South Africa’s ruling party has elected a new leader, Cyril Ramaphosa, who will likely be the party’s presidential candidate in the next national election. But will Ramaphosa, who was not the outgoing president’s pick, be able to overcome the massive challenges ahead for the party?

The party’s electoral commission announced the results Monday after a tense party conference in Soweto, saying “Comrade Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma received 2,261 votes, and comrade Cyril Ramaphosa received 2,440 votes.”

Ramaphosa, a successful businessman and current deputy president, has promised to bring business-friendly policies to South Africa.

But that may not be what pushed him over the top in this tight and tense vote to lead the African National Congress party.

His opponent was Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a former top diplomat and minister who was also, for 16 years, the wife of the South African President Jacob Zuma.

Zuma is still president — his term as leader of the nation ends in 2019. But Zuma’s popularity has sunk lower and lower, as he dealt with one corruption scandal after another.

Nearly 4,800 ANC delegates participated in the conference in Johannesburg, which was beset by massive delays as the deeply divided party argued, behind closed doors, about procedural issues.

Earlier Monday, a grinning Zuma toured a collection of statues of South African liberation stalwarts, pausing to pay his respects at the bronze images of former President Nelson Mandela and former ANC president Oliver Tambo.

He refused to answer journalists’ questions, but took a few minutes to address the crush of reporters.

“I’m happy to say now I’m bowing out very happy because, I think, from my own point of view, I I made my contribution,” he said.

Many of Zuma’s critics — including many high-profile party members — say his contribution to the ANC has been to destroy its image as a party of liberation and equal opportunity.

Funde Sonwabo, a delegate from Gauteng, said he had voted for Dlamini-Zuma, but was happy to support the winner. He acknowledged that the ruling party — which he has belonged to, he said, since he was 20 — has issues. The ANC has lost ground in recent elections, losing control of three major cities to the opposition.

“We do have problems,” he said, “and I’m glad that our leadership is admitting that we do have problems. But then, we can’t continue moaning and analyzing the problems. We’ve got to work out strategies of how to get out of the situation in which are.”

The party’s outgoing treasurer general, Zweli Mkhize, said party leadership is aware of calls for Zuma to step aside as president now that his term as party leader is over.

“We took a discussion, that discussion, in the past,” said Zweli. “When it arises I think the ANC must deal with it at that point. At the moment, that issue hasn’t arisen.”

But with Ramaphosa’s elevation to head of the powerful party, many ANC watchers predict that issue may arise again.
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A U.S. soldier killed by Islamic militants in Niger was shot 18 times and appeared to have fought back until he died, a military investigation reveals.

U.S. officials briefed the Associated Press on the still-to-be-finalized and released report on the October ambush that killed Army Sergeant La David Johnson. Three other U.S. soldiers also died in the attack near Niger’s border with Mali.

Confusion has surrounded circumstances of the ambush and Johnson’s death, including why his body was found nearly two kilometers from the attack site, and why it took two days to find his remains.

According to the AP, military officials say Johnson and two soldiers from Niger tried to get away from the ambush by running to a nearby jeep, but were shot before they got to the vehicle.

The report says Johnson was very athletic and was able to run farther than the others. He took cover under some brush and, according to the evidence, fired back at the militants until the moment he died. He was hit at least 18 times.

The report will likely answer several questions, including why it took so long for U.S. forces to recover Johnson’s body and clear up media reports saying that Islamic militants had held him prisoner.

Pentagon officials believe a villager tipped off militants that U.S. forces were in the region as part of a joint U.S. – Niger patrol hunting for an Islamic State leader who also has ties to al-Qaida.

Sergeant Johnson’s death also created a major controversy for President Donald Trump, who told Johnson’s widow during a condolence phone call that the sergeant “knew what he signed up for” when he joined the army.

Myeshia Johnson said the president struggled to remember her dead husband’s name during the call and that his tone brought her no comfort.

Trump tweeted that he was very respectful to Mrs. Johnson.
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A court to try alleged war criminals in South Sudan’s conflict was one step closer to reality Friday, the fourth anniversary of the day hostilities began.

South Sudan’s Council of Ministers and the African Union agreed last week to the contents of a document that defines the roles of the so-called “hybrid” court, according to Elizabeth Deng, a Nairobi-based researcher for Amnesty International.

 

“This is the document that would specify the criminal jurisdiction of the court, that would define the crimes that the court has the competency to investigate and prosecute. The statute would describe the structure and the composition of the court and the appointment procedure for the courts staff,” Deng told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus.

A 2015 peace deal between South Sudan’s government and rebel groups called on the AU Commission to establish the court to investigate and prosecute individuals accused of violating international or applicable South Sudanese law since the conflict erupted in the capital, Juba. Progress has been excruciatingly slow.

“Over the past two years, the feeling of Amnesty International has been that the government of South Sudan has been a significant factor in delaying the court’s establishment. They have been dragging their feet and reluctant … to ensure it is established quickly,” Deng said.

 

Parliament is expected to deliberate on the hybrid court statute next. It is not clear when a vote will take place.

 

Jehanne Henry, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the step by the Council of Ministers appears to be progress, but the parliament must act next and act quickly.

 

“Sending the document to parliament is a step, but it is not necessarily a step that moves this thing forward unless it is followed up by a lot of other steps,” Henry told South Sudan in Focus.

‘We must learn lessons’

 

A policy analyst at the Juba-based Sudd Institute said the conflict has dragged on far too long and cannot continue.

Zachariah Diing Akol said all South Sudanese must stop and reflect on what the nation has gone through and learn from it.

“If it was just the individuals — two, four or 100 — we would not be where we are today. What is the power of a few individuals? All of us have fought in one way or the other. All of us must learn lessons,” Akol said.

Akol said the suffering caused by the war has robbed South Sudanese of their livelihoods and dignity.

“Lives have been lost and they continue to be lost. Sources of livelihood of people are destroyed, people don’t do what they used to do; they are relying on others and that is not a comfortable position to be in,” Akol said.

Calls for peace from refugees

Meanwhile, hundreds of South Sudanese living in Uganda gathered Friday in Kampala to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the fighting and called on the warring parties to end the conflict.

Martha Nyayiey Gatluak, 22, said she fled to a camp run by the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) when war erupted in December 2013. Gatluak spent a year in the camp and later fled to Uganda with her family.

“I am calling on our leaders to bring us back together,” Gatluak said. “From 2013, we don’t party together, we sit in our separate ways. There is a lot of hatred in us, we don’t love each other the way we used to. We should have peace in our country so we can go back as South Sudanese, not as tribes.”

The fighting that erupted in Juba in late 2013 quickly spread to other parts of the country and took on ethnic overtones. The International Crisis Group said at least 100,000 people were killed during the first weeks of fighting.

The conflict led to a humanitarian crisis that has forced more than 4 million South Sudanese to flee their homes, with many relocating to Uganda, Sudan, Kenya and Ethiopia.

Peaceful dialogue urged

Elizabeth Nyakui Yien, 44, one of those who gathered in Kampala, urged South Sudan’s leaders to end the war through peaceful dialogue.

“My message to the government or the [rebel] IO is that they should think twice because our life is at stake, we are not able to get the basic needs. My children do not go to school and there is not enough food that we get from the U.N.,” Yien told South Sudan in Focus.

And as the country’s leaders gather next week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to try to revive the peace deal, South Sudanese refugees at Uganda’s Morobi settlement say they want their leaders to hear the cries of the more than one million South Sudanese refugees and work towards genuine and lasting peace.

Modi Charles Sekwatoloko, a refugee leader at the settlement, said the refugees want peace more than anything else. He said the country’s leaders must cast aside their differences and be prepared to make concessions.

“They [the refugees] have experienced the suffering here, so they feel if our leaders could really come down and reconcile themselves, then they give us that peace, we shall rejoice,” Sekwatoloko said.

 Mugume Davis Rwakaringi, Simon Peter Apiku contributed to this report.

 
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The multinational joint task force fighting the Boko Haram insurgency in Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria says it will hold some 200 former terrorists until Cameroon can construct a rehabilitation center where they will be socially integrated before returning to their communities. The ex-terrorists are currently at the barracks of the multinational joint task force in Mora, on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria.

Soldiers of the Mora camp of the Multinational Joint Task Force fighting Boko Haram sing what is now their regular song after a successful operation. They have just returned from the border with Nigeria with 12 fighters whom they say handed themselves over to the military. Among them is Soule Bupaga, a 22-year-old Nigerian.

He says his wish is to return to his village (at Sanda Wajiri, near Kerawa) in Nigeria and that he regrets all the killings even though they were forced to carry them out. He says what he did was not good.

There are nearly 200 former fighters detained in the camp. Some were arrested during fighting and others handed themselves over to the military. Cameroonian ex-fighter, 26-year old Gouma Wamwha, says he decided to report to the military after he escaped from a Boko Haram training camp in the Nigerian border town of Gambarou, but was barred from entering his village in the Cameroon town of Kolofata.

He says he escaped from a Boko Haram camp with a motorcycle he was given to monitor and report to his former superiors each time a suspected group of people or a strange vehicle was seen approaching.

Midjiyawa Bakari, governor of Cameroon’s far north region says the government will continue to protect the ex-fighters. He says they have secured land in the border town of Meme were all former fighters will be assisted in reintegrating to society.

He says the ex-fighters have committed to assisting the military in bringing back their peers who are still either hiding in the bush because they are afraid of the military or are still under Boko Haram control.

200 other former Boko Haram fighter are taken care of in the Mozogo local council by the government of Cameroon and UN agencies. Their relatives are not ready to accept them in their villages for fear they may once again be infiltrated by the terrorists. The population says some of them may be spies or have been brainwashed with Boko Haram ideology.

 
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Eastern Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar, whose forces control parts of the country, said on Sunday he would listen to the “will of free Libyan people”, in the strongest indication so far that he might run in elections expected next year.

Haftar styles himself as a strongman capable of ending the chaos that has gripped Libya since the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

His comments, made at a military graduation ceremony, recall those of Egypt’s General Abdel Fattah al-Sissi when he was testing the ground before becoming presidential candidate. Sissi was eventually elected in 2014.

Just as Sis built up wide support after toppling Egypt’s Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, supporters of Haftar speak of a similar situation developing in Libya, with rallies held in some eastern cities calling on him to run.

“We declare clearly and unequivocally our full compliance with the orders of the free Libyan people, which is its own guardian and the master of its land,” Haftar said in a speech.

He spoke in the eastern city of Benghazi, from where his forces managed to expel Islamist militants during a three-year battle.

Haftar, a general from the Gadhafi era, also dismissed a series of U.N.-led talks to bridge differences between Libya’s two rival administrations, one linked to him in the east and one backed by the United Nations in the capital Tripoli.

“All the dialogues starting from Ghadames and ending in Tunis and going through Geneva and Skhirat [in Morocco] were just ink on paper,” he said, listing host cities of U.N. talks.

Obstacle

The United Nations launched a new round of talks in September in Tunis between the rival factions to prepare for presidential and parliamentary elections in 2018, but they broke off after one month without any deal.

A major obstacle to progress was the issue of Haftar’s own rule. He remains popular among some Libyans in the east weary of the chaos but faces opposition from many in western Libya.

In his speech Haftar said his forces, known as the Libyan National Army (LNA), could be only placed under an authority that had been elected by the Libyan people, in a further indication that he might take part in the election.

The large North African country has been in turmoil since Gadhafi’s downfall gave space to Islamist militants and smuggling networks that have sent hundreds of thousands of migrants across the Mediterranean to Europe.

Haftar is just one of many players in Libya, which is controlled by armed groups divided along political, religious, regional and business lines.
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A man stabbed two Danish journalists in Gabon’s capital, declaring it was in retaliation for U.S. attacks against Muslims and leaving one reporter in serious condition, Gabon’s defense minister said.

The attack Saturday occurred while the journalists were shopping at an artisanal market, a site popular with tourists. It is the first of its kind in this West African country where Muslims and Christians coexist peacefully.

 

The stabbing was carried out in Libreville by a 53-year-old Niger national who screamed “Allah Akbar,” said Gabonese Minister of Defense Etienne Massard Makaga. The attacker, who has lived in Gabon for 19 years, was immediately arrested.

 

When questioned by the police, he said he acted “in retaliation for the attacks of the United States against the Muslims and the American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” said Makaga.

 

“Everything will be done to ensure that the author and his possible accomplices are punished with the utmost rigor that the law allows,” said the minister who denounced “an act abominable, cowardly and ignoble.” Makaga said such acts are contrary to the Gabonese way of living together and “detrimental to social peace.”

 

The journalists, one male and one female reportedly working for National Geographic, were rushed to a hospital.

 

The man was operated on and is currently in intensive care, said government spokesman Alain Claude Bilie By Nze.

 

Oil-rich Gabon is known for its wildlife, including most of Africa’s remaining forest elephants, which are being heavily targeted by traffickers.

 

Gabon is ruled by President Ali Bongo Ondimba, whose family has been in power for nearly half a century.

 
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