DURBAN: South Africans on Saturday cleaned up shopping centres and stores looted during a week of shocking violence that rocked the country and left more than 200 dead.
Aid organisations also handed out food in communities that had been cut off from main roads or where food shops were ransacked in the unrest.
The violence -- the worst in post-apartheid South Africa -- erupted after former president Jacob Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in jail for snubbing a corruption inquiry.
His successor President Cyril Ramaphosa, who came to office promising to curb graft, said the riots were a "coordinated and well-planned attack" on the country's young democracy.
"Using the pretext of a political grievance, those behind these acts have sought to provoke a popular insurrection," Ramaphosa said in a televised address on Friday night.
The rioting caused widespread destruction, leaving thousands of businesses trashed, including many retail shops that were specifically targeted.
As an uneasy calm set in Saturday, residents in the hard-hit KwaZulu-Natal province swept up debris at the Dube Village Mall in the township of Inanda, north of Durban, shovelling it into refuse bags.
Behind them walls topped with spikes and razor wire had been spray painted with the words "Free Zuma".
Zuma, whose home province is KwaZulu-Natal, commands support among loyalists in the ruling African National Congress (ANC), who portray him as a champion of the poor.
Walking across a charred shop, Sikhumukani Hongwane, a private security guard was on duty when the mall was attacked last Sunday, just after Ramaphosa had addressed the nation.
He saw a mob of people starting to burn a nearby garage and he fled. He is still haunted.
"We are scared, even now. All the memories...are coming back." he told AFP. "We can't sleep".
Many in the province are now going hungry after food stores were looted and burned, or cut off from suppliers as roads closed.
The government, humanitarian aid agencies, charities and churches have started moving food to people in need, including hospital patients and families.
"We are loading bread for staff for five hospitals," Imtiaz Sooliman, leader of Gift of the Givers, told AFP.
Sooliman said that his food convoys were being escorted by armed security. AFP journalists saw a supermarket delivery vehicles escorted by police.
"Yesterday we sent food for patients in private hospitals -- they had no food to feed patients. They have all the money but they can't buy anything, they called us saying patients haven't eaten," he said.
The organisation was also delivering food parcels door-to-door after a government minister told him Friday that dozens of Durban areas had no access to food, Sooliman added.
The few shops that were spared are opening for a few hours and in some places price of bread has almost doubled.
"It is mayhem because the few shops that are here cannot accommodate the whole community. The few stores we've got, (have) got snaking queues like people are going there to vote," said Siyanda Nxumalo, a community activist in Inanda.
Traffic was back to normal along a main highway linking the north to the port city of Durban after it had been closed for much of the week.
Ramaphosa said the instigators had "sought to exploit the social and economic conditions under which many South Africans live -- conditions that have worsened since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic".
He said that business owners told him it would take "a few months" to restore normal operations following the destruction, interrupting supply chains and raising the spectre of shortages.
Of the 212 people killed, 180 died in KwaZulu-Natal, according to government figures. Some of the fatalities were shot and others died in looting stampedes.
More than 2,500 people have been arrested for various offences linked to the violence, including theft.
The government said all but one of the suspected masterminds are at large.
Ramaphosa admitted that his government was "poorly prepared for an orchestrated campaign of public violence, destruction and sabotage of this nature".
He has called up army reserves and ordered the deployment of 25,000 troops -- 10 times the number that he initially deployed.
Opposition politicians have condemned the government's handling of the crisis, calling on Ramaphosa to ensure the suspected masterminds are arrested and charged.
Shaken South Africans clean up after deadly unrest
https://arab.news/c59s5
Shaken South Africans clean up after deadly unrest
- Violence erupted after former president Jacob Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in jail for snubbing a corruption inquiry
- Zuma’s successor President Cyril Ramaphosa said riots were a "coordinated and well-planned attack"
Strike at Argentina’s flagship airline hits 30,000 passengers
- The 24-hour strike led to the cancelation of 319 flights, mainly impacting domestic and regional travelers, but also hundreds of passengers heading to the United States and Europe
- Since taking office in December, Milei has applied a drastic austerity program in a bid to rein in chronic inflation and decades of government overspending
BUENOS AIRES: A strike by pilots and crew demanding salary increases in inflation-hit Argentina affected more than 30,000 passengers on Friday, according to the Aerolineas Argentinas airline and unions.
As workers walked off the job for the second time this month, President Javier Milei was preparing to sign a decree declaring the aviation sector an “essential service” to guarantee a minimum level of service during such strikes, his spokesman said.
The 24-hour strike led to the cancelation of 319 flights, mainly impacting domestic and regional travelers, but also hundreds of passengers heading to the United States and Europe.
Costa Rican engineer Alex Rodriguez, 53, was stranded while on his way to visit one of South America’s top tourist attractions, the breathtaking Iguazu Falls on the border between Argentina and Brazil.
“We had planned the holiday a long time ago, about three months ago. We came from very far away, it was expensive and then everything fell through,” he told AFP.
The general secretary of the Association of Aeronautical Personnel (APA), Juan Pablo Brey, said the purchasing power of aviation staff had fallen 40 percent since Milei took office in December.
Since taking office in December, Milei has applied a drastic austerity program in a bid to rein in chronic inflation and decades of government overspending.
However, annual inflation still stands at 236.7 percent and the economic slowdown sparked by the budget cuts has hit Argentines’ pockets hard.
Brey told a local radio station that cabin crew earned 729,000 pesos ($730 at the official exchange rate) and ground crew members 500,000 pesos — half what they could make at some low-cost companies.
Aerolineas Argentinas said the strike was “untimely, abusive and out of context, promoted by union leaders in an irresponsible manner.”
Milei’s spokesman Manuel Adorni said that those striking would be “fined and sanctioned.”
Milei had tried to privatize Aerolineas Argentinas as part of his sweeping economic reforms, but was forced to remove the company from the list of those to be privatized to get his measures through parliament earlier this year.
Spain hosts meeting on Israel-Palestinian two-state solution
- Spanish PM Sanchez one of the staunchest critics in Europe of Israel’s Gaza offensive since start of conflict
- Palestinian PM and foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye in attendance
MADRID: Ministers from Muslim and European countries along with the European Union’s foreign affairs chief gathered Friday in Madrid to discuss how to advance a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Together, we want to identify the concrete actions that will enable us to make progress toward this objective,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wrote on social network X.
“The international community must take a decisive step toward a just and lasting peace in the Middle East,” the Socialist premier added.
Sanchez welcomed participants at his official residence before the start of the meeting at the foreign ministry in central Madrid, hosted by his top diplomat Jose Manuel Albares.
In attendance were Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa and the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye — all members of the Arab-Islamic Contact Group for Gaza — as well as the heads of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
The European Union was represented by its foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell as well as the foreign ministers of Ireland, Norway and Slovenia in addition to Spain.
“The implementation of the two-state solution is the only way to ensure a just and lasting peace in the region through the peaceful and secure coexistence of the state of Palestine and the state of Israel,” Albares told a news conference.
Asked about Israel’s absence from the meeting, he said the country had not been invited because it belonged “neither to the group of Europeans nor to the Arab-Islamic contact group” but stressed he would be “delighted” if Israel took part in discussions on the two-state solution.
Calls for the solution have grown since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, which began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized 251 hostages, 97 of whom are still in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel has responded with an offensive that has killed at least 41,118 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
Sanchez has been one of the staunchest critics in Europe of Israel’s Gaza offensive since the start of the conflict.
Under his watch, Spain on May 28 along with Ireland and Norway formally recognized a Palestinian state comprising the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Earlier this month he announced that the first “bilateral summit between Spain and Palestine” would be held before the end of the year. He said he expected “several collaboration agreements between the two states” to be signed.
Seven sentenced in UK’s biggest child abuse probe
- The men were imprisoned for between seven and 25 years after being convicted in June
- The cases stem from the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) Operation Stovewood, a decade-long investigation into child sexual abuse that is the largest of its kind in UK history
LONDON: Seven men who sexually abused two girls two decades ago received hefty jail sentences in the UK on Friday as a result of Britain’s biggest ever investigation into child abuse.
The men were imprisoned for between seven and 25 years after being convicted in June of offenses committed in Rotherham, in northern England, in the early 2000s.
The cases stem from the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) Operation Stovewood, a decade-long investigation into child sexual abuse that is the largest of its kind in UK history.
It began in 2014 following the publication of the Jay Report, which sent shockwaves around the country.
It found that at least 1,400 girls were abused, trafficked and groomed by gangs of men of mainly Pakistani heritage in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.
The report found that police and social services failed to put a stop to the abuse.
Some 36 people have been convicted so far as a result of the operation, according to the NCA, which investigates serious, organized and international crime.
The latest convictions came at the end of a nine-week trial at Sheffield Crown Court.
The trial heard how the victims, who were aged between 11 and 16 at the time of the offenses and were both in the care of social services, were groomed and often plied with alcohol or cannabis before being raped or assaulted.
They would often be collected by their abusers from the children’s homes where they lived at the time, the NCA said.
“These men were cruel and manipulative, grooming their victims and then exploiting them by subjecting them to the most harrowing abuse possible,” said NCA senior investigating officer Stuart Cobb.
Rotherham, a once prosperous industrial town that has suffered years of economic decline, experienced some of the worst anti-migrant violence during this summer’s riots in England when hundreds of people attacked a hotel housing asylum-seekers.
Dutch aim for migration clampdown as government sees “asylum crisis”
- The new government said it would declare a national asylum crisis, enabling it to take measures to curb migration without parliamentary consent
- Opposition parties have questioned whether this move is necessary or even legal
AMSTERDAM: The Dutch government said on Friday it aimed to implement a raft of measures to limit migration in the coming months, including a moratorium on all new applications, days after Germany announced new border controls to keep out unwanted migrants.
The new government, led by nationalist Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam PVV party, said it would declare a national asylum crisis, enabling it to take measures to curb migration without parliamentary consent.
Opposition parties have questioned whether this move is necessary or even legal, but the PVV’s migration minister Marjolein Faber said she was acting on opportunities granted by the country’s own migration laws.
“We are taking measures to make the Netherlands as unattractive as possible for asylum seekers,” Faber said in a statement on Friday.
The government reconfirmed its aim to seek an exemption of EU asylum rules, even though Brussels is likely to resist, as EU countries have already agreed on their migration pact and opt-outs are usually discussed in the negotiating phase.
“We have adopted legislation, you don’t opt out of adopted legislation in the EU, that is a general principle,” EU spokesman Eric Mamer told reporters when asked about a possible Dutch opt-out on Friday.
Among its first moves, the government said it would end the granting of open-ended asylum permits, while significantly limiting options for those who have been granted asylum to reunite with their families.
It would also start working on a crisis law that would suspend all decisions on new applications for up to two years, and that would limit facilities offered to asylum seekers.
Wilders won an election last year with the promise of imposing the strictest migration rules in the EU. He managed to form a cabinet with three right-wing partners in May, but only after he gave up his own ambition to become Prime Minister.
The cabinet instead is led by Dick Schoof, an unelected bureaucrat who has no party affiliation.
Like its neighbor Germany, the Netherlands said it will also impose stricter border controls to combat human trafficking and curb irregular migration.
NATO condemns Russia’s missile strike on civilian grain vessel
- “There is no justification for such attacks,” NATO spokeswoman Farah Dakhlallah said
BRUSSELS: NATO said on Friday it strongly condemned a Russian missile strike on a civilian grain ship in the Black Sea on Thursday.
“There is no justification for such attacks. Yesterday’s strike shows once again the reckless nature of Russia’s war,” NATO spokeswoman Farah Dakhlallah said.
