Somalia News Gazette

HARARE, ZIMBABWE — Zimbabwe has charged two journalists under its cybercrime law in a move media advocates say runs counter to global trends to support and promote press freedom.

Police in Harare have charged two journalists from the national paper, News Day, under provisions of the country’s Cyber and Data Protection Act that cover “false data messages.”

Editor Wisdom Mdzungairi and senior reporter Desmond Chingarande were called in for questioning last week over their coverage of a legal dispute involving local authorities and a memorial park in Harare.

Both deny the charge and Chingarande said he was surprised when police called.

“They allege l published a false statement on internet, but l see this as an intimidation tactic. There were allegations that they are burying people on a part of Glen Forest Memorial Park called Chikomo Chemhute, which is situated at the confluence of Mazowe River, without approval from responsible ministries,” he said.

Chingarande said he sought comment from all sides in the story before publishing. But, with the story now part of a police matter, he says he is unable to say much more.

Mdzungairi and Chingarande are the first journalists charged under new provisions of the cybersecurity law that Zimbabwe enacted during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Media Institute of Southern Africa said such laws are a means to target journalists and citizens.

Tabani Moyo, who heads the regional media watchdog, said, “These are some of the challenges which we continue having in Zimbabwe, where in we make progress in repealing acts such as the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, then the government claw(s) back using other pieces of legislation to retain elements that will further targets journalists. To have penal or sedition provisions in our statute books that target journalists [is] so out of sync with the global trends toward promotion and protection of media and journalistic expression.”

Zimbabwe is not alone in passing such laws, Moyo said. Zambia, Eswatini and Tanzania enacted cybersecurity laws and Namibia and Lesotho are finalizing similar legislation.

Moyo says heavy penalties, including up to 20 years in prison for those deemed to have shared false news, goes against democratic norms.

“This is an anathema to democratic existence and out of sync with our own constitution which provides for freedom of expression and media freedom, also violating international and regional conventions and tools,” Moyo said.

Ruby Magosvongwe, chair of the Zimbabwe Media Commission — a government-appointed body set up to promote and protect journalism — said she is aware of concerns over violations against the media.

Speaking at a conference on the safety of journalists, organized by UNESCO and media watchdogs in Africa Friday, she called for the government to be more involved in complaints of attacks against the media.

“My wish, my desire, is that in future we include our line ministries so that they get the firsthand reports, because they provide the link between ourselves as media institutions, media entities, with the respective governments from across the continent, across Africa, because examples have been given where journalists have suffered violence but if the line ministries are not involved, then it becomes kind of a conspiracy of sorts,” Magosvongwe said.

For News Day journalists Mdzungairi and Chingarande, they are now waiting to hear from court officials on when a trial in their case will take place.

Source: Voice of America

PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a speech on the key U.S. strategy for sub-Saharan Africa at the University of Pretoria on Monday, on the first leg of his Africa trip.

Blinken stressed the value of democracy and the threats to it in his address, saying Africa was an “equal partner” that the U.S. wanted to work with and would not “dictate to.”

“By 2050, 1 in 4 people on the planet we share will be African. They will shape the destiny, not only of this continent, but of the world,” he said.

Blinken spoke about the blow the pandemic has dealt to Africa and economies on the continent, as well as food insecurity he said had been deepened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

He also addressed a wide range of issues, including conflict prevention, misinformation online, science and technology, as well as climate change and clean energy.

VOA spoke to several South African students, asking their thoughts on the address by America’s top diplomat.

Zaphesheya Dlamini, who has just finished a master’s degree in political science, was skeptical.

“Listen — every single foreign policy, every single national interest, is always going to be their national interest. It’s not ours, we know that. But then don’t try and present it like it’s a shared interest,” Dlamini said.

She also thought Blinken didn’t address how U.S. domestic politics influence the rest of the world. She referenced the overturning of the U.S. landmark case Roe v. Wade, which protected a woman’s right to an abortion, and the Global Gag Rule, which prohibits foreign nongovernmental organizations that receive U.S. funding from providing legal abortion services or referrals, as examples of things she thought he should have spoken about.

International relations student Billy Botshabelo Manama, 22, said Blinken’s speech heavily promoted good governance, which he acknowledged had sometimes been a problem on the continent.

“Look — a lot has been mentioned on democracy, rightfully so, looking at the history of Africa,” Manama said.

Manama added that he believed that like the U.S., South Africa also stood for equality and human rights.

Source: Voice of America

BEIJING — China on Sunday shortened its suspension period for inbound international flights carrying COVID-positive passengers, signaling that Beijing could soon ease its strict border controls.

Incoming flights carrying five positive COVID-19 cases, or four percent of the total passengers, will now face a reduced one-week suspension, the Civil Aviation Administration (CAAC) said in a statement.

Previously, if a plane brought in five infected passengers, all flights operated by the responsible airline along the same route were suspended for two weeks.

Flights logging an eight percent passengers positivity rate will be barred for two weeks, CAAC said.

Source: Voice of America

BUTHA-BUTHE, LESOTHO — While millions across Europe sweat through a summer of record-breaking heat, they’re skiing in Africa.

Don’t worry. This isn’t another sign of climate change but rather the fascinating anomaly of Lesotho, a tiny mountain kingdom completely surrounded by South Africa. Lesotho has an obscure geographical claim to fame: It’s the only country on Earth where every inch of its territory sits more than 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) above sea level.

That gives Lesotho snow in the southern hemisphere’s winters. And while cold winters aren’t rare in southern Africa, snow is and ski resorts are even rarer. At an altitude of 3,000 meters (9,842 feet), Afriski in Lesotho’s Maluti Mountains is Africa’s only operating ski resort south of the equator.

“I’ve never seen snow in my life,” said Kafi Mojapelo, who traveled the short distance from South Africa for a skiing vacation she never thought she’d take. “So, this is a great experience.”

Bafana Nadida, who comes from the sprawling urban township of Soweto in Johannesburg, was delighted with putting ski boots on for the first time. He planned a day of ski lessons, taking pictures and just playing about in the snow.

Skiers and snowboarders lined up to rent the proper gear. Some were given pointers by Hope Ramokotjo, who is from Lesotho and has worked as a self-taught ski and snowboard instructor for 12 years. His wide smile and deep, reassuring voice puts beginners at ease.

“Push your heels out. Don’t pull your shoulders,” Ramokotjo called out to his class of keen yet inexperienced African skiers as they wobbled along on the snow. “Here you go! Nice!”

Afriski’s Kapoko Snow Park is the only freestyle snow park on the continent. Competitors lined up last month for the annual Winter Whip Slopestyle snowboard and ski competition. Sekholo Ramonotsi, a 13-year-old from the Lesotho city of Butha-Buthe who practices regularly at Afriski, won the junior snowboard and ski divisions.

“I would really like to ski in Europe,” he said.

London-born Meka Lebohang Ejindu said he has taught skiing and snowboarding in Austria for more than a decade, and this is his first season in the southern hemisphere. He has family roots in Lesotho.

“For a competition like this to happen in southern Africa is so heartwarming,” he said.

Afriski may not be at the level of Europe’s vast Alpine resorts, but a love of winter sports is catching.

At Afriski’s Sky Restaurant and Gondola Cafe, happy hour starts at 10 a.m. and skiers and boarders show off their winter fashions and party to house music, beers in hand. Some claim the bar is the highest in Africa, although that’s challenged by the Sani Mountain Lodge, 130 kilometers (80 miles) to the east on the Lesotho-South Africa border.

What no one can dispute is this crowd went skiing in Africa.

Source: Voice of America

MOGADISHU — Somali members of parliament gathered at the presidential palace in the capital, Mogadishu, Sunday and overwhelmingly endorsed new Cabinet ministers appointed by Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre last week. During the vote, several mortar explosions hit the capital.

Somali parliament speaker Adan Mohamed Nur Madobe told the gathering at the palace’s highly fortified villa Hargaisa that 229 members of parliament voted in favor of the Cabinet, seven voted against it and one abstained.

Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre addressed parliament after the vote and welcomed the outcome.

He said, “I want to pledge another time that we will work on how to help our people who are facing droughts, to work on security and implement our program that is in front of you while we are working with unity and accountability to overcome all the challenges we are facing. I want to thank you again for your overwhelming approval.”

Among the ministers whom parliament endorsed was Mukhtar Robow Ali, known as Abu Munsor — the former deputy leader and spokesman in militant group al-Shabab. He is now becoming the religious affairs minister.

Mursal Mohamed Khaliif, a member of the federal parliament, spoke to VOA about the approval process.

“Despite a handful of members of parliament trying to create chaos during the proceedings, the overwhelming majority of parliamentarians, 229 of them, voted in favor of approving the new Cabinet. I am very excited to have been a part of those proceedings and I wish all the new Cabinet success in executing their duties,” he said.

Anwar Abdifatah Bashir, a lecturer at Somali National University and a Horn of Africa political analyst, VOA by phone that the new government is taking over at a crucial time.

“This comes as Somalia is facing a number of challenges including, but not limited, to protracted drought, insecurity within the country, as well as the border with Ethiopia where al-Shabab recently attacked in the Somali region in Ethiopia,” he said.

During the vote in the capital, several mortar shells hit the city.

Eyewitness in Mogadishu’s Warta Nabada neighborhood told VOA that several rounds of shells landed near the presidential palace.

A police officer confirmed the attack to VOA but declined to give details on casualties.

Al-Shabab claimed responsibility and said it had shelled the palace with seven mortar rounds.

Meanwhile, in the town of Jowhar, the capital of Somalia’s Hirshabele state, a bomb blast near a hotel that al-Shabab attacked last month wounded at least five people, including a soldier, two children and two women. No one has claimed responsibility.

Ibrahim Ali Nur, a local journalist in the town, spoke with VOA and said the explosion destroyed several properties. Jowhar is an agricultural town located 90 kilometers north of Mogadishu.

Source: Voice of America

Three more ships carrying thousands of tons of corn left Ukrainian ports Friday, part of a grain deal between Kyiv and Moscow, as the two countries accused each other of damaging a major Ukrainian nuclear power plant.

Ukraine’s state nuclear power company Energoatom said Russian shelling had hit the Zaporizhzhia power station, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

“Three strikes were recorded on the site of the plant, near one of the power blocks where the nuclear reactor is located,” Energoatom said in a statement.

It said there were no signs that the damage had caused a radioactive leak.

Three strikes

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukrainian forces were responsible for damaging the plant.

“Ukrainian armed units carried out three artillery strikes on the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the city of Enerhodar,” the ministry said in a statement.

“Fortunately, the Ukrainian shells did not hit the oil and fuel facility and the oxygen plant nearby, thus avoiding a larger fire and a possible radiation accident,” it said.

Russian troops have occupied the plant in southern Ukraine since March.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia on Monday of using the plant as a shield for its forces.

An official with the Russian-backed administration in Enerhodar said earlier this week that Ukrainian forces had repeatedly attacked the plant, according to Reuters.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his daily video address on Friday that Russia was committing acts of “nuclear terrorism.”

“Russia must take responsibility for the very fact of creating a threat to a nuclear plant,” he said.

Corn shipments

Three more ships carrying thousands of metric tons of corn left Ukrainian ports Friday in a sign that a deal to allow exports of Ukrainian grain, held up since Russia’s invasion of its neighbor in February, is starting to work.

The ships departed for Ireland, the United Kingdom and Turkey. Another ship, the Razoni, left Ukraine on Monday for Lebanon, carrying the first grain shipment through the Black Sea since the start of the war.

In New York on Friday, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said another ship was headed toward the Ukrainian port of Chornomorsk to pick up a grain shipment.

The U.N. and Turkey recently brokered a deal, the Black Sea Grain Initiative, aimed at enabling Ukraine to export about 22 million metric tons of grain currently stuck in silos and port storage facilities. The deal is meant to ease a global food crisis marked by soaring prices and food shortages in some regions.

Ukraine and Russia are key global suppliers of the wheat, corn, barley and sunflower oil that millions of people in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia rely on for survival.

In another hopeful sign, Taras Vysotsky, Ukraine’s first deputy minister of agriculture, said the country could start exporting wheat from this year’s harvest through its seaports as early as next month. According to Reuters, Vysotsky said Ukraine hoped in several months to increase shipments of grain through the route from 1 million metric tons expected this month to between 3 million and 3.5 million metric tons per month.

The initiative will run for a 120 day-period that ends in late November.

A backlog of nearly 30 ships that have been stranded in Ukraine’s southern ports because of the war has entered its sixth month. The Joint Coordination Center, or JCC, a body set up under the Black Sea Grain Initiative, says the ships need to move out so other ships can enter the ports and collect food for transport to world markets.

The crews and cargo of the vessels that set sail Friday will undergo checks at the JCC inspection area in Turkey’s territorial waters before moving on toward their destinations.

The JCC says that based on its experience with the first ship that sailed Monday, it is now testing moving multiple ships in the safe corridor, both outbound and inbound.

Erdogan in Russia

Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Russia on Friday for talks with President Vladimir Putin that included the grain deal, prospects for talks on ending hostilities in Ukraine, and the situation in Syria.

In a statement issued at the conclusion of the talks in Sochi, which lasted four hours, Putin and Erdogan emphasized “the necessity of a complete fulfillment” of the grain deal.

They also said that “sincere, frank and trusting ties between Russia and Turkey” are important to global stability.

In other developments Friday, the Biden administration prepared its next security assistance package for Ukraine. Reuters reported that the package was expected to be worth $1 billion, one of the largest U.S. military aid packages to Ukraine to date.

On Thursday, Zelenskyy blasted human rights group Amnesty International for a report that said Ukrainian forces had put civilians in harm’s way by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas.

The report “unfortunately tries to amnesty the terrorist state and shift the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim,” Zelenskyy said. “There cannot be, even hypothetically, any condition under which any Russian attack on Ukraine becomes justified. Aggression against our state is unprovoked, invasive and openly terroristic.”

The head of Amnesty International’s Ukrainian office, Oksana Pokalchuk, also took issue with the report. In posts on Facebook on Thursday, she said the Ukrainian office “was not involved in the preparation or writing” of the report and tried to prevent the material from being published.

Pokalchuk on Friday announced her resignation from Amnesty International in a Facebook post.

Amnesty International said its researchers investigated Russian strikes in Ukraine between April and July in the Kharkiv, Donbas and Mykolaiv regions. The organization said its “researchers found evidence of Ukrainian forces launching strikes from within populated residential areas as well as basing themselves in civilian buildings in 19 towns and villages in the regions.”

Source: Voice of America

Malawian state prosecutors have added charges against a Chinese national who was already facing five counts for allegedly exploiting children. A BBC investigation found 26-year-old Lu Ke selling exploitative videos of Malawian children, officials said.

Malawi’s Senior State Advocate Serah Mwangonde told a court in Lilongwe on Thursday that the additional charges follow the completion of investigations into the matter.

She later briefed reporters outside the court.

“We have also added money laundering, procurement of children to perform in public and we have added a cybersecurity crime,” she said.

Mwangonde said the new charges are in addition to five counts of child trafficking which Lu Ke was charged with earlier in July after his extradition from Zambia in June.

Police arrested Lu Ke last month following his extradition from Zambia, where he fled after a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) investigation reported he was recording young villagers in central Malawi and making them say racist things about themselves in Mandarin.

In one video, children, some as young as 9, are heard saying in Mandarin that they are a “black monster” and have a “low IQ.”

The BBC reported he was selling the videos at up to $70 apiece to a Chinese website. The children in the videos were paid about a half-dollar each.

Lu Ke’s lawyer, Andy Kaonga, told the court Thursday that he was yet to be served with the amended charge sheet and other documents or disclosures.

State prosecutor Mwangonde said her office was still perfecting the remaining documents.

Kaonga said the documents and new charge-sheet would help him know how best he could advise the suspect to properly take a plea.

This forced the presiding senior resident magistrate, James Mankhwazi, to adjourn the case to Aug. 19.

Lu Ke is currently at Maula prison after a court last month refused him bail, saying he could easily flee the country considering that he fled to Zambia where he was arrested and sent back to Malawi.

Source: Voice of America