kidnapping students for ransom in northwest Nigeria, with Kaduna state particularly hard hit. They have taken nearly 1,000 people from schools since December last year, more than 150 of whom remain missing. Kidnappers have also targeted roads, private residents and even hospitals. Shoes of the abducted students lie on the floor. (AFP) 8 employees kidnapped from medical centre Eight medical centre employees were kidnapped in northwest Nigeria on Sunday, police said, although local sources said more people had been taken. A large number of unidentified armed men attacked Kaduna state’s Saye Tuberculosis and Leprosy Health Centre at around 1500 GMT, after a “heavy exchange of fire” with officers, local police spokesman Mohamed Jalige said. “Eight people were kidnapped,” he said, adding they were presumably taken for ransom. Local sources said 15 people had been abducted, including two nurses and their baby. They said the large number of attackers had forced officers to flee. “The truth is that the police abandoned their station after violent exchanges of fire,” a Saye resident told AFP. “The attack on the police station was a distraction whilst another group attacked the dormitories of the health centre workers,” another neighbour said.

Africa has suffered a record number of coronavirus cases over the past week, registering over 36,000 new infections per day, according to an AFP count based on official figures. African nations combined saw a daily average of 36,141 new Covid-19 cases from June 28 to July 4 as the pandemic flares up across the continent, surpassing the 32,609 daily cases registered in early January, during the previous high point of the virus. South Africa is the worst-hit country in Africa, with new daily infections hitting record highs of 26,000 cases over the weekend, fuelled by the highly contagious Delta variant which first surfaced in India. The daily figures across Africa had fallen under 8,000 in mid-May but have marched upwards since then. Last week’s figures were a 23 percent increase on the previous week. Part of the problem is that African countries are suffering from a crippling shortage of Covid vaccines. According to the AFP count, just 3.66 vaccine doses have been administered for every 100 Africans. The corresponding figure in the US and Canada is 100.26, while in Europe it stands at 68.3. Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional director for Africa, has warned that “the speed and scale of Africa’s third wave is like nothing we’ve seen before”. After South Africa, the other African nations worst affected by the new surge are Tunisia with an average of 5,230 cases per day, a rise of 52 percent, and Zimbabwe with 1,150 daily cases, a whopping 72% rise over the previous week. In terms of cases per 100,000 residents, the Seychelles have the worst record in the world with 754 daily cases over the past week, which was actually a fall of 25 percent. Namibia suffered 433 cases per 100,000 people over the same period, a rise of 10%, while Tunisia’s daily figures were 52% up at 310 per 100,000. The number of deaths from coronavirus is also on the rise in Africa, with an average of 748 fatalities per day, a surge of 43% over the previous week. That figure is still lower that the 906 deaths recorded between January 18-24 across the continent.

Gunmen have kidnapped 140 students from a boarding school in northwestern Nigeria, a school official said on Monday, the latest in a wave of mass abductions targetting schoolchildren and students. Heavily-armed criminal gangs often attack villages to loot, steal cattle and abduct for ransom in northwest and central Nigeria, but since the start of the year they have increasingly targeted schools and colleges. The attackers scaled a fence to break into the Bethel Baptist High School in Kaduna state in the early hours of Monday, taking away most of the 165 pupils boarding there overnight. ‘The kidnappers took away 140 students, only 25 students escaped. We still have no idea where the students were taken,’ Emmanuel Paul, a teacher at the school told AFP. Kaduna state police spokesman Mohammed Jalige confirmed the early Monday morning attack, but he could not give details on the number of pupils taken. ‘Tactical police teams went after the kidnappers,’ he said. ‘We are still on the rescue mission.’ Around 1,000 students and pupils have been abducted in different Nigerian states since December last year. Most have been released after negotiations with local officials, although some are still being held. Bethel Baptist High School is a co-education college established by Baptist church in 1991 at Maramara village in Chikun district outside the state capital Kaduna. Monday's attack was the fourth mass school kidnap in Kaduna state since December. Kaduna state governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai has been one of the most vocal local leaders insisting he will refuse to pay ransom money. Monday's school abduction came just hours after gunmen also snatched eight medical employees from a Kaduna health centre, according to police. President Muhammadu Buhari, a former general first elected in 2015, has promised to end the scourge of kidnapping and criminal gangs, but the mass abductions are only one challenge facing his government. Nigeria's security forces have been battling a jihadist insurgency the northeast since 2009, a conflict that has killed around 40,000 people and displaced more than 2 million more. The criminal gangs, known locally as bandits, operate from camps in the Rugu forest, which cuts across Zamfara, Katsina, and Kaduna state in Nigeria, as well as Niger. Most of the gangs are motivated by material gain, although some have sworn allegiance to the jihadist organisations in northeast Nigeria, hundreds of kilometres away.