Angola’s former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled Africa’s second biggest oil producer for nearly four decades, has died aged 79, the Angolan presidency said Friday.

Dos Santos died at 11.10am Spanish time at the Barcelona Teknon clinic following a prolonged illness, the presidency said.

The announcement said dos Santos, who ruled Angola for almost 40 years from 1979, was “a statesman of great historical scale who governed … the Angolan nation through very difficult times.”

Dos Santos had mostly lived in Barcelona since stepping down in 2017 and he reportedly had been undergoing treatment there for health problems.

Angola’s current head of state, Joao Lourenco, announced five days of national mourning starting Friday, when the country’s flag will fly at half-staff and public events are canceled.

One of Africa’s longest serving leaders, dos Santos came to power four years after Angola gained independence from Portugal and became enmeshed in the Cold War as a proxy battlefield. His rule was marked by a brutal civil war lasting nearly three decades against US-backed UNITA rebels and a subsequent oil-fuelled boom.

Shy, but shrewd political operator

His political journey spanned single-party Marxist rule in post-colonial years and a democratic system of government adopted in 2008. He voluntarily stepped down when his health began failing.

In public, dos Santos was unassuming and even appeared shy at times. But he was a shrewd operator behind the scenes.

He kept a tight grip on the 17th-century presidential palace in Luanda, the southern African country’s Atlantic capital, by distributing Angola’s wealth between his army generals and political rivals to ensure their loyalty. He demoted anyone he perceived to be gaining a level of popularity that could threaten his command.

Dos Santos’ greatest foe for more than two decades was Jonas Savimbi, leader of the UNITA rebels whose post-independence guerrilla insurgency fought in the bush aimed to oust dos Santos’ Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA.

The Angolan strongman frequently described himself as an accidental president, taking the reins after Angola’s first leader, Agostinho Neto, died during cancer surgery in 1979.

With Neto having only served for four years and the 37-year-old dos Santos regarded as a relatively weak outside candidate, few could have imagined he would go on to rule for just shy of four decades.

But dos Santos proved an extremely astute politician.

In 2003, dos Santos banished his party’s secretary general to a junior position for appearing a little too eager to replace him. João Lourenço would have to wait 14 years to finally get his wish to become Angola’s next president.

Humble roots, grand ambitions

Born on August 28, 1942 to immigrant parents from the archipelago of Sao Tome, dos Santos was raised in the poor Luanda neighbourhood of Sambizanga. His father was a builder, his mother a maid.

But from a young age dos Santos had grander ambitions and joined the then-nascent MPLA.

Like many of his fellow liberation fighters, he spent his early 20s in exile in the Republic of Congo before moving to Baku in Azerbaijan, then part of the Soviet Union, to study petroleum engineering. There he met his first wife, Tatiana Kukanova, a Russian chess champion with whom he had his first and most famous daughter – Isabel dos Santos.

By 1977 and the death of Neto, dos Santos was among half a dozen senior MPLA members with a shot at the leadership. He won partly because he seemed the weakest candidate.

His opening speech as leader set the tone for future public appearances, lasting just one minute and 54 seconds. Over the next 38 years he would do just a handful of interviews.

Oil boom feeds family fortunes

Although he would increasingly be regarded by his critics as a dictator, it was his apparent willingness to compromise and stand by election results in 1992 as part of a UN negotiated peace process that would seal the popularity of his party.

Jonas Savimbi, the leader of UNITA that fought on the other side of the civil war, refused to accept the result of that election and took the tired country back to war. When the Angolan army eventually succeeded in killing Savimbi, Unita had lost much of its support.

Between 2002 and 2014, as oil production grew in tandem with booming prices, the size Angola’s economy multiplied by 10, from $12.4 billion to $126 billion.

While little of the money trickled down to the poor, those closest to dos Santos became billionaires.

His eldest daughter Isabel became, according to Forbes, Africa’s richest woman and youngest billionaire worth about $3 billion. Forbes has since dropped Isabel from its list of billionaires because of the asset freezes.

Isabel also became chairman of state oil company Sonangol, while son José Filomeno headed a $5 billion sovereign wealth fund.

Dos Santos, who said in a rare 2013 interview he would like to be remembered “as a good patriot”, never specifically responded to the allegations that he had allowed corruption to become rampant.

Source: Reuters

The scant remains of DR Congo’s fiery independence hero Patrice Lumumba were to be interred on Thursday after a pilgrimage that revived traumatic memories but also stirred national unity.

A single tooth is all that remains of the young nationalist who was murdered in January 1961 at the age of 35, just months after becoming Congo’s first post-colonial prime minister.

A coffin containing the remains was to be enshrined in a mausoleum in Kinshasa, in a ceremony hosted by President Felix Tshisekedi coinciding with the country’s 62nd anniversary.

Topped by a large statue of Lumumba, the mausoleum is located on a main avenue of the capital which also bears his name.

Lumumba was among the vanguard of pan-African leaders who led the charge to end colonialism in the late 1950s.

He rose to prominence in 1958 when he launched a political party, the Congolese National Movement (MNC), which called for independence and a secular Congolese state.

His party won national elections in May 1960, a month before independence from Belgium, leading him to be named first prime minister of the country when it became independent.

He stunned Belgium with a speech on independence day — attended by King Baudouin — that accused the exiting colonial masters of racism and “humiliating slavery” of the Congolese people.

Within three months, Lumumba was forced out by a coup fomented with the help of Belgium and the CIA, which also opposed the support he had requested from the Soviet Union.

In January 1961, Lumumba was handed over to the authorities in mineral-rich southeast Katanga province, which had seceded from the fledgling nation months earlier with Belgium’s support.

He was shot dead and his body was dissolved in acid, but a Belgian police officer involved in the killing kept one of his teeth as a trophy.

After years of campaigning by his family, Belgium returned the tooth on June 20, a move that followed a visit of reconciliation by Baudouin’s nephew and successor, King Philippe.

The remains were taken to Lumumba’s home area of Sankuru in the centre of the country, to his political stronghold of Kisangani in the northeast and finally to the place where he was murdered before being flown to Kinshasa.

Five former prime ministers joined a funeral vigil on Thursday alongside current government chief Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde.

“The figure of Patrice Lumumba is a prime symbol of national unity, transcending political differences,” said Evariste Mabi, a premier in the 1980s under Lumumba’s nemesis, dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

“(He) embodies the people’s successful struggle for freedom.”

Source: AFP

A UN peacekeeper was killed by a mine Sunday in restive northern Mali as he was participating in a patrol, the head of the UN’s MINUSMA Mali force El Ghassim Wane tweeted.

The peacekeeper was part of the Guinean contingent in MINUSMA, a MINUSMA official told AFP on condition of anonymity. “He was first wounded and died of his injuries at our hospital in Kidal,” he added.

The latest death comes amid tense negotiations on the renewal of MINUSMA’s mandate.

175 peacekeepers of MINUSMA have died so far

A total of 175 of its peacekeepers have died in hostile acts.

“Terrible news that adds to the long list of our colleagues who lost their lives during their service in Mali,” Wane wrote on Twitter.

Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are one of the jihadists’ weapons of choice against MINUSMA as well as Malian forces. They also regularly kill civilians.

Mali, a poor and landlocked country in the heart of the Sahel, underwent military coups in August 2020 and May 2021.

The political crisis has gone hand in hand with a serious security crisis since 2012 and the outbreak of separatist and jihadist insurgencies in the north. The country is now ruled by a junta that has turned away from France and its partners, and turned to Russia to try to stem the jihadist threat that has spread to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

The violence has left thousands of civilians and soldiers dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.

Source: AFP

The British government was to send a first plane carrying asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday despite last-gasp legal bids and protests against the controversial policy.

A chartered plane was to leave one of London’s airports overnight and land in Kigali on Tuesday, campaigners said, after UK judges rejected an appeal against the deportations.

Claimants had argued that a decision on the policy should have waited until a full hearing on the legality of the policy next month.

Thirty-one migrants were due to be sent but one of the claimants, the NGO Care4Calais, tweeted that 23 of them had now had their tickets cancelled.

Those due to be deported include Albanians, Iraqis, Iranians and a Syrian, Care4Calais said.

Other claimants included the Public and Commercial Services Union, whose members will have to implement the removals, and immigration support group Detention Action.

PCS chief Mark Serwotka said on Sunday it would be “an appalling situation” if Tuesday’s removals were subsequently found to be illegal at the full hearing.

Home Secretary Priti Patel should wait for the July hearing if she “had any respect, not just for the desperate people who come to this country, but for the workers she employs”, Serwotka told Sky News.Protesters gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice and the Home Office on Monday.

In Geneva, UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi called the UK government policy “all wrong” and said it should not be “exporting its responsibility to another country”.

Church of England leaders, including the most senior cleric the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, reiterated criticism of the policy as “one that should shame us as a nation”.

“Our Christian heritage should inspire us to treat asylum seekers with compassion, fairness and justice, as we have for centuries,” Welby and 24 other bishops wrote in Tuesday’s Times newspaper.

“This immoral policy shames Britain.”

“Evil trafficking” must be combatted by providing safe routes to the UK to “reduce dangerous journeys”, The Times quoted the bishops as saying ahead of the letter’s publication.       

‘Hate speech and discrimination’                

Patel and Prime Minister Boris Johnson insist the policy is needed to stop a flood of all-too-often deadly migrant crossings of the Channel from France.

“It’s very important that the criminal gangs who are putting people’s lives at risk in the Channel understand that their business model is going to be broken,” Johnson told LBC radio on Monday.

“They’re selling people falsely, luring them into something that is extremely risky and criminal.”

Under the agreement with Kigali, anyone landing in the UK illegally is liable to be given a one-way ticket for processing and resettlement in Rwanda.

The government says that genuine asylum claimants should be content to stay in France.

And contradicting the UN refugee agency UNHCR, it insists that Rwanda is a safe destination with the capacity to absorb possibly tens of thousands of UK-bound claimants in future.

Doris Uwicyeza, chief technical adviser to Rwanda’s justice ministry, pushed back against criticism of the human rights record of President Paul Kagame’s government — which is set this month to host a Commonwealth summit attended by Prince Charles and Johnson.

Rwanda’s 1994 genocide made it particularly attentive to “protecting anybody from hate speech and discrimination”, including gay people, she told LBC radio.

British newspapers reported that Prince Charles had dubbed the plan “appalling”.

The reported comment prompted unnamed cabinet ministers to tell Queen Elizabeth II’s heir to stay out of politics.

International NGO Human Rights Watch issued a public letter warning that “to this day, serious human rights abuses continue to occur in Rwanda, including repression of free speech, arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and torture”.

Source: AFP

French troops were on Monday handing back a military base in northeastern Mali ahead of a final withdrawal from the Sahel nation, France’s army said, after nine years fighting a jihadist insurgency.

And the UN’s emissary there warned that their withdrawal could leave Menaka, where they were based, vulnerable to a jihadist attack.

The departure from the Menaka base “was conducted in good order, safely and in transparent fashion”, said French army spokesman General Pascal Ianni in Paris.

It comes ahead of the last withdrawal from Mali “at the end of the summer” when France’s main military base at Gao will be returned to Malian forces, he added.

But El-Ghassim Wane, the UN Secretary General’s special representative in Mali, warned that the pull-out could spell trouble for Menaka.

He had visited the town two weeks ago, he said, and people there he had spoken to “did not rule out an attack on Menaka town”, where 5,000 people forced to flee the violence in the region had taken shelter.

“Should this scenario come to pass, the MINUSMA base is likely to be perceived as the last haven for civilians fleeing violence,” Wane added, referring to the base of the UN peacekeeping force in Mali.

But he warned: “With minimal Malian forces in the area and some 600 peacekeepers available to protect civilians, UN personnel and assets, MINUSMA’s ability to mount an effective response is limited.”

Deteriorating relations

Former colonial ruler France set up the Menaka outpost in 2018 in the wild tri-border zone where Mali meets Niger and Burkina Faso. It housed French and European special forces under the name Takuba tasked with training up local troops.

General Ianni told journalists the Takuba operation would not be transferred to neighbouring Niger.

France launched anti-jihadist operations in the Sahel in 2013, helping Mali snuff out a revolt in the north.

But the jihadists regrouped to attack the volatile centre of the country, initiating a fiery insurgency that elected president Ibrahim Bubacar Keita was unable to crush.

In August 2020, protests against Keita culminated in a coup by disgruntled colonels — followed by a second military takeover in May 2021.

From then on, relations with France went steadily downhill, propelled by the junta’s resistance to setting an early date to restore civilian rule and by Bamako’s charges that France was inciting the region to take a hard line against it.The bust-up accelerated in 2021 as the junta wove closer ties with Moscow, bringing in “military instructors” that France and its allies condemned as mercenaries hired from the pro-Kremlin Wagner group.

France not quitting Sahel

The French operation across the Sahel counted at its peak in 2020 some 5,500 troops before Paris started to reduce the numbers gradually and close the most forward bases at Kidal, Tessalit and Timbuktu in northern Mali.

Last January, the French ambassador to Bamako was expelled and the following month President Emmanuel Macron announced the total withdrawal from Mali as relations and security deteriorated.

However, the army said Monday that French forces were not quitting the Sahel region.

“The commitment to the struggle against terrorism, alongside the states of the region, at their request, remains an absolute priority,” the spokesman said.

Source: AFP

Over 800 militants of the extremist group Boko Haram were killed during recent operations on the fringes of Lake Chad by troops of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), commander of the force has said.

The operation dubbed “Lake Sanity” lasted for 75 days and included troops from Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad and Niger, said Major General Abdul Kalifa Ibrahim, commander of MNJTF.

“So far over 800 of Boko Haram criminals have been neutralized or killed. Over a quarter of these people were killed as a result of the work of the sector one of MNJTF, which is the Cameroonian sector. I find the discipline and the hard work of the Cameroonian sector to be one of the best,” Ibrahim told reporters during a press conference Wednesday evening.

“(Almost) three months operation, not one Cameroon soldier has died. This is a record,” he added during the press conference that presented battle-damage assessment of the operation.

He said, the MNJTF’s combined ground and amphibious operations have put a lot of pressure on the extremists, attacking their strongholds and making movement difficult for them.

MNJTF is a joint military effort created by countries including Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Benin to fight Boko Haram and the ISIS affiliate – West African Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), which threatens the stability of these countries and the entire region.

Source: Xinhuanet

Tunisia’s president sacked 57 judges on Wednesday, accusing them of corruption and protecting terrorists in a purge of the judiciary that comes as he seeks to remake the political system after consolidating one-man rule.

In a televised address President Kais Saied said he had “given opportunity after opportunity and warning after warning to the judiciary to purify itself”. Hours later the official gazette published a decree announcing the dismissals.

Among those sacked was Youssef Bouzaker, the former head of the Supreme Judicial Council whose members Saied replaced this year as he moved to take control of the judiciary.

The council had acted as the main guarantor of judicial independence since Tunisia’s 2011 revolution that introduced democracy and Saied’s changes prompted accusations he was interfering in the judicial process.

Another prominent judge on the list of those sacked was Bachir Akremi, whom some political activists accuse of being too close to the Islamist Ennahda party and of stopping cases against it. Ennahda and Akremi both deny that.

Last summer Saied dismissed the government and seized executive power in a move his foes called a coup before setting aside the 2014 constitution to rule by decree and dismissing the elected parliament.

He says his moves were needed to save Tunisia from crisis and his intervention initially appeared to have widespread public support after years of economic stagnation, political paralysis and corruption.

Saied, who has also replaced the independent electoral commission, has also said he will introduce a new constitution this month that he will put to a referendum next month.

However, nearly all Tunisia’s political parties have rejected the move along with the powerful UGTT labour union.

With Tunisia’s economy failing, and with public finances in crisis, Saied meanwhile faces the prospect of growing popular anger over high inflation and unemployment, and declining public services.

The UGTT said this week that public sector workers would go on strike on June 16, posing the biggest direct challenge to Saied’s political stance so far.

Source: REUTERS

Officials from Cameroon and Gabon began meeting on Tuesday in Cameroonian capital Yaoundé to discuss the border demarcation between the two countries.

“This meeting is a veritable platform for permanent consultation and reflection on questions linked to demarcation and security of the border of both countries. The outcome of this meeting will fill the legal vacuum that exists in that domain,” said Cameroon’s Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji.

“This meeting will help us trace our border. (We need) to identify the reference side, register their geographical distinctions as well as all problems faced,” said Lambert-Noel Matha, Gabonese interior minister.

The two sides are expected to finalize a draft protocol on establishing a mixed technical committee to demarcate the border, the officials said, reiterating that there is no border dispute between the two countries.

Cameroon and Gabon share a border of about 300 km.

Source: Xinhaunet

Malian troops have discovered a mass grave close to military base French forces handed back to the Malian army just days ago in Gossi.

The Gossi military base in the north of the country was handed over to the Forces Armées Maliennes (FAMa) on Tuesday as part of the French forces’ planned exit from the country.

Paris plans to end its failed almost decade-long military operation under the pretext of eradicating terrorist groups wreaking havoc in the Sahel country.

The army general staff revealed in a statement that “bodies in a state of advanced putrefaction were discovered in a mass grave, not far from the camp formerly occupied by the French force Barkhane.”

“The state of advanced putrefaction of the bodies indicates that this mass grave existed well before the handover. Consequently, the responsibility for this act can in no way be attributed to the FAMa,” the statement said.

The defense ministry has been assigned to conduct an investigation into the mass killings.

France and the United States were quick to blame Russian forces deployed in Mali for the killings.

The French army claimed Russian fighters buried bodies near the Gossi base with the intention of framing the French for the killings, according to French and American news agencies.

Leaders of West Africa’s Sahel region have abandoned their hopes in purported counter-terrorism efforts by France and started negotiating with armed militants to bring peace to the restive region.

France’s exit from Mali came as swathes of territory remained under the control of rebel militants linked to al-Qaeda and Daesh.

The Sahel, a semi-arid stretch of land south of the Sahara desert, has been in turmoil since 2012, when a number of armed separatists started targeting the local population in Mali.

As a former colonial power seeking significant military presence in Africa, France decided to send thousands of soldiers in 2013 to try to prevent separatist forces from reaching Mali’s capital, Bamako.

France increased the number of its forces in the Sahel from 600 to 5,100 soldiers for its Operation Barkhane last year.

However, the military boost failed to bring the situation under control and the UN also deployed its peacekeeping forces to the region.

Militant groups with links to al-Qaeda and Daesh have strengthened their foothold across the region.

This has made the territory ungovernable, stoking ethnic violence, especially in neighboring countries Mali and Burkina Faso. The French Barkhane force is also involved in Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, and Mauritania.

Culled from Presstv

Four French tourists and one Belgian were among 10 people killed in a bus crash Wednesday in Egypt, whose travel industry is only just emerging from years of political upheaval and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fourteen others — eight French and six Belgians — were taken to hospital with “broken bones, bruises and superficial injuries” but all were in a stable condition, the governor of the southern province of Aswan said.

The other five people killed were all Egyptian — the bus driver, his assistant and the tour guide, as well as two people in the other vehicle, a statement from the public prosecution said.

The Belgian foreign ministry confirmed to AFP that one of its citizens died and others were injured.

The accident occurred early Wednesday morning when the bus collided with a pick-up as it was transporting the tourists on the 300 kilometre (186 mile) road journey between Aswan and the famed Abu Simbel temple further south.

An AFP photographer saw what remained of the burnt-out vehicles lying by the roadside.

The prosecution ordered an “urgent investigation” to determine “the cause and circumstances of the accident and those responsible”.

Crashes are relatively common in Egypt, where many roads are in disrepair and traffic regulations frequently ignored.

Some 7,000 people died in road accidents in the country in 2020, according to official figures.

Vital tourism industry

The Abu Simbel temple was moved from its original location in the 1960s under the rule of president Gamal Abdel Nasser to make way for the construction of the Aswan High Dam.

Egypt had begun reviving its vital tourism industry by promoting its ancient heritage, after the country’s 2011 revolution and ensuing unrest struck the sector.

But the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and the subsequent global travel bans resulted in a plunge in tourism revenues to $4 billion, from $13 billion the previous year.

The sector employs some two million people in a country of 103 million and generates more than 10 percent of GDP.

In August 2021 Russia resumed flights to Egyptian resorts, six years after a Russian airliner crashed after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all 224 people on board.

But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has yet again cut off much of the flow of tourists to Egypt, as the two countries accounted for about 40 percent of visitors prior to the war.

The current administration of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has invested heavily in promoting tourism, and has organised major events in a bid to attract visitors.

Last year, the North African country staged a procession of floats carrying the mummified remains of 22 pharaohs, including Egypt’s most powerful ancient queen, to a new resting place in Cairo.

Since the start of April, visitors from dozens of additional countries have been permitted to obtain visas on arrival to Egypt, rather than applying in advance.

While attacks on tourists have largely ceased since they peaked in the 1990s, deadly incidents have occurred.

And in February 2019, a German woman and two Egyptian children were killed when a building collapsed in a residential neighbourhood of the southern city of Luxor.

Source: AFP