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Friday, June 23, 2023
News 24: The Most Trusted News Brand In South Africa For 5 Straight Years!
Wednesday, June 21, 2023
Belgium And Africa
Contextual Legacies
BELGIUM
History has been stirring passion in Belgium as the country prepares to celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2030.
When authorities announced they would spiff up the triumphal arch in the Parc du Cinquantenaire in Brussels – a monument built in 1880 to commemorate the European country’s first 50 years of existence – critics noted that they failed to include any references to Belgian colonization and decolonization in Africa.
“For me, the Parc du Cinquantenaire remains a park strongly linked to the exploitation of Congo,” said Georgine Dibua Mbombo, who runs Bakushinta, an organization that promotes Congolese culture in Belgium, in an interview in the Guardian.
Belgium controlled Congo from 1885 to 1960, including 25 years when the entire African nation, then called the Congo Free State, was considered the personal property of Belgian King Leopold II, explained TRT World. Belgium’s current monarch, King Philippe, has expressed his “deepest regrets” for the 10 million Congolese people who died under Leopold’s brutal rule due to famine, disease, and violence. His critics say Philippe has yet to fully apologize, however.
Meanwhile, curators at the Africa Museum in Tervuren near Brussels have been working with experts to redress their colonial legacy. Leopold II founded the museum. Among its first exhibits were live Congolese people who had been forcibly taken from their homes, wrote the BBC. Now the museum has special educational displays that include explanations for racist statues that formerly might have stood in the building without any such context.
Such efforts might be bearing fruit. In 2001, 95 percent of Belgians believed colonization was positive. Last year, only 35 percent shared that view.
Today, the symbol of post-imperial Belgium might be the Palace of Justice, reported the New York Times. Built in 1883, the building was once the largest in the world. But it has been undergoing renovations since 1984. Since then, the crumbling palace and the botched repair job have become a metaphor for a country that arguably is equally dysfunctional: three officials languages (French, Dutch, and German); one federal and six local parliaments; a myriad of political parties – and the Flemish separatist movement. These layers are one reason why Belgium recently endured two years without a government.
Enlivening the electorate could be one reason Belgium is allowing voters as young as 16 to cast ballots in the European Parliamentary election next year, wrote Politico. Austria, Greece, and Malta also have similarly lowered voting ages for the same elections, noted Euronews.
The Belgians seem to have learned that everyone has the right to try to make history.
Wednesday, June 7, 2023
Johannesburg-Musical Chairs
Musical Chairs
SOUTH AFRICA
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Apartheid, or legal segregation based on race, ended in South Africa almost 30 years ago. Yet anyone walking around Johannesburg could be forgiven for believing the hateful policy was still in place, according to Catalyst, a free-market-oriented news publication. The deeply segregated city is only 12 percent white.
White families abandoning South Africa’s largest city is one problem that has gone unaddressed in Johannesburg in recent years. Power outages, water shortages, crumbling roads, dilapidated buildings, poverty, and other problems are also endemic there.
Dysfunctional local politics are at the root of these challenges.
“I care deeply for Johannesburg but feel let down by the city, its officials, the voters and politics,” wrote David Potter, who served on the Johannesburg municipal council for 12 years until the end of May. “Many ward councilors are at the end of their tethers. Joburg is likely simply too far gone. I don’t need to tell you that – it is visible everywhere.”
Because voters keep refusing to give a single political party more than half the votes in the city, Johannesburg politicians have needed to form precarious coalitions that often fail to remain together long enough as a mayoral administration that could fix the city’s serious problems. The country’s most popular party, the African National Congress, for example, lost its majority in the city in 2016.
Johannesburg recently swore in its sixth mayor in less than 22 months, the New York Times reported. The Africa Report likened the string of leaders to a “clown car.” The newest mayor, Kabelo Gwamanda, is a first-term city councilman whose political party won 1 percent of the vote in municipal elections. Gwamanda’s rivals are already accusing him of running a Ponzi scheme involving a funeral insurance scam. He’s countered that the charges are politically motivated.
“I am an indigenous child of the soil and I possess the intelligence necessary to lead my people in the direction that is required,” Gwamanda told Eyewitness News. “So, I will not be deterred by political ploys from whichever direction it’s coming from.”
The new mayor needs to be focusing on bread-and-butter issues like ending the mismanagement, corruption, and even sabotage that has become commonplace in South Africa’s energy system, for example, as the BBC discussed. He must also focus on improving city services like sewage maintenance and trash collection, added News24, or else residents could lose confidence in the city administration completely.
But, if the past is any precedent, someone else will inherit these problems before the current mayor can do much to change things.
Monday, June 5, 2023
Senegal-The Showdown
The Showdown
SENEGAL
Deadly clashes in Senegal left at least nine people dead over the weekend, unrest that came after a court sentenced opposition leader and main presidential contender Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison on charges of “corrupting youth,” the Associated Press reported.
Senegalese police clashed with Sonko’s supporters across the country, prompting the government to order a blanket ban on the use of social media platforms in a bid to curb further violence.
While the court convicted Sonko on Thursday of corrupting youth, it also acquitted him of charges of raping a woman who worked at a massage parlor and making death threats against her.
The corrupting youth charge relates to allegations that Sonko had a sexual relationship with the woman, who was under 21 years old at the time, the New York Times noted.
The verdict would ban Sonko from participating in next year’s presidential elections, although the government said he could ask for a retrial once he was imprisoned.
Authorities have yet to issue an arrest warrant against the opposition politician.
Sonko and his supporters counter that the legal proceedings are politically motivated and part of the government’s efforts to derail his candidacy for the 2024 elections.
He is considered President Macky Sall’s main competition, although Senegal’s constitution does not allow the incumbent leader to run for a third term, according to legal analysts.
Sall has not confirmed whether he will run, but he has said that a 2016 constitutional reform reset the clock to zero and gives him the right to seek another term.
The recent ruling and violence have also raised concerns about the situation in Senegal, a West African nation that has long been hailed as a model of political pluralism in a region known for coups and aging leaders trying to remain in power.
Human rights groups and Sall’s opponents have warned in recent years about democratic backsliding in the country, citing the arrest of political opponents and journalists.
Crossed Signals
INDIA
A School Boy's Prank Backfires
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