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Now that Africa is getting an influx of cash to pay off debts, President Bush is pushing for an influx of democracy on the troubled continent. The United States and others of the Group of Eight major industrialized nations agreed Saturday to eliminate more than $40 billion of debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest nations as part of a British-led effort to lift Africa out of poverty. Bush was to follow up on the agreement by playing host Monday to leaders of five countries that held democratic elections last year. "At a time when freedom is on the...

Link post, for the purpose of alerting interested FR denizens to the post in the General/Chat section, where discussion and comments should be posted: Geology Picture of the Week, June 12-18, 2005: Finger Klippe

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned Friday that the outbreak of the deadly virus Marburg which has killed 174 people in Angola is not yet under control. "The situation right now in Angola is not under control yet," Mike Ryan, head of the WHO's emergency response unit, told reporters here. He asked international agencies and local health authorities to remain firmly engaged in Angola for the next four to six weeks to control the epidemic. "This is still a crisis, and a health crisis at the national level, and requires a profound commitment from national authorities and the international community,"...

PRESIDENT Hifikepunye Pohamba on Friday warned that Namibia could face a "revolution" unless white farmers agreed to give up their land. Speaking at a farewell function at the Lands Ministry, Pohamba urged commercial farmers to take up Government's offer to buy their land. "Land expropriation does not mean confiscation, but means selling land to the government at fair prices as provided in the constitution and the relevant laws," Pohamba said, adding that to date "not a single farm has been expropriated". But he warned that the patience of the black population was running out. "We have a fear in the...

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran, which the United States accuses of secretly pursuing nuclear weapons, has a stake in the world's biggest open-pit uranium mine in the African state of Namibia, the mine's owner told Reuters. Rossing Uranium Limited, which is majority owned by Anglo-Australian firm Rio Tinto, sells its uranium to nuclear power plants in the United States, Japan, South Korea and Sweden. Graham Davidson, the general manager for operations at Rossing, said in a letter to Reuters that the company's board of directors only permits the sale of uranium for use in generating electricity. "The government of Iran has...

United Nations observers have sighted about 100 Rwandan troops inside the Democratic Republic of Congo. Thousands of civilians have reportedly begun to flee the area. The Congolese say more than 6,000 Rwandans have crossed the border and are attacking and burning villages. From the eastern town of Beni, Congolese regional cooperation minister Mbusa Nyamwisi said villages were being targeted nearby. "We are being attacked by the Rwandan troops," he said. The apparent incursion comes after threats last week by Rwanda's president Paul Kagame to send troops across the border to engage Hutu rebels inside Congolese territory. President Kagame said any...

Namibia farmers face land grab By Christopher Munnion in Johannesburg (Filed: 16/11/2004) Namibia's white farmers were braced for a Zimbabwe-style land grab after polls opened following the retirement of President Sam Nujoma. Voters among the 1.8 million people queued outside polling booths yesterday at the start of two days of voting which is certain to see the ruling South-West African People's Organisation (Swapo) returned to power, probably with an increased majority. A smiling Mr Nujoma, who unsuccessfully sought to change the constitution so that he could seek a third term, was one of the first to cast his vote. "Namibians...

WINDHOEK, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Namibian farmworkers frustrated at the slow pace of land redistribution have threatened to take matters into their own hands in three weeks time with unspecified action against white-owned farms. The Oct. 16 deadline was agreed overwhelmingly by a packed meeting late on Thursday at which worker after worker vented their anger at the lack of progress and accused government ministers of complacency. "We are going to take drastic action that will shake the farms. We will make these people respect us. We are prepared to face the consequences of our action," said Alfred Angula, general...

By Barnaby Phillips BBC correspondent in Namibia Hilde Wiese's farmhouse is cluttered with antiques and memories. The heavy wooden furniture and old stove belonged to her grandfather, Theodore, who came out to Namibia from Germany more than 100 years ago.He built the farmhouse, and on the walls there are black-and-white photographs of him and his wife, Berta. This is where Hilde has lived and worked for 68 years; raising cattle, growing vegetables and flowers for export to Europe. But Hilde's world is falling apart - she has received a letter from the Namibian government, telling her she must sell the...

Windhoek - NATIONAL Union of Namibian Workers' (NUNW) President Risto Kapenda says the government should expropriate as much land as possible in a short period of time, and without any compensation.He suggested that calls for an orderly expropriation were tantamount to dancing to the tune of Europeans and would be an insult to the people land was taken away. This contradicts government statements that land will be expropriated with just compensation. More than 15 farmers have so far been served with notices of intent to expropriate. Kapenda said in an interview on Friday with a journalist from a German radio...

Africa's despots are saber rattling again. Last week Sam Nujoma, the Namibian President, called white people 'snakes', and then Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's disgraceful dictator, called the almost saintly Archbishop Desmond Tutu an 'evil and embittered little bishop'. Zimbabwe under Mugabe has been a lost cause for years, and the Archbishop's complaints about Mugabe's disregard for the law were likely to fall on deaf ears. But that the disease is spreading to Nujoma's Namibia is a rather worrying development. Collapsing or genocidal regimes, including Sudan's, are rife for providing cover for, if not directly encouraging, terrorism. Remember that Osama bin Laden...

WINDHOEK - Namibia's white farmers are increasingly concerned about their future after President Sam Nujoma's government began targeting a second group of farms for expropriation under its land reform program. A second wave of letters was sent to white farmers last week, on the heels of a first bunch in early May notifying farm owners to set a price for the sale of their land to the state. The letters mark the first time since land reforms began in the southern African country in 1996 that the government has taken steps to expropriate farmers, raising concerns that Namibia is following...

Andreas Wiese, a fourth-generation Namibian of German descent, is preparing to quit farming. His family raise cattle, grow vegetables and cultivate calla lilies for export to Europe and South Africa on an arid 4,000-hectare ranch 50km north-east of the capital Windhoek. Last month the government ordered the Wieses to sell their property to the state within two weeks. The family have since made an offer and the 32-year-old farmer, who also holds a German passport, says he may emigrate. "We are selling," he says, ending a day's work in the family's Windhoek flower shop. "I personally don't see a future...

Windhoek - Namibian President Sam Nujoma Wednesday slammed "racist" white farmers who have claimed the government's land reform programme lacks transparency and threatened to punish anyone who evicted black workers. In a televised speech, Nujoma took a swipe at a farmers' support group which recently said the farm expropriation process was not transparent because the lands ministry did not define the criteria. "I want to make it categorically clear to... minority racist commercial farmers whose objective it is to distort the facts concerning the government's land reform and expropriation policy, that the land question in Namibia is a sensitive issue....

WHITE farmers in Namibia are increasingly divided over how to respond to the government's plans to expropriate some of their land, with a splinter group urging members to fight to stop the process. A group of 30 farmers met at the eastern town of Gobabis this week under the banner of the Namibia Farmers Support Initiative and agreed to pool resources to prevent the state from dealing with individuals. They expressed fear that if they ignored the plight of individuals, the Namibian government would deal with all of them singly, as had happened in Zimbabwe. While the main farmers' body...

Windhoek - A black farm workers' union in Namibia threatened on Friday to seize white-owned farms by force in an angry response to a new farmers' organisation which has vowed to fight land expropriations in the southern African country. President Sam Nujoma's government last month told 15 white farm owners to make an offer to sell their property to the state, the first move by the authorities to force the white farmers off their land. "If the white colleagues do not want expropriation of land, we can always introduce a new method - which is taking the land without compensation...

A DEFIANT group of commercial farmers whose land Government has identified for expropriation claim they are victims of immoral politicking and will fight it tooth and nail. Government served some 15 white farmers with expropriation notices and gave them 14 days to respond. Sigi Eimbeck from the Namibia Farmers Support Initiative (NFSI) told the media yesterday that the planned expropriation had nothing to do with land reform but was a campaign strategy by Lands Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba. The Minister, who is also Swapo Vice President, was elected as the party's candidate for the November presidential elections over the weekend. "We...

May 23 2004 at 01:51PM By Brigitte Wieldich Ongombo West - Four generations of farming in Hilde Wiese's family are about to come to an end in Namibia following a government order to sell their farm. Wiese is among 15 white farm owners who were told by Land Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba to "make an offer" within 14 days to sell their property and enter into negotiations on the expropriation. The deadline expires on Monday. Wiese, 68, owns Ongombo West, a farm located 50km from Windhoek, where she and her son Andreas raise cattle, grow vegetables and for the past five...

Windhoek - President Sam Nujoma has made good on his promise - made barely two weeks ago - to drive "minority, racist farmers" off the land to make way for blacks. The Namibian government has started taking commercial land for resettlement, following its announcement in February of a change in its willing-seller, willing-buyer policy. This week the first notice of expropriation was issued to the white owner of a "trouble" farm, from where six black employees had been illegally dismissed and evicted last year. It was issued on Monday by Hifikepunye Pohamba, Minister of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation. The owner...