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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – From the presidency to prisoner behind bars, former President Omar al-Bashir now faces formal charges of murder in the latest development to spring from a massive turnout of Sudanese people demanding civilian rule.
"Omar al-Bashir and others have been charged for inciting and participating in the killing of demonstrators," the office of Sudan's acting prosecutor general, Al-Waleed Sayyed Ahmed, announced on May 13.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – Frustrated with the failures of the ruling African National Congress, South Africans gave the ANC its lowest turnout since 2004 when it took a record 69 percent of the vote. The ANC won a sixth straight term but with the worst ever electoral showing for the iconic party. Voter turnout was low. Thousands of youth did not even bother to register.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – The back-to-back cyclones that have ravaged Mozambique are unprecedented in recorded history, according to the UN. As more villages are wiped away, a multi-billion-dollar bidding war is heating up in foreign board rooms among multinationals eager to extract Mozambican oil. Top bid so far by Occidental Petroleum Corp has reached $57 billion.
The fantastic sums changing hands are between Anadarko which owns the wells, Chevron and Occidental, hopeful buyers. Donations for relief and rescue, however, are far below satisfactory, according to foreign charitable organizations like CARE.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – Protests that began over the skyrocketing price of bread and shortages of food and fuel have accomplished what few people believed was possible in a country ruled by a leader with an iron fist.
A Sudanese people’s movement was born on the streets of Khartoum. Hundreds of thousands of women and men hunkered down and braved attacks by anti-riot police.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – Jihadist groups dislodged from Middle East battlegrounds are reportedly regrouping in West Africa, exploiting longstanding grievances between the Dogon farmers and the Puelh-Fulani nomadic herdsmen of Mali over access to limited supplies of land and water.
A militia in Dogon attire entered Ogossagou, a Fulani village and suspected jihadi hideout at about 4 a.m. local time and murdered over 100 men, women and children.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – Joseph Kabila, ex-president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, may have gone once too often to the cookie jar, taking back one by one all of the powers and rights earned by his successor from a recent election, Felix Tshisekedi.
President Tshisekedi may have had enough.
After a disputed vote that gave the former president’s allies an overwhelming majority in the upper house of parliament, 80 out of 100 seats, while the actual president’s Union for Democracy and Social Progress party (UDPS) gained only three, the newly-named senators were blocked from taking office in a surprise move by President Tshisekedi.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK | LONDON (IDN) – The UK government is coming under pressure to compensate and apologize to the last surviving African veterans who fought alongside white British soldiers in the Second World War that began 80 years ago and lasted six years.
More than half a million black African soldiers who fought in the British army were paid up to three times less than their white counterparts, a newly unearthed document has revealed, prompting calls for an investigation and the government to compensate surviving veterans.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – The Democratic Republic of Congo finally has a president. Opposition figure Felix Tshisekedi was declared winner of the presidential race by the DR Congo’s top court on January 20.
The Constitutional Court said Tshisekedi had won by a simple majority, paving the way for him to take over from the current president, Joseph Kabila.
The outcome was challenged by runner-up Martin Fayulu who claimed that the election had been stolen and called on the international community to reject the results.
Election data leaked to some news organizations suggested that he won the vote.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – When Democrats captured one House seat after another in the U.S. midterm elections, observers brushed it off as a "blue trickle". Later they had to admit: it was a giant blue wave.
Africans are also yearning for change and their frustration is erupting across the continent with a new crop of activists challenging the old order.
In Ethiopia, reforms are already underway since the installation last year of 42-year-old Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Women have been named to some of the government’s key positions – president, chief justice and half of all ministers. Thousands of political prisoners and journalists have been freed while senior officials accused of human rights abuses and corruption no longer enjoy immunity.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – After a brief spin as President of South Africa, the multi-talented Jacob Zuma is plunging into a new and exciting career path – he’ll be a recording artist of liberation songs from the anti-apartheid struggle.
A full-length album will be recorded in April during the Articulate Africa project, a program of national and international literary writings.
Zuma, who was forced to step down in February 2018 over multiple graft scandals, is remembered for singing and dancing at rallies during his tenure.
