NEWS - The African Mirror

Jun

02

2026

The Zim tycoon who keeps on giving: Wicknell Chivayo’s latest blessed transaction

NEWS

IN Zimbabwe, generosity comes in many forms. There is the quiet kind - a widow’s mite, a civil servant’s small donation box. And then there is the Wicknell Chivayo kind: loudly announced, elaborately documented, spiritually decorated, and delivered with the subtlety of a $1.2 million Rolls-Royce reversing into a rural church compound. “Sir Wicknell”, as he prefers to be styled - and who are we to argue with a man who gifts Toyota Hiluxes the way normal people hand out business cards - has done it again. The businessman, socialite, and self-described philanthropist whose extraordinary political connections have made him…

Jun

01

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

ATOMS FOR AFRICA: Rwanda’s nuclear gambit and the new battle for the continent

NEWS

ON May 15, 2026, in the conference halls of Kigali, Rwanda, quietly made history. A Commercial Nuclear Power Plant Agreement was finalised between the Rwanda Atomic Energy Board and Russia's Rosatom, the Kremlin-backed nuclear giant that has become the world's dominant builder of new reactors. Four days later, at the Nuclear Energy Innovation Summit for Africa - NEISA 2026 - Kigali sealed another landmark deal: a civil nuclear cooperation Memorandum of Understanding with the United States government. Both signings occurred within a single week, at the same summit, in the same city. This is not a coincidence. It is a…

Jun

01

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENTS

WHO chief travels to Ebola epicentre as death toll mounts and world looks away

NEWS

WHEN Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, stepped off his plane in Bunia on Saturday - the dust-choked capital of Ituri Province in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo - he was entering the eye of a gathering storm. The city is the administrative hub of what has become the most dangerous Ebola hotspot on earth: the epicentre of the DRC's 17th declared Ebola outbreak, and the first anywhere in the world caused by the rare and particularly lethal Bundibugyo virus strain. His three-day mission - beginning in Kinshasa on Thursday, before pushing forward to…

Jun

01

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENTS

FIRED: The Zambian diplomat who sold his office

NEWS

IN diplomatic corridors, the title of Deputy Ambassador carries weight, prestige, and - crucially - trust. It is a position earned, conferred by the head of state, and sustained by the belief that its holder will act with integrity in the name of the nation. Tom Michelo, Zambia's Deputy Ambassador to Ethiopia, has spectacularly shattered that trust. President Hakainde Hichilema has dismissed Michelo with immediate effect following his arrest by Zambia's Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) over allegations that he fraudulently obtained US$500,000 from a Chinese investor. The money, according to investigators, was paid to Michelo on the understanding that he…

May

30

2026

By The African Mirror

EBOLA: “It’s a disease you get when you care for someone.”

NEWS

ON a dirt track outside Bunia, a health worker’s boots track the same footprints left by family members who rushed to help a sick relative - then watched them die. Two weeks into a rare Ebola flare‑up of the Bundibugyo strain, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and neighbouring Uganda are confronting not only a lethal virus but the social fault lines that allow it to spread. WHO figures show 125 confirmed cases and 17 confirmed deaths so far, with 906 suspected cases and more than 223 suspected deaths under investigation as laboratories scale up testing. That gap between confirmed…

May

30

2026

By The African Mirror

World Cup 2026 echoes with Ebola fear as North American hosts lock out some African fans

NEWS

IN an unprecedented move just weeks before kick-off, the United States, Canada, and Mexico have unveiled a hardline, tri-lateral cordon sanitaire - banning entry to virtually all travelers from Ebola-hit Central Africa. For the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), returning to the World Cup after 52 years, the victory has turned to ashes as its own fans are deemed a biosecurity risk. In a stark admission that the global health crisis has spiraled beyond containment, the three host nations of the 2026 FIFA World Cup announced a coordinated travel ban, targeting African nations grappling with the deadly Bundibugyo Ebola strain.…

May

30

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

R1 billion bust at Beit Bridge: South Africa’s biggest-ever drug seizure exposes transnational mandrax pipeline

NEWS

SOUTH Africa has recorded the largest drug seizure in its history after the Border Management Authority (BMA) intercepted a truck carrying nearly a billion rands' worth of methaqualone - the key precursor in the manufacture of mandrax - at the Beit Bridge port of entry on 27 May 2026. The operation, coordinated by the BMA's National Targeting Centre, resulted in the arrest of two Malawian nationals and a Zambian national, who appeared before the Musina Magistrates' Court on Friday. The bust follows a series of major narcotics interceptions across the region, raising urgent questions about the scale and sophistication of…

May

29

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Left behind: the five Ghanaians South Africa could not – and would not – put on the plane

NEWS

OF the 300 Ghanaian nationals processed for departure from OR Tambo International Airport on Tuesday, 295 boarded the chartered aircraft arranged by the Ghanaian government and flew home. Five did not. Their reasons for being grounded - each distinct, each grounded in a different provision of South African and international law - tell a more complex story than the headline numbers of the week's repatriation operation suggest. The Border Management Authority (BMA), whose Commissioner Dr Michael Masiapato confirmed the operation's outcome, characterised the refusals as procedurally correct and consistent with its legal mandate. The African Mirror examines each case in…

May

29

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENTS

Eight students arrested after 16 girls die in Kenyan school dormitory inferno

NEWS

ON the dead of night, while their families slept hundreds of kilometres away, the girls of Utumishi Girls Academy awoke to smoke and flame. It was barely past midnight. The fire tore through one of the school's dormitories in Gilgil, in Nakuru County, central Kenya, with a ferocity that gave many students no time to think — only to run, jump, or be consumed. By dawn on Thursday, 28 May 2026, at least 16 young students were confirmed dead. Seventy-nine others had been rushed to hospitals across the region - some with severe burns, others with broken limbs sustained as…

May

29

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Paid to serve, forced to pay: SA’s MK Party Chief Whip arrested for salary extortion scheme

NEWS

IN the 32 years of the democratic South African parliamentary politics, it would be difficult to recall a more audacious or troubling allegation against a sitting officer of the National Assembly. Mmabatho Nthabiseng Mokoena-Zondi, the Chief Whip of uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party, appeared before the Cape Town Magistrate's Court on Thursday, 28 May 2026, on charges of fraud - having allegedly forced four parliamentary researchers to hand over more than half of their monthly salaries under the false pretence that the funds were required to sustain the legal defence of the party's president, Jacob Zuma. She was granted R30,000 bail…