Month: June 2023

At least 31 soldiers and three army auxiliaries were killed on Monday in an attack by suspected jihadists in northern Burkina Faso, the army announced on Tuesday, with security sources telling Africanewsguru.com that another separate attack had left dozens dead.

“A supply convoy escorted by military units, returning from Djibo”, a town besieged for months by jihadists in the Sahel region (north), was on Monday “the target of an ambush” in Namsiguia, in the Centre-nord region, according to a Burkina Faso army statement.

“The fighting, which was particularly violent, caused significant casualties, despite the vigorous response of the units,” it added, referring to a “provisional toll” of 31 soldiers and three Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP, civilian army auxiliaries) killed, while “around ten elements are still being sought by reinforcements” dispatched to the scene.

According to the army, “more than forty terrorists have been neutralized”.

The army did not mention in its communiqué another attack in the same region on Monday, which, according to security sources told Africanewsguru.com, also left “dozens dead”, the majority of them VDP.

“Terrorist groups attacked the village of Noaka” in the Centre-Nord region, “mainly targeting VDP”, according to one of these sources.

“We lost dozens of men in Noaka and several are wounded,” said a local VDP official. “Several other fighters are still missing,” he added.

According to a local resident, “it’s a massacre that’s taken place in Noaka”, estimating that “around thirty” VDP were killed in the attack and mentioning “many wounded”. “The valiant fighters, supported by the army, also inflicted a heavy loss on the assailants”, he added, referring to “several motorcycles and weapons recovered”.

The local VDP leader also reported that another, smaller-scale attack had taken place on Monday in Gayeri, in the eastern Komondjari province, killing four army auxiliaries.

The population of Tanwalbougou (east) had demonstrated the same day in response to the upsurge in jihadist attacks, calling for supplies to their locality, which has been blockaded by armed groups for several weeks, according to local residents.

Burkina has been caught since 2015 in a spiral of jihadist violence that began in Mali and Niger a few years earlier and has spread beyond their borders.

Over the past eight years, the violence has left more than 10,000 civilians and soldiers dead, according to NGOs, and more than two million internally displaced.

Since last September, the country has been ruled by a military junta led by Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who came to power following a coup d’état, the second in eight months.

The chairwoman of Ethiopia’s National Election Commission (NEBE), Birtukan Mideksan, an imprisoned former opposition politician who had held the post since December 2018, announced on Monday that she had tendered her resignation for health reasons.

“Needing a long rest to take care of my health, I submitted my letter of resignation on June 12 to the office of the Speaker of the House of People’s Representatives (lower house of parliament, ed. note) to inform him that I will, of my own free will, be stepping down as NEBE chair on August 7, 2023,” 49-year-old Birtukan wrote in a Facebook post.

“The remaining time will be devoted to completing unfinished business and ensuring the administrative transition,” she continued, without giving any further details.

Among the “unfinished business” should be the proclamation of the official results of the referendum on the creation in southern Ethiopia of a 12th regional state within the federal state.

The vote took place on 6 February in several administrative zones of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Regional State (SNNPR), which had called for them to be grouped together in a new region. However, the vote was cancelled in the Wolayta zone due to irregularities, and was re-run there on 19 June.

According to the results published by NEBE on 24 June, voters in this area voted overwhelmingly in favour of a new region, as did those in the other areas concerned.

Two similar referendums, in 2019 and 2021, have already resulted in the creation of two additional regions, Sidama and Sud-Ouest, which were split off from the SNNPR.

A former judge and then opposition leader, imprisoned in the 2000s under the coalition regime dominated between 1991 and 2018 by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), then exiled to the United States, Ms Birtukan was chosen by the new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, shortly after he came to power in 2018, to chair the NEBE.

“Over the past four years and six months, I have tried honestly and in accordance with the law to fulfil my duty: to manage the political parties and organise three referendums and one national election”, she said.

According to the Constitution, NEBE is responsible for “organising elections impartially, freely and fairly”, in a country where the sincerity of the ballots has long been contested.

In 2018, Mr Abiy promised that the 2020 legislative elections would be “free, fair and democratic”, but they were postponed twice, first because of the Covid pandemic and then because of logistical difficulties.

The elections were finally held in 2021, but it was not possible to hold them in all the constituencies due to the multiple outbreaks of violence, in particular the armed conflict opposing.

Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock was in Pretoria on Tuesday to meet with her South African counterpart Naledi Pandor for the German-South African Binational Commission.

Key issues expected to be discussed at the talks centred around energy security, climate change and geopolitical issues affecting Africa and Europe, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

South Africa has faced criticism for its neutral stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has refused to condemn Russia, instead calling for dialogue between the warring countries.

Earlier in June, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was part of a delegation of African leaders who met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kyiv and Moscow, respectively, in an attempt to broker peace talks between the two countries.

War in Ukraine

“This war is, and we have discussed this already, is an attack on the U.N. charter, on the very rules that bind and protect us all,” Baerbock saidduring Tuesday’s talks. “The African delegation, led by President Cyril Ramaphosa, made this very clear in St. Petersburg. This war also concerns Africa, the U.N. charter must be respected, and we are thankful for his clear words.”

The war has greatly affected food security and oil prices globally, with African countries amongst those most impacted.

“Today we are faced with different and yet equally serious global challenges in Africa and elsewhere in the world, including in Europe, where the war in Ukraine has had global ramifications,” Pandor said.

Diplomatic dilemma

In August, South Africa will also host a BRICS summit in Johannesburg. The BRICS group includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

The move placed Pretoria in a diplomatic dilemma over pressure from Western nations to arrest Putin over alleged war crimes related to the war in Ukraine.

Putin is the subject of an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court and South Africa is under obligations to arrest him as a signatory of the Rome Statute which formed the court.

Earlier this year, relations between South Africa and the United States soured after Washington accused Pretoria of supplying arms to Russia through a Russian ship which docked in Cape Town in December 2023. South Africa has denied the allegations.

A man was stoned to death after being accused of blasphemy in northwest Nigeria, authorities and activists said, sparking outrage on Monday from rights groups worried about what they said were growing threats to religious freedom in the region.

Usman Buda, a butcher, was killed Sunday in Sokoto state’s Gwandu district after he “allegedly blasphemed the Holy Prophet Muhammad” during an argument with another trader in a marketplace, police spokesman Ahmad Rufa’i said in a statement on Sunday night.

Local residents shared videos that appeared to be from the scene showing a large crowd that included children pelting stones at Buda on the floor as they cursed him.

Rufa’i said a police team was deployed in the area but when they arrived, “the mob escaped the scene and left the victim unconscious.” He was later declared dead at Usmanu Danfodiyo Teaching Hospital in Sokoto, Rufa’i said.

The killing was the latest attack rights campaigners have said threatens religious freedom in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim northern region. Blasphemy carries the death penalty under Islamic law in the area.

Amnesty International Nigeria’s office said the failure to ensure justice in such cases would encourage more extrajudicial killings. “The government is not taking the matter seriously and that has to change,” Isa Sanusi, acting director of Amnesty International Nigeria, said.

Sokoto Gov. Ahmed Aliyu said local residents should not take laws into their hands. But he also warned that his government would “deal decisively” against anyone found guilty of blasphemy.

“Sokoto people have so much respect and regard for Prophet Muhammad … hence the need for all the residents to respect (and) protect his dignity and personality,” Abubakar Bawa, his spokesman, said.

Many of those accused of blasphemy never make it to court for trial. Last year, a student in Sokoto was beaten and burnt to death for alleged blasphemy while a man was killed and set ablaze for the same reason in the capital city of Abuja also in the northern region.

The police in Sokoto said it has opened an investigation into the latest incident, though arrests are rare in such cases.

“Even where arrests were made, there were serious allegations that those arrested were either later released or the whole case is jeopardized. This is very dangerous and it shows the Nigerian authorities are deliberately not willing to do the right thing to fix this dangerous situation,” Sanusi added.

Five civilians were killed and some beheaded in an attack on Saturday evening in two villages in eastern Kenya claimed by the radical Islamist Shebab, police and local sources said on Sunday.

The attack was carried out at around 19:30 (16:30 GMT) on Saturday in the villages of Juhudi and Salama, located in the coastal county of Lamu, which borders Somalia, according to these sources.

“Five people were killed The victims’ throats were slit and others were beheaded,” a police source told Africanewsguru.com.

“They (the assailants) were armed with machetes and some had firearms, but they did not shoot at them. The victims’ throats were slit and others were decapitated”, added this source.

A resident of one of the villages, Hassan Abdul, said that “the women were locked in the houses and the men were ordered to come out, they were tied up with ropes and massacred”.

“In total, five people were killed, including a secondary school pupil. All those killed had their throats slit and some were beheaded”, he added, claiming to have counted between 20 and 30 assailants.

According to another resident, Ismail Hussein, the attackers also seized goods belonging to the residents, in particular foodstuffs, before fleeing by firing into the air.

The Lamu County Prefect, Louis Rono, confirmed the attack but did not give a death toll. “We have increased security in the area following last night’s attack,” he said on Sunday.

The Shebab, a group affiliated to al-Qaeda, claimed in a statement to have carried out an operation on the village of Juhudi, saying they had killed “six members of the Kenyan infidels” and “burnt down ten houses where Christians were living”.

– Deadly attacks – For more than 15 years, the Shebab have been fighting the federal Somali government, backed by the international community, to establish Islamic law in this country in the Horn of Africa.

Since its military intervention in southern Somalia in 2011 and then its participation in the African Union force in Somalia (Amisom, now Atmis) created in 2012 to combat this insurgency, neighbouring Kenya has also been targeted by this group, which also recruits among the local youth.

Deadly attacks targeted the Westgate shopping centre in the capital Nairobi in September 2013 (67 dead), Garissa University in April 2015 (148 dead) and the Dusit hotel complex, also in Nairobi, in January 2019 (21 dead).

Numerous other smaller-scale attacks regularly target police and civilians in the border counties of Mandera, Wajir, Garissa and Lamu, home to the tourist island of the same name.

Saturday’s attack took place in the vicinity of Mpeketoni, an inland town around 450 km as the crow flies from the capital Nairobi and around 120 km from the Somali border.

The area had already been targeted on 2 January 2022 by an attack attributed to the Shebab, in which one man was decapitated and five others shot or burnt to death, according to a police report.

In 2014, a series of raids claimed by the Shebab left around a hundred people dead.

On 14 June, eight police officers were killed when their vehicle was destroyed by an improvised explosive device in Garissa county.

On 15 May, Kenya and Somalia announced the gradual reopening at three points of their land border, which had been officially closed in 2011 in an attempt to curb Shebab attacks.

The 2023 BET Awards are celebrating 50 years of hip-hop with tributes to the genre’s earliest voices, late legends, and new talent during a performance-packed show that consistently felt like a party.

Busta Rhymes took home the Lifetime Achievement Award with a star-studded tribute performance.

A masked Lil Uzi Vert opened the show at Los Angeles’ Microsoft Theater before it jumped into a quick history lesson. Capri walked the audience through a medley of the earliest days of New York City ’80s rap culture featuring The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” MC LYTE’s “Cha Cha Cha,” and Big Daddy Kane’s “Raw.”

The coveted best new artist award went to Coco Jones, in a category which featured only female performers while Nigerian Musician, Damini Ogulu, a.k.a Burnaboy won the award for Best International Act. The ‘African Giant’ crooner beat the likes of Ayra Starr, Central Cee and Stormzy, among others to clinch the most coveted category of BET awards.

Though Burna Boy was absent at the show, his plaque was received by Michael Blackson. His (Burna Boy’s) announcement as winner had been greeted with a resounding applause.

The night’s biggest surprise was a rare public performance by Quavo and Offset, the surviving members of Migos, who did a rendition of “Bad and Boujee” in front of an image of Takeoff, who died in a shooting last December.

DJ Kid Capri walked the audience through rap classics honoring not just East and West rap but also the styles of Miami, Atlanta and Jamaica, live from Microsoft Theater in downtown Los Angeles.

Sitabile Dewa was content with her sex life when she was married, but after her divorce, she found her prospects for erotic pleasure rather bleak.

In socially conservative Zimbabwe, divorced women and single mothers are often cast as undesirable partners for men, and in her frustration Dewa decided she wanted to use sex toys.

The problem is sex toys are against the law in Zimbabwe.

“I should not be deprived of self-exploration and indulgence in self-gratification,” said Dewa, 35.

Part of Zimbabwe’s “censorship and entertainments control” law makes the importation or possession of sex toys illegal as they are deemed “indecent” or “obscene” and harmful to public morals. Owning sex toys can put a woman in prison.

Dewa said the law is “archaic” and is challenging part of it in court on the basis that it is repressive and infringes on her freedom. She filed court papers in March suing the Zimbabwe government and seeking to have parts of the law repealed. The court is considering her case.

Her bold, open references to masturbation and women’s sexuality are bound to make many Zimbabweans uncomfortable.

But her crusade is significant, say women’s rights campaigners, as part of a broader challenge to the nation’s patriarchal outlook, where women’s choices on a range of other issues that affect them and their bodies — including contraception, marriage and even what they wear — are scrutinized and often limited.

Dewa is a women’s rights activist herself, and says she applied her own life experience in her stand against the ban on sex toys.

Proof that the law is actively enforced came last year when two women were arrested over sex toys.

One of them was running an online business selling sex aids to women and offering advice on their use. She spent two weeks in detention and was sentenced to six years in jail or 640 hours of unpaid community work.

The thing that appears to rile authorities the most on the sex toy issue is the sidelining of men, said Debra Mwase, a programs manager with Katswe Sistahood, a Zimbabwean group lobbying for women’s rights. Sexually liberated women frighten the men who dominate Zimbabwe’s political, social and cultural spaces, she said.

“Sex is not really seen as a thing for women,” Mwase said. “Sex is for men to enjoy. For women, it is still framed as essential only for childbearing.”

“Sex without a man becomes a threat,” she added.

Dewa boils it down to this: “These laws would have been repealed a long time ago if the majority of users were men,” she said.

Also significant is Zimbabwe’s history. While untangling the effects colonialism might have had on women’s rights in sub-Saharan Africa today, multiple studies have shown that African women were far more sexually expressive before European laws, culture and religion were imposed.

Prominent Ugandan academic Sylvia Ramale wrote in the introduction to a book she edited titled “African Sexualities” that pre-colonial African women were “relatively unrestrained” when it came to their sexuality. For one thing, they wore revealing clothing, Ramale said.

But colonialism and the foreign religion it carried with it “stressed the impurity and inherent sin associated with women’s bodies,” she said.

Mwase quips at what she sees as a great irony now in Zimbabwe, which has been independent and free of the oppression of white minority rule for 43 years and yet retains laws like the one that deals with sex toys, which is a carryover from colonial times.

“African societies still vigorously enforce values and laws long ditched by those who brought them here. It is in Europe where women now freely wear less clothing and are sexually liberal, just like we were doing more than a century ago,” she said.

Dewa’s campaign for access to sex toys falls into the bigger picture in Zimbabwe of women being “tired of oppression,” and is clearly forward-thinking, she said. But there has recently been evidence of a throwback to the past that might also be welcome.

Some parts of a pre-colonial southern African tradition known as “Chinamwari” are being revived, in which young women gather for sex education sessions overseen by older women from their families or community.

Advice on anything from foreplay to sexual positions to sexual and reproductive health is handed out, giving Chinamwari a risqué reputation but also the potential to empower young women.

In modern-day Zimbabwe, Chinamwari meetings are advertised on the Internet. But they also now come with guarantees of secrecy, largely because of the prevailing attitudes toward sex and backlash from some men uncomfortable with the thought of women being too good at it.