Free Republic

Somalia: Reporter whose goal was to report positive news is murdered in jihad attack JUL 13, 2019 7:00 AM BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS Somali-Canadian television reporter Hodan Nalayeh has been murdered by jihadists. Nalayeh’s aim was report on good news and inspiring stories from Somalia, but she “was reported killed in the Al Shabaab complex attack in Kismayo which targeted reporters and activists for a civic society in Somalia.” Nalayeh launched a weekly television show Integration TV in Toronto on OMNI TV in 2014. The world is engaged in a defensive war against jihad and normative Islamic doctrine that sanctions violence,...

Only sixteen percent of blacks in the sprawling South African township of Soweto, Johannesburg, pay for their electricity, while South Africa’s electricity supply infrastructure is rapidly crumbling due to incompetent Third World management and lack of maintenance. The situation is so dire that local media have now reported that the government has been briefed on emergency measures in the event of a total national electricity blackout. The extent of the problem was graphically revealed when late last year, shock photographs—taken in secret by one of the employees of the state-run Electricity Supply Commission (Eskom)—were leaked of one of the country’s...

......His mother, he says, built the 700-pupil local school, his father sat on the local council, and whenever his black neighbours need helping out - be it a fellow farmer borrowing a tractor, or the local police borrowing fuel for their cars - it is his door on which they knock. ....He has already handed over another farm he owns to a group of black settlers who turned up in 2006, since when, he says, he has done his best to be neighbourly. He helps prepare the land for cultivation and offers advice when they need it, although driving through...

COTONOU, Benin (AP) -- More than a hundred thousand people in the tiny West African nation of Benin have lost their savings in a Ponzi scheme run by a now-defunct company that appeared to be publicly endorsed by the country's president. The government said in a statement last month that more than 130,000 people gave their savings to Investment Consultancy and Computering Services. Together they lost more than $130 million, the statement said. The corporation was registered as a nonprofit computer service company and was operating illegally as a banking institution. ICC was forced to close July 1, and more...

When it comes to any analysis of the problems facing Africa, Western society, and particularly people from the United States, encounter a logical disconnect that makes clear analysis impossible. That disconnect is the way life is regarded in the West (it’s precious, must be protected at all costs etc.), compared to the way life, and death, are regarded in Africa. Let me try to quantify this statement. In Africa, life is cheap. There are so many ways to die in Africa that death is far more commonplace than in the West. You can die from so many things--snakebite, insect bite,...

When stories are told about African poverty, race often seems to play a large part. Based in Senegal, Reuters photographer Finbarr O'Reilly (previously featured here for his work in DR Congo) traveled to South Africa earlier this year and visited one of a growing number of squatter camps populated mostly by Afrikaners - white South Africans - to document their stories and help show that, despite the fact that impoverished blacks in the region far outnumber whites, poverty is a human issue, not necessarily racial. O'Reilly: "While most white South Africans still enjoy lives of privilege and relative wealth, the...

ZIMBABWE'S coffee production has hit a record low since Independence following the chaotic land reform exercise that reduced coffee growing estates to four from 120. Statistics gathered after a high level coffee stakeholder conference held last week in Mutare show that organic coffee production mostly in Zimbabwe's Eastern Highlands pl-unged to 300 tonnes in 2010 from a peak production of 15 000 tonnes in 1990 when farmers raked in US$37,5 million from sales. Production has been in freefall for the past 10 years, signalling a threat to the livelihood of both commercial and communal farmers ... Today the coffee sector...

Cape Town - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is stockpiling arms and ammunition and preparing for war, the Democratic Alliance warned on Thursday.... ..."Mugabe is [also] talking to Venezuela, Cuba and Korea to fund a war-chest in preparation for the referendum and election, following the implementation of the global political agreement (GPA) brokered by former president Thabo Mbeki on behalf of SADC."... ...James said Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party appeared to be "mobilising for war against their own citizens"....

ENTEBBE, Uganda (AFP) - Africans must travel to the moon to investigate what developed nations have been doing in outer space, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said Saturday. "The Americans have gone to the moon. And the Russians. The Chinese and Indians will go there soon. Africans are the only ones who are stuck here," Museveni said, addressing a meeting of the Uganda Law Society in Entebbe. "We must also go there and say: 'What are you people doing up here?'."

Zimbabwe's Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, has said the new unity government is broke and can not meet trade union demands for higher wages. Mr Tsvangirai said no state worker, including President Robert Mugabe, was earning more than $100 (£67) a month. The unions have called for a monthly minimum of $450 and threatened to go on strike if their demand is not met. "This government is broke, and we are only able to pay the $100 allowance," Mr Tsvangirai told the crowds

Zuma’s blueprint for governance accords fairly closely with the descriptions of early anthropologists: like any African king, he will rely on the counsel of wise advisers. This worries Mosiuoa Lekota, the former ANC hero and now a leader of the breakaway Congress of the People. He points out that the Communist party and its allied trade unions played a critical role in the overthrow of Mbeki and believes the left now controls the ANC. “Even Zuma has said as much,” Lekota noted. “He told the ANC national executive, ‘I owe nobody anything here. The only people I will consult beyond...

When Daleen Joubert heard last week's promise that Zimbabwe's new Government would protect the country's remaining white farmers, she and her husband Willem dared to believe that their ordeal could soon be over. ... On the evening of last week's pledge by Tendai Biti, the Finance Minister in Zimbabwe's coalition Government, to “arrest any further farm invasions” the locks on their farm gate were smashed, the door to Mrs Joubert's elderly father's home was broken down and its contents taken out and dumped. The police, who had taken part in the eviction, left a message for Mr and Mrs Joubert,...

HARARE, Zimbabwe – President Robert Mugabe and a longtime opposition leader-turned-finance minister made an unusual joint appeal Thursday for $5 billion (euro3.66 billion) in international aid to revive Zimbabwe's shattered economy. The two men presented an economic recovery program that scraps the stringent price controls which have fueled a black market and spiraling inflation. It also sets up "safety nets and social protection for vulnerable groups exposed to market forces," Finance Minister Tendai Biti said, without offering details. The longtime opponents disagreed, however, over the causes of the country's economic meltdown. Biti said Zimbabwe had to do its part by...

A secret plan has been hatched by by Robert Mugabe's most loyal supporters to evict the last of Zimbabwe's white farmers from their land before his 85th birthday. Their leader is already planning to celebrate the occasion with vast quantities of champagne and caviar, despite half his country facing starvation. But just in case the Bollinger laid on for President Mugabe's 85th birthday does not provide quite enough fizz, his acolytes are preparing an extra surprise for the occasion - a fresh onslaught against Zimbabwe's last white farmers. Police, prosecutors and magistrates loyal to the Zimbabwean president are understood to...

It is the 85th birthday of President Mugabe this month and the zealots of his Zanu (PF) party are determined that it should be an occasion that their great leader will never forget. In recent days they have been out soliciting “donations” from corporate Zimbabwe and have drawn up a wish list that is scarcely credible in a land where seven million citizens survive on international food aid, 94 per cent are jobless and cholera rampages through a population debilitated by hunger. The list includes 2,000 bottles of champagne (Moët & Chandon or '61 Bollinger preferred); 8,000 lobsters; 100kg of...

<p>HARARE -- Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic has killed more than 2,000 people and almost 40,000 have contracted the normally preventable disease, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday.</p>

Zimbabwe's central bank will introduce a $50 billion note -- enough to buy just two loaves of bread -- as a way of fighting cash shortages amid spiraling inflation. Zimbabwe is grappling with hyperinflation now officially estimated at 231 million percent, and its currency is fast losing its value. As of Friday, one U.S. dollar was trading at around ZW$25 billion. When the government issued a $10 billion note just three weeks ago, it bought 20 loaves of bread. That note now can purchase less than half of one loaf. Realizing the worthlessness of the currency, the RBZ has allowed...

Zim cholera death toll tops 1 100HARARE, ZIMBABWE Dec 18 2008 13:03The death toll from a cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe has soared to 1,111, the United Nations said on Thursday, adding to pressure for a quick solution to the crisis in the Southern African country. African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma backed a diplomatic push as the way to end political deadlock and rejected any suggestion of sending troops. The latest cholera figures from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Geneva included a new outbreak in Chegutu Urban in Mashonaland West, west of Harare, where...

Zimbabwe's highways are littered with police checkpoints, which is discomforting for foreign journalists working there illegally. But they are simply a pretext for extracting food or money from drivers. “What are we having for Christmas?”, one policeman asked The Times. “I'm hungry,” another said bluntly. A third threatened to issue me with a ticket for stopping a yard past the point where he was standing. He then said that my companions - hitch hikers - were “unlawful passengers”. Eventually he backed down, but a black driver would have had to pay. More alarming was when I was flagged down by...

BINDURA, Zimbabwe (Reuters) – Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said on Saturday he would not allow a unity government to reverse his controversial policy of seizing white-owned farmland and giving it to blacks. Speaking at his ZANU-PF party's annual conference, Mugabe said that while he hoped the opposition would agree to form a coalition government, he would not compromise on policies such as land seizures, which critics say wrecked Zimbabwe's economy. "We don't want a unity which is retrogressive," Mugabe told about 6,000 ruling party supporters at this town about 80 km (50 miles) north of the capital Harare. "The biggest...