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AFRICA
President Kagame Sacks 244 top soldiers and replaces them immediately
Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame Wednesday sacked over 200 soldiers, including senior military officers. He replaced them summarily.
Mairj General Aloys Muganga, commander of the army’s mechanized division, and Brigadier General Francis Mutiganda are among 16 officers dismissed.
Another 228 soldiers of other ranks were also kicked out of the Rwandan military. The statement, released by the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) Wednesday, gave no reason for the sackings.
The move comes a day after Kagame reshuffled top military officers, firing a defense minister and army chief simultaneously and announcing their replacements.
Gen Muganga is a graduate of US War College and served as commander of reserve forces from 2018 to 2019.
The reshuffle and sacking come at a time of heightened tension between Rwanda and the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, each side accusing the other of working with rebels to topple one another’s governments.
South Africa’s EFF party bashed for inviting PLO Lumumba for a speech
South Africa’s opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party is facing a backlash for its decision to invite Professor PLO Lumumba to give a speech in July at the University of Cape Town.
Prof Patrick Lumumba is alleged to hold homophobic views. Last month he congratulated Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s president, for “defying Western countries and doing the right thing” by signing an anti-gay bill into law.
The lecture he has been asked to deliver is part of events to mark the 10th anniversary of the EFF party founded by firebrand politician Julius Malema.
Some UCT staff and students have demanded that he not be allowed to give the address there as his presence would signal the institution’s acceptance of his “homophobic stance”, local media reported.
Other South Africans on social media have asked the EFF to withdraw the invitation.
However, the party is standing by its decision, with Malema saying that “allowing different views makes a discourse even more exciting.”
The EFF had held demonstrations in April outside the Ugandan embassy in the capital, Pretoria, to express its opposition to the anti-homosexuality bill.
USAID suspends food aid to Ethiopia
USAID Thursday suspended food aid to Ethiopia because it said donations were being diverted from those in need.
According to a leaked memo, Ethiopian government agencies and the military are behind the scheme.
About 20 million Ethiopians, who are facing severe food shortages because of war and drought, would be affected.
The United States is the single largest humanitarian donor to Ethiopia, providing more than $1.8b in assistance since 2022.
The USAID said a review of its operations in Ethiopia found a “widespread and coordinated campaign” to divert food assistance. The agency did not publicly say who it believed was behind the campaign.
However, a memo prepared by an independent donor group and seen by several news outlets pointed to a coordinated and criminal scheme” apparently orchestrated by federal and regional government entities, with military units nationwide benefiting.
On Thursday, USAid said it could not move forward with the distribution of food assistance until reforms were undertaken.
The agency added that food assistance would resume once it was “confident” that assistance would be delivered to its intended recipients.
The move came after USAid and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) froze food aid to the northern Tigray region last month after the agencies discovered that shipments were being diverted to local markets.
300 orphans rescued from war-torn Khartoum
Close to 300 orphans caught in the crossfire in Khartoum, Sudan’s embattled capital, were rescued last week in a daring and dangerous evacuation by humanitarian workers.
In a risky operation, 297 children – about 200 below the age of two years – were taken by road to Wad Madani, in the south of Sudan.
Ninety-five others from Mygoma orphanage and other facilities across the capital were evacuated over the weekend by local activists.
The evacuations were carried out after the deaths of 67 children at the Mygoma orphanage. They died of starvation, dehydration, and infections as fighting prevented staff from reaching the orphanage.
Khartoum has been hit by daily air strikes and heavy clashes between rival forces since 15 April. The orphanage is in an area that has been at the heart of the fighting between the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The state-run Mygoma orphanage was home to about 400 children when the war broke out in April. It became too dangerous for many doctors and carers to reach the orphanage to look after the children.
President Museveni Contracts COVID
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni Wednesday tested positive for COVID-19. However, a senior health ministry official said Museveni was in good health and would continue his duties while getting treatment.
“Today, the President tested positive for COVID-19. This was after developing mild flu-like symptoms. However, he is in robust health and continues to perform his duties normally while adhering to SOPs,” Diane Atwine, Permanent Secretary at the health ministry, said.
Earlier on Wednesday, after giving a State of the Nation address at the parliament’s grounds, Museveni, 78, hinted that he may have contracted COVID, saying in the morning he had felt a slight cold, prompting him to request COVID tests.
“So I am a suspect of corona, and I am standing here. That is why you saw me coming in separate cars with Mama,” Museveni said, referring to the First Lady Janet Museveni, who accompanied him to parliament.
UN crimes court says Rwandese genocide suspect not fit to stand trial
A UN war crimes court Wednesday ruled that Félicien Kabuga, an 88-year-old man accused of being a major financier of the 1994 Rwandan genocide is unfit to stand trial. The court said Kabuga had “severe dementia”, according to medical experts.
He was arrested in Paris in 2020 after evading capture for 26 years. Said to have been Rwanda’s richest man at the time, he is alleged to have financed ethnic Hutu militias who slaughtered about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. He has constantly denied the charges.
The head of the Rwandan genocide survivors’ Association, Ibuka, told BBC Great Lakes he was “saddened” by the judges’ decision.
“As survivors, we felt relief when he was arrested, thinking that we were going to finally get justice,” said Philbert Gakwenzire.
He said he doubted whether Kabuga really was unfit to stand trial and that the association was thinking of “ways to take this forward”.
In their ruling, judges at a UN war crimes court in The Hague said Kabuga was “unfit to participate meaningfully in his trial and is very unlikely to regain fitness in the future”. One of the four judges disagreed with the majority decision.
The judges proposed an alternative legal procedure that “resembles a trial as closely as possible, but without the possibility of a conviction.”
Tanzania protests human rights violation report
Tanzania’s justice minister Tuesday defended the government over accusations of forcefully relocating the Maasai people from their ancestral land near the Serengeti National Park.
Damas Ndumbaro described as “misleading” a report by Amnesty International that accused security forces of repeatedly using excessive force to evict the Maasai in the northern Loliondo region.
The rights group said police carried out arbitrary arrests and shot at people.
The minister told the BBC that the government had only sought to restrict a 4,000 sq km area that was a game-controlled area established by the German colonial government.
He said local people had invaded the area after independence in 1961 to the extent that it could no longer be used for conservation, and the government had donated about two-thirds of the land to the communities there.
The minister said the police had acted calmly despite locals confronting them with crude weapons.
“Our police behaved very professionally in last year’s demarcation exercise. They did not react because they respect human rights,” he said.
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