20100409
alshahid

Mogadishu (Alshahid) – The insurgent group Alshabab had banned the BBC from operating in areas under their rule with effect from today, according to an order from the Alshabab’s information office in Mogadishu.

The order also bans local FM stations from broadcasting the BBC and VOA.

According to the order, Alshabab decided to ban the two media houses due to the bias reporting which encourages Somalis to be against the installation of an Islamic state in Somalia.

Alshabab also cited that BBC and VOA are owned by Britain and USA respectively and the two are leading the Zionist war against Islam.

The order calls for the local FMs to terminate their contract with the two broadcasters and hand over their equipments to Alshabab.

Alshabab had earlier on banned the World Food Program from operating in areas under their control.

20100409
alshahid

Mogadishu (Alshahid) – The first deputy speaker of the Somalia parliament Prof. Mohamed Ummar Dhalxa had on Friday accused the security forces of the TFG for denying some of the Somalia MPs to hold a meeting in Mogadishu.

Prof. Dhalxa stated that some MPs who are opposed to the TFG were denied by the police to meet in some of the hotels in Mogadishu.

Dhalxa added that the police on several occasions refused the MPs to meet in Mogadishu. He urged the MPs not to be tired of reminding the government of her mistakes.

There is an apparent dispute between some of the Somalia legislators and the government led by Premier Omar Abdirashid which is based on accusations that the government has failed its duties and should resign.

20100409
alshahid

Khartoum (Alshahid) – Sudanese political parties addressed supporters on Friday on the last day of general election campaigning, as President Omar al-Bashir, looking assured of re-election, makes a final push for parliamentary seats.

“We will build roads to Geneina (in west Sudan). We have built a road that reaches the border of Ethiopia (in the east) … We are not focused on just one region, we are working for balanced development,” Bashir told a rally in Dalgo, north Sudan.

“People ask ‘why are you launching all these projects today?’ We say they are solid projects; it is not publicity. It is our duty to offer services to our people,” he said in an address carried by private TV channels.

Bashir’s resources have allowed him to stage rallies in all corners of the country, which drew the ire of opposition parties who accused him of dipping into state funds for his personal bid.

The 66-year-old Bashir is counting on the landmark elections to redeem his stature but the credibility of the election has been marred by a boycott of a significant part of the opposition.

SPLM said it would not field candidates in the northern states, except in the sensitive Blue Nile and south Kordofan, after it said it was withdrawing its presidential candidate, Yasser Arman, from the race.

The Umma Party also announced a boycott of the election, with leader Sadiq al-Mahdi refusing to run against Bashir.

Hatim al-Sir, of the opposition Democratic Unionist Party, who has now become Bashir’s main challenger though his chances of beating Bashir are very slim, is to meet supporters later on Friday in the Nile state in north Sudan.

But Sir is hoping to push for the legislative and local elections which remain fiercely competitive in large parts of the country.

Bashir’s National Congress Party currently controls 52 percent of the 450-seat National Assembly and is hoping to maintain its support in the north, the south being dominated by the SPLM.

The current south Sudan leader and head of the SPLM, Salva Kiir, is to address a rally in Juba, the southern capital, later on Friday.

In a bid to quell accusations of fraud, Bashir who has ruled Africa’s largest country since 1989, promised free and fair elections at a rally on Thursday.

“Unfortunately the trends on the ground are very disturbing,” Susan Rice the US envoy to the United Nations told reporters on Thursday.

She said a decision by the European Union to withdraw observers from Darfur underscored “how insecure and problematic the electoral process is in that portion of the country and elsewhere.”

Former US president Jimmy Carter arrived in Khartoum on Thursday as election monitors from his Carter Center prepare for the three-day process.

“We are hoping and praying that it will be a fair and honest election for those (who) are participating,” Carter told reporters.

“I regret that some parties have decided not to participate,” Carter said, underlining, however, that “there are around 16,000 candidates who are still involved in the election” on all levels.

20100409
PRESS TV

Four employees of an engineering company in Port Harcourt in southern Nigeria were abducted on Friday by gunman dressed in military attire, police say.

One Lebanese worker and three Syrian expatriates were taken near the oil hub of Port Harcourt, said police spokeswoman Rita Inoma Abbey.

"The hoodlums kidnapped the four ... and fled while firing at the police," she said.

Every year, hundreds of kidnapping incidents take place in the oil producing region of the Niger Delta.

The victims are usually released unharmed a few days after the kidnapping.

afrol News, 9 April - Island hopping is no longer defined to the Caribbean or Aegean, but growing more popular in the Indian Ocean. Seychelles has found that tourism marketing on the close-by French island Réunion and a tighter cooperation is gaining quick results.

Last year, Seychelles tourism authorities and stakeholders for the first time went on a promotional tour to the sister Indian Ocean island of Réunion. It paid off. The trip resulted in Air Austral introducing a second flight from its Réunion base to Seychelles and a growth in island hopping tourists.

This year, therefore, Seychelles sends a strong delegation comprising of tourism and cultural officials to Réunion this weekend for yet another Seychelles promotional tour. Two ministers join the trip.

Last year, the Seychelles tourism officials met with different tour operators in two cities in Réunion to update them on developments on the tourism market as well as with the press to spread the awareness on Seychelles, as also the Réunionnais public increasingly is travelling on holidays abroad.

"The exposure proved to be a huge success which saw the visitor arrivals from that market increased during the third quarter of the year and which is on a consistent rise since the beginning of 2010," according to authorities.

Speaking ahead of this promotion, the Seychelles' director of tourism marketing, Alain St Ange, said that Réunion is an emerging market which is doing very well and they feel it should be given the support to produce better results.

"The figures picked up faster than we expected and it shows that our promotional tour last year was necessary to reactivate that market and bring Seychelles back in the minds of the Réunionnais public," he said.

He explained that they are going back with a cultural group so as to show a different aspect of the destination and to get the Réunionnais public to associate them with the cultural similarities that bond the two countries.

"There are so many points in common that bond the two countries and we want to incite the Réunionnais through these to visit our islands," Mr St Ange added.

afrol News, 9 April - As an African Union (AU) representative today arrived Comoros to mediate in the archipelago's renewed political crisis, protesters on the island of Moheli call for President Ahmed Abdallah Sambi's dismissal. Thoughts of secession again are popular among Moheli islanders.

The current political crisis emerged in Comoros as President Sambi last year prolonged his term in power by one year in a constitutional referendum. The move broke with a complicated power-sharing deal from 2001 between the Comoros Union presidency and the archipelagos' three autonomous islands.

According to the 2001 deal, union presidents are elected from each of the three islands in a rotation system for one four-year term each. The first union president, according to the deal, was from Grande Comore, who transferred powers to Mr Sambi in 2006. Mr Sambi was elected from the island of Anjouan.

President Sambi's term ends on 26 May this year, according to the original scheme of the power-sharing deal. Then, a union president was to be elected from the island of Moheli.

Moheli islanders now demand their turn at the presidency and protest marches have been growing in scale and intensity on the island during the last weeks. Protesters have thrown stones against security forces and burnt tyres.

The Mohelian opposition to President Sambi has declared it will not accept Mr Sambi as union president after 26 May. If no Mohelian is heading the union presidency by that date, the 2001 power-sharing agreement will be seen as null and void.

On Moheli, secessionist thoughts are again emerging. In the 1990s, both Moheli and Anjouan declared independence from Comoros. While Moheli soon returned to the union, Anjouan staid independent in practical terms for years, only giving into an AU blockade that caused famine on the island. The secessionist crisis was only solved by the AU-brokered 2001 agreement, giving wide autonomy to the three islands.

The AU is now working hard to save the 2001 peace deal. AU Commissioner for Peace and Security, Ramtane Lamamra, arrived in the capital Moroni yesterday for a three-day working visit to Comoros. "We hope to leave this country with the assurance that the situation is going to improve," Mr Lamamra said upon arrival. In Moroni, he held talks with President Sambi.

But the AU efforts were thwarted today. Mr Lamamra had planned a visit to Moheli today to talk with the opposition to President Sambi. However, riots on the island again turned violent and the AU Commissioner's trip to Moheli had to be cancelled for security reasons.

20100409
PRESS TV

About 3,000 people attended the funeral of South Africa's white supremacist leader, who was murdered on Saturday by two of his black farm-workers.

The funeral of Eugene Terre'Blanche, who led the Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), was held on Friday at the conservative Afrikaner Protestant Church in Ventersdorp, BBC reported.

South Africa's police and army units were present at the service as a precautionary measure in case of clashes between the local black community and members of AWB broke-out.

As a good will gesture, notable figures from the black community attended the funeral ceremony in the midst of the white AWB members, who were dressed in paramilitary clothes.

Police authorities now believe that the murder of Terre'Blanche, who was hacked to death on his farm, was not politically motivated rather as a result of a pay dispute between him and his employees, Reuters reported.

However, Secretary General of AWB, Andre Visagie, who disagrees with police, told reporters, “We think it was an assassination, not a murder.”

“We are going to ask the government to give us our own homeland. We want to be free. We are not interested in being a part of this failure of South Africa,” Visagie said. “Our very very last resort would be violence, but we hope that we can go without it.”

Terre'blanche had become marginalized for his efforts in the early 1990's to maintain white minority rule and to preserve apartheid in South Africa, Reuters reported.

The reaction to his murder by the white supremacists is a clear indication of the racial divide that still exists in South Africa 16 years after the fall of apartheid.

afrol News, 9 April - Humanitarian organisations are warning that the developing food crisis goes far beyond the known drought areas in Niger and Chad. Millions are facing malnutrition and hunger all over the Sahel, from Mauritania and Guinea to Nigeria and Sudan. Food aid is already under-financed.

Today, the UN's Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) announced it had already freed some US$ 20.5 million to address the food crisis in the Sahel this year. CERF funds so far have focused on five West and Central African states - Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Chad.

The large amount was only to meet the most urgent humanitarian needs in the Sahel. In a region under the threat of food crisis, CERF funds are to enable UN agencies and their partners to mainly respond to nutritional, food and health needs of vulnerable populations.

The crisis is reaching enormous proportions. According to the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), only in Niger some 7.8 million persons are facing a food crisis, while more than 2 million in neighbouring Chad are in the same desperate situation. Several millions, still poorly mapped, will be affected in other Sahelian countries.

The UN's children agency UNICEF has started mapping child malnutrition in the entire region and is alarmed by its findings. "Already an estimated 859,000 children under the age of five in Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, northern Nigeria and Chad are classified as needing treatment for severe malnutrition," UNICEF spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume told media in Geneva today.

UNICEF was said to be very concerned that the ongoing drought in much of the Sahel region of Africa "has created a food crisis that is jeopardising the health of the region's most vulnerable children."

Tens of thousands of children are at risk of severe malnutrition in Niger and neighbouring countries unless donors urgently provide more funds for humanitarian programmes, Ms Berthiaume said. UNICEF was ready to help the children, but it did not have the funds it needs to carry out its programmes, she added.

Only half of the US$ 50 million sought by the UN agency to deal with the crisis has been received so far, Ms Berthiaume said, adding that the funds were needed as soon as possible because the crisis was "expected to peak within the next two months."

20100409
ALALAM

Sudan's political parties are preparing on Friday for their last day of campaigning before voting begins on Sunday.

President Omar al-Beshir, whose resources have allowed him to stage rallies in all corners of the country, is expected to make a final campaign speech later in the day.

South Sudan leader Salva Kiir is expected to address a rally in Juba, the southern capital.

Three days of polling in presidential, legislative and local elections begin on Sunday in Sudan's first multi-party elections since 1986.

Residents of south Sudan will also be voting for the leader of the semi-autonomous government there.

The election has been marred by a boycott of the opposition parties on the presidential level, although legislative and local elections are expected to be more competitive.

The Umma party, one of the two largest opposition groups, announced its boycott on Wednesday.

Umma was among a group of opposition parties that had given the government four days from April 2 to implement key reforms in return for a pledge to take part in elections postponed to May.

The Umma announcement came just hours after the European Union said it was withdrawing its election monitors from Darfur, citing security issues.

The Sudanese authorities however confirmed that the withdrawal of European monitors from Darfur would not affect the elections.

The former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement had already decided to boycott the election in northern Sudan, after withdrawing its presidential candidate Yasser Arman from the race.

However, the SPLM said it would still field candidates in the sensitive border states of Blue Nile and South Kordofan, where the party enjoys support.

The US also said on Thursday that it will support the postponement of elections in the Sudan for a brief period to allegedly ensure more security.

US envoy to the United Nations Susan Rice claimed "disturbing trends" could mar the outcome of the vote.

She said a decision by the European Union to withdraw observers from Darfur underscored "how insecure and problematic the electoral process is in that portion of the country and elsewhere."

afrol News, 9 April - The World Bank has approved a US$ 3.75 billion loan to help South Africa achieve a reliable electricity supply, despite some protest from environmentalists for the country to shift to greener energy sources.

However, the bank has said it is also financing some of the biggest solar and wind power plants in the developing world.

"The loan - the Bank's first major lending engagement with South Africa since the fall of apartheid 16 years ago - aims to benefit the poor directly, through jobs created as the economy bounces back from the global financial crisis and through additional power capacity to expand access to electricity," the World Bank said in a statement.

The loan which is provided to South Africa's power utility, Eskom, the bank justified, was brought about by unique circumstances including South Africa's energy crisis of 2007 and early 2008, and the global financial crisis that exposed the country's vulnerability to an energy shock and severe economic consequences.

"Without an increased energy supply, South Africans will face hardship for the poor and limited economic growth," said Obiageli K. Ezekwesili, World Bank Vice President for the Africa Region. "Access to energy is essential for fighting poverty and catalyzing growth, both in South Africa and the wider sub-region. Our support to Eskom combines much-needed investments to boost generation capacity for growing small and large businesses, creating jobs, and helping lay the foundations for a clean energy future through investments in solar and wind power."

The Eskom Investment Support Project (EISP) is to co-finance the following blend of energy technologies: US$ 3.05 billion for completing the 4800 MW Medupi coal-fired power station, using for the first time on the African continent the same proven, efficient supercritical technology used in OECD countries; US$ 260 million for piloting a utility-scale 100 MW wind power project in Sere and a 100 MW concentrated solar power project with storage in Upington; and US$ 485 million for low-carbon energy efficiency components, including a railway to transport coal with fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

In approving the project, the World Bank noted South Africa's achievement in increasing energy access from around 30 percent of citizens to more than 80 percent since the fall of apartheid in 1994 and noted its Free Basic Electricity policy that provides 50 kilowatt hours (KWh) of free electricity per month to poor families.

The Bank also noted South Africa's pivotal role as generator of 60 percent of all electricity consumed on the African continent and the importance of a functioning electricity sector for job creation, economic progress, human welfare, and poverty reduction.

"The Eskom project offers a unique opportunity for the World Bank Group to strengthen its partnership with the government of South Africa, Eskom, and other financiers and help South Africa chart a path toward meeting its commitment on climate change while meeting people's urgent energy needs," said Ruth Kagia, World Bank Country Director for South Africa.

"As part of the project, Eskom will pilot 100 megawatts of solar power with storage and wind power, the biggest grid-connected renewable energy venture in any developing country," added Vijay Iyer, World Bank Energy Sector Manager for Africa. "We are optimistic that the lessons learned from these projects will facilitate the scale-up of the renewable energy industry across Africa."

The project has received strong support, both from South Africa and other parts of the world. In a letter to World Bank President, Robert Zoellick, South African President Jacob Zuma stated that the energy sector in South Africa is of "strategic national importance" and "achieving energy security will be a critical factor for restoring economic growth, both in South Africa, and the wider southern Africa sub-region."

President Zuma has also stated that his government is "committed to reducing the country's carbon footprint and broadening its energy sources in line with our cabinet-endorsed Long-Term Mitigation Scenarios" and expressed appreciation that the EISP includes "investments in cutting-edge, supercritical technology being installed for the first time on the African continent as well as substantial investments in renewable energy."

afrol News, 9 April - May be it is time to say enough is enough! This may be the stance that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, under the leadership of President Jacob Zuma, is taking as racial tensions again escalate in the country.

After almost a week of racial tensions, following the murder of leader of the white right wing party, Eugene Terreblanche, preceded by political flops at different levels, the party is now doing everything to avert a possible civil explosion to a full-scale war, or maybe too late.

The ANC has today issued a strong statement condemning its youth leader, Julius Malema, after yesterday's racial attack and dismissal of the BBC journalist, Johan Fisher, during a press briefing at the party's headquarters in Johannesburg.

Mr Fisher was insulted and called names such as ‘rubbish, bastard, agent' before he was shown the door, for simply asking why Mr Malema was contemptuous of Zimbabwe's opposition MDC party being housed at the rich Sandton part of Gauteng, while he himself lived in the same suburb?

The attack on the journalist has been widely criticised, with Mr Malema being called a future dictator in the making. It was also seen as something that was probably being partly enjoyed by the ruling party executive, which only responded the next day.

While the ANC statement distances the party from Mr Malema's utterings, and even insinuations that the party was supporting the party of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, the different political sectors in South Africa have been left baffled, in that Mr Malema's high-profiled Easter weekend visit to Zimbabwe, could not have been done without the sanctioning of the ANC executive – unless he has totally gone out of control.

Unless, the ANC is only realising too late that, South Africa's mediatory role in Zimbabwe means more than just flights, wining and dining in Harare.

Just as with the hate speech turnabouts, be it in singing, chanting or spam mail, South Africa may realise too late the damage and danger posed by these rhetoric. It is just in the not forgotten months when xenophobic attacks on political and economic refugees left thousands homeless and causing the country to fork more than it could ever budget, to restore law and order and relocate the refugees into the communities – something that has not yet been fully achieved.

For some political critics in the country, the racial war is far from over, with just the switching of positions. While the past it was the whites against the blacks, this time around it is the blacks against the whites, but, with the majority of those who have embraced the true rainbow nation, non-racial South Africa, being left wondering in the wilderness. In fact, for many whites, what they are experiencing is the reverse apartheid, which they say it's worse than the yesteryears' one.

The reality of an open filthy racial war has now dawned in South Africa, and unless it is urgently swept off to the darkest of dungeons, it will grow and like wildfire sweep the country to its humiliating demise.

More legal cases of hate speech or racial-based human rights issues are growing and while the laws of the country may not ably deal with all, there will be more setbacks and bitterness. For instance, would it be okay for one group to want to be left alone and sing the so-called historical freedom songs, while the other is barred, not barred, fiercely prohibited, from singing its apartheid anthem or other songs?

As the funeral of Eugene Terreblanche is underway and his body will be buried on the open earth, the hope for Africa's most prosperous economy, would be for the history to also be buried, once and for all. But, it may be too late to put out the fires!

afrol News, 9 April - The Catholic Archbishop of Johannesburg, Buti Tlhagale, has warned that also clergy in Africa have committed sexual abuse of children. Abuse was not a Western problem, it affected Africa too, he said.

The South African Archbishop in his Chrism Mass deplored that the "image of the Catholic church is virtually in ruins because of the bad behaviour of its priests, wolves wearing sheep's skin, preying on unsuspecting victims, inflicting irreparable harm, and continuing to do so with impunity. We are slowly but surely bent on destroying the church of God by undermining and tearing apart the faith of lay believers."

So far, there have been no sex abuse scandals within the Catholic Church in Africa. Revelations of sexual abuse of thousands of children by Catholic clergy in North America and Europe have rocked confidence in the church and the Pope's capability of leading the faith community.

But the lack of revelations in Africa so far should not be misinterpreted as a sign that everything was right on the continent, Archbishop Tlhagale warned. The fact that "the misbehaviour of priests in Africa has not been exposed to the same glare of the media as in other parts of the world," did not mean this misbehaviour did not exist.

Archbishop Tlhagale added that Catholic priests now found it difficult to address moral issues as their own poor morals were exposed. "As Church leaders, we become incapable of criticising the corrupt and immoral behaviour of the members of our respective communities."

"We become hesitant to criticise the greed and malpractices of our civic authorities. We are paralysed and automatically become reluctant to guide young people in the many moral dilemmas they face," he deplored.

Mr Tlhagale is the president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference and is described as one of Africa's most influential Catholic leaders.

Africa is among the main mission fields of the Catholic Church, where membership in the church is fastest growing. But there have already been reports about congregants leaving the church in disgust over the sex abuse scandals, protesting the moral standards among Catholic clergy.

20100409
africagoodnews

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) would invest $100-million in the second Africa Infrastructure Investment Fund (AIIF2), which was aimed at promoting the development of basic infrastructure on the African continent.

The AIIF2, which was established by the African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), a joint venture between Macquarie Africa and the Old Mutual Investment Group South Africa, was aimed at raising between $600-million and $1-billion to invest in unlisted equity and equity like infrastructure investments in sub-Saharan Africa.

The fund would take "significant" stakes in a range of infrastructure projects including toll roads, wind farms, other renewable energy projects, ports, water and sewerage utilities, and social infrastructure, the IFC said in a statement this week. "AIIF2 is a vital addition to the pool of specialised African infrastructure equity capital. It will facilitate the development and sustainable operation of a number of infrastructure projects, which are critical to accelerating Africa's development," noted AIIM MD Andrew Johnstone.

20100409
africagoodnews

Two partial skeletons unearthed in a South African cave belong to a previously unclassified species of pre-human dating back almost 2 million years and may shed new light on human evolution, scientists said on Thursday.
ProfLeeBurgerWithPartialRemains

Fossils of the bones of a young male and an adult female suggest the newly documented species, called Australopithecus sediba, walked upright and shared many physical traits with the earliest known human Homo species.

The finding of the pre-human, or hominid, fossils - which scientists say are between 1.78 and 1.95 million years old - was published in the journal Science and may answer some key questions about where humans came from.

Prof. Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, who led the team that found the fossils in August 2008, told a news conference held near the cave outside Johannesburg the discovery was "unprecedented".

"I am struck by the exceptional nature of something right on our doorstep ... there are more hominid fossils than I have ever discovered in my entire career," he said.

"When we found it we never imagined that we were looking at a new species."

Berger earlier told reporters by telephone the team were hoping to reveal a possible two further skeletons from the same site.

He was reluctant to define the new species as a "missing link" in human evolutionary history, but said it would "contribute enormously to our understanding of what was going on at that moment where the early members of the genus Homo emerged".

South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe told the news conference: "As any parent knows, one of the most common questions a child asks is, 'where do I come from?' It has become clear the answer is 'Africa'.

"With the World Cup in 63 days, we will now be able to welcome people from the world with fresh news of our past."

Many experts believe the human genus Homo evolved from the Australopithecus genus about 2 million years ago. One of the best-known pre-humans is "Lucy", the skeleton of a species called Australopithecus afarensis, and this new species is about 1 million years younger than "Lucy", the scientists said.

The fossils, a juvenile male and an adult female, were found in the Malapa caves in the "Cradle of Humankind" World Heritage Site, 40 km (25 miles) outside Johannesburg.

The species had long arms, like an ape, short powerful hands, a very advanced pelvis and long legs capable of striding and possibly running like a human, the researchers said.

The scientists estimate both hominids were about 1.27 metres, although the child would have grown taller.

The brain size of the younger one was probably between 420 and 450 cubic centimetres, which is small when compared with the human brain of about 1200 to 1600 cubic centimetres, they said.

"These fossils give us an extraordinarily detailed look into a new chapter of human evolution ... when hominids made the committed change from dependency on life in the trees to life on the ground," said Berger.

Prof. Paul Dirks of James Cook University in Australia, who also worked on the study, said he and a team of researchers from around the world identified the fossils of at least 25 other species of animals in the cave, including sabre-toothed cats, a wildcat, a brown hyena, a wild dog, antelopes and a horse.

20100409
AFRICA NEWS

Thousands of supporters are expected to throng the funeral grounds of Eugene Terreblanche, the infamous South African white supremacist leader, who was shot in his farm last Sunday. The burial rite is taking place in the rural town of Ventersdorp to commemorate his controversial life.
South africa police
Two of his workers have been charged with murder.

Terreblanche fought South Africa's transition to democracy and was hated by many, if not most, of his fellow countrymen, according to the BBC.

But thousands of Terreblanche's supporters are expected to fill the grounds of the Afrikaans Protestant Church for his funeral.

Though all the indications are that the murder had more to do with money than politics, it has led to a period of heightened racial tension.

White groups and opposition parties blamed an ANC official, Julius Malema, for singing an apartheid-era song at rallies, that includes the lyrics "shoot the farmer".

The ANC has rejected that link, but accepts that the song and the debate around it was polarising society. It has now instructed its members to stop using it.

20100409
AFRICA NEWS

President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga of Kenya attempts to convince church leaders to abandon their stand to shoot down the draft constitution hit a snag after a six-hour meeting at the presidency. The churches are against a portion that legalizes abortion.
kenya_annan_odinga_kibaki
The National Council of Churches of Kenya threatened to mobilize voters to reject the draft constitution in the forthcoming referendum, after the Kenyan parliament failed to delete a clause that legalized abortion and the inclusion of the Kadhis court - a move the churches see as giving Islam supremacy over them.

In order to resolve the impasse it was agreed that a sub-committee involving church leaders and the government officials should be put in place to advance the talks. Another meeting is scheduled for next week to review the situation.

AfricaNews reporter said Kenya’s long search for a new constitution since independence may hit a ditch if the influential church leaders succeed in their protest.

Meanwhile, about 20 legislators led by Agriculture Minister William Ruto have said they will incite Kenyans to reject the draft document. The leaders mainly from the Rift Valley province said the draft constitution does not embody the wishes of the Kenya people.

The Attorney General Amos Wako is making editorial corrections in the draft constitution before it goes to the public for a referendum.

20100409
AFRICA NEWS

he Malawi government has barred a private newspaper company Nation Publication Limited (NPL) from covering public functions.
newspaper
NPL owns The Nation, a daily newspaper, Weekend Nation, and Nation on Sunday.

AfricaNews reporter said the relationship between the government and NPL became sour on Wednesday when the publication’s reporter Dumbani Nzale was barred from covering a public function organized by the Ministry of Agriculture in Lilongwe.

The reporter, however, was asked to leave the room by the Ministry’s Principal Secretary, Dr. Andrew Daudi, who claimed to have acted on instruction from undisclosed persons.

Nzale was at the function on the instructions of NPL Bureau Chief for the Central region, Mabvuto Banda after receiving an invitation from an NGO known as Seed Trade Association of Malawi (STAM), a grouping of all seed companies in the country. The function was held at the Ministry of Agriculture’s offices at Capital Hill.

Meanwhile, the Malawi Chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) has condemned in strongest terms the barring of NPL from covering a public functions.

“MISA Malawi is deeply concerned with the behavior displayed by the Ministry of Agriculture. The action taken by the Ministry, in our view, is detrimental to media freedom and freedom of information which includes the right to be accorded the fullest possible facilities for access to public information as duly instituted under section 36 of the Malawi Constitution.

The event in question aimed at updating the media on underground preparations for the forthcoming congress of African Seed Companies which Malawi is expected to host in 2011. Barring the reporter from covering the function is therefore not only a direct breach of the provisions of section 36 of the Constitution but also denying a lot of Malawians their right to know,” read part of the press release signed by Chair of MISA Malawi Brian Ligomeka Ligomeka.

The institute said it is also more worrisome to note that this is the second time this year that a reporter from Nation Publications Limited has been unceremoniously chased away from a public function by government officials claiming to be acting on instructions from undisclosed persons.

This development also follows complaints from NPL that the company is no longer receiving advertisements from government. MISA Malawi’s monitoring system as well as other reports show that government departments and institutions have been directed not to advertise with any of NPL’s newspapers.

20100409
AFRICA NEWS

Ghana's first professional Skier to participate in the Winter Olympics, Kwame Nkrumah Achampong, has said he is quitting from the sport. "I don't think I would want to go through the whole process again, so that was my first and last ever Olympics, somebody else will have the privilege of representing Ghana in future Olympics."
Snow Leopard
Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong born in the Scottish city of Glasgow but grew up in Ghana's capital, Accra said he is seeking to set up a project in Ghana in the coming month that would see to the training of new Skiers from the snowless West African country.

Below is the full text of a brief interview AfricaNews had with the Snow Leopard at his base in the United Kingdom.

AfricaNews: As the first ever Skier from snowless country like Ghana, how do you feel about it?

Kwame: It is a great experience that money cannot buy and it was a bit of difficult for me because unlike the other athletes, mine was more of a struggle to get there. It was good. It was something wonderful but I don’t want to go through the whole process again. That was my first and last ever Olympics, so somebody else will have the privilege of representing Ghana in future Olympics but for me it was good enough.

AfricaNews: Are you saying you wouldn’t participate in any Olympics again?

Kwame: Yea, I’m not going to break another Olympics, I might just peak for another season just to carry on the continuity while somebody else is being prepared to take-over. So that’s my will, I don’t want it to die with me. I’ll just carry on for another season and help some other people to get on board, that is better than being in a competition for just competition sake. Competition is about playing very well not every time going in there as just a participant. No!

AfricaNews: Any particular reason why you wouldn’t participate again?

Kwame: One, I’m too old and two, I think it is time for me to focus on my family and also back the area work of getting an Olympics team. I should focus on that and some kind of give younger people the opportunity.

Some of the smaller nations, the same people keep coming year after year but my focus is that the young people would be better at skiing than me, so my job is to support them and put in place the structure that would enable younger athletes to go out there and perform better than me.

There is no point in me going back and I don’t improve on my performance then it’s a waste of resources.

AfricaNews: With the project you want to establish in Ghana, how is it going?

Kwame: I’m planning to come to Ghana and establish this project to train new skiing team to represent Ghana. But before I come to Ghana, I have to make sure that everything is set-the equipments are ready and I get some people who will volunteer to start the process.

Once the project starts we will get some volunteers from Europe so that we get it done. In the meantime too, I have some athletes from Europe who are Ghanaians and who want to train.

I’m putting the whole plan together; the plan and proposals would be placed at the Ghana Skiing team’s website. So if you go there and register, you can download the full plan on what we want to achieve and help us to get there.

AfricaNews: How did the Vancouver Olympics go?

Kwame: It wasn’t too bad, it was ok. We achieved a lot of the goals we set out to achieve. Ghana was not the last on the finish line; it was another country which was last. So at least, for our first ever Winter Olympics we showed people that we are capable of doing something.

So the next plan is to do things better; make more resources available, get more people involve and we see how far we can go.

20100409
AFRICA NEWS

Islamist hardliners in Somalia have taken over a United Nations compound in southern Somalia, reports said on Thursday.
journalists_released_in_somalia_jan09_photo_Mohammed_Odowaa
Al-Qaeda linked group of Al-Shabaab disarmed guards of the UN agencies' compound in Wajid, some 400km south-west of the lawless and war-torn capital, Mogadishu. However, the World Food Programme said the compound was empty and the action would not affect its operations.

But reports said Al-shabaab looted computers from the WFP offices and seized control of the nearby airstrip.

Somali Islamist group Al-shabaab has ordered the WFP to stop importing relief items into Somalia and accused the aid agency of destroying local agriculture last year.

The fighting in Somalia has killed over 19,000 Somalis since 2007 and 1.5 million people displaced inside the country while another 560,000 civilians have registered as refugees in neighbouring countries.

20100409
AFRICA NEWS

All United Nations (UN) staff have been banned from flying Africa's friendly airline, Air Malawi. The ban follows the career’s report on operational problems, according to a Safety Advisory document from the UN to staff who attended the recent joint AU and UN for Africa (ECA) finance ministers' conference.
Ban-Ki-Moon.jpg
The report cited recent Air Malawi problems, the resignation of pilots and engineers. The incidents have raised questions about the airline’s safety and sustainability.

“UN staff are therefore not authorized to travel on Air Malawi,” read the document.

Malawi Head of Security Affairs, Sally Tembo, told the local press the document is an internal matter. It was not for public consumption.

“Perhaps I need to speak to our legal people first. As of now I cannot comment,” Tembo told the Daily Times.

The airline boss, chief executive Wisdom Mchungula wondered why the UN had taken that decision.

“The UN would be in a better position to explain. Do you hear of any flight cancellations from us? Our safety management remains intact,” he said.

Air Malawi is facing a series of financial, human and material resources. It is currently utilizing a plane that was hired from South Africa. Has a huge debt case in the commercial courts against a foreign company that fixed one of its planes and there is a non relenting pilot resignations.

Operating under a Class C Category, the UN staff is only supposed to fly on Category A but may use Category B where Category A is not available.