NEWS - The African Mirror

Mar

14

2026

THE COBRA STRIKES BACK: Eritrea’s cartoonist walks free after 15 years without trial

NEWS

HE drew with one arm. He saw with both eyes. And for fifteen unbroken years, the government of Eritrea — among the most secretive and repressive on earth - could not endure what Biniam Solomon saw. Solomon, now in his early sixties and known across the Horn of Africa and its diaspora by his pen name Cobra, has walked out of one of Asmara's most feared detention facilities. He was arrested in 2011 in the Eritrean capital. He was never charged. He was never tried. He was never given a date. For a decade and a half, his family received…

Mar

13

2026

By PAN-AFRICAN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT

Nigeria under siege but unbowed: Tinubu vows democracy will endure

NEWS

PRESIDENT Bola Ahmed Tinubu summoned the language of a man who has known exile and prison, not the polished cadences of a ceremonial address, when he gathered Nigeria's political party leadership at the Presidential Villa on Wednesday and declared that democracy and the rule of law would survive his tenure — whatever the odds. The setting was an inter-faith Ramadan fast-breaking with the National Working Committee of the ruling All Progressives Congress and the leadership of the Inter-Party Advisory Council. The occasion was convivial. The subtext was not. Nigeria is a country where democracy is being asked to perform under…

Mar

13

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

From Pretoria’s elite to Florida mugshots: SA couple arrested in the US for theft

NEWS

THE black Range Rover idling outside a Publix supermarket on South Federal Highway in Boca Raton became an unlikely emblem of a fall from grace this week, when Boca Raton Police Department officers used the vehicle to intercept Melany "Mel" Viljoen, 39, and her husband Petrus "Peet" Viljoen, 57 - recognisable to South African audiences as stars of Real Housewives of Pretoria - during a traffic stop on Tuesday, 10 March 2026. Both were arrested on charges of aggravated grand retail theft, a second-degree felony under Florida law that carries a maximum sentence of 15 years. The couple, who relocated…

Mar

13

2026

By The African Mirror

Women arrested for kissing in Uganda, Senegal doubles prison terms

NEWS

ON Wednesday, Senegal's parliament voted 135 to zero - three abstentions, not a single dissent- — to double the maximum prison term for same-sex relations to ten years and to criminalise any promotion of homosexuality. The same week, details emerged that Ugandan police had arrested two young women in Arua City last month for kissing in public. Across the continent, Ghana's parliament was receiving a revived bill that would jail people for simply identifying as LGBT. In three weeks, Africa's anti-gay crackdown had found a new gear. The Senegalese vote is the most sweeping of the recent moves. The legislation,…

Mar

14

2026

By SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

The beauty of the Ghana-Nigeria-Korea partnership that carries hope of millions

NEWS

ON 12 March 2026, in the industrial port city of Ulsan - South Korea's beating maritime heart - a vessel slid into the frigid waters of the Korean Strait to begin a journey that carries the hopes of more than 35 million people. The ship is named the MT Asharami Ghana. And its name is not merely a commercial designation. It is a declaration. The commissioning ceremony, held at the storied HD Hyundai Heavy Industries shipyard, brought together the President of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, alongside senior executives of Nigeria's Sahara Energy Group, representatives of the NNPC-Sahara joint venture WAGL…

Mar

14

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Three Somali nationals arrested for fraud and bribery at SA border post

NEWS

THREE Somali nationals have been arrested and charged with fraud, corruption, and illegal immigration following a two-week joint operation by INTERPOL’s National Central Bureau (NCB) Pretoria and the South African Police Service (SAPS) at land border posts in Mpumalanga. The operation, which ran from 27 February to 11 March 2026, targeted wanted persons and the trafficking of stolen and fraudulent travel documents through the region’s porous cross-border corridor. “The passport tested positive on the INTERPOL Mobile Device, triggering a chain of inquiries that ultimately exposed an alleged bribery plot.” On 10 March 2026, INTERPOL NCB Pretoria officers stationed at Komatipoort…

Mar

12

2026

By OWN CORRESPONENT

Cornered by justice: Mugabe abandons bail, may admit to shooting a man in the back

NEWS

IT was meant to be another procedural skirmish in a case riddled with delays, power outages and legal manoeuvring. Instead, on Wednesday morning inside the Alexandra Magistrate's Court in Johannesburg, the legal team representing Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe - the youngest son of the late Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe - walked into court and quietly folded. There would be no bail application. Not now. Perhaps not ever. Advocate Laurance Hodes, who, alongside attorney Sinenhlanhla Mnguni, represents both Bellarmine and his co-accused, Tobias Mugabe Matonhodze, made the announcement that their instructions were not to proceed with the bail applications. The reason is…

Mar

12

2026

By The New Humanitarian

Ethiopia’s blame game after videos reveal starving displaced people in Tigray

NEWS

IN July 1972, the last emperor of Ethiopia celebrated his 80th birthday in extravagant style, culminating in a sumptuous banquet for 2,000 elite guests. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of his subjects were dying of starvation in Tigray and Wollo. The callous indifference of the emperor’s government towards this catastrophe helped cement the idea among large segments of the population that Haile Selassie was an out-of-touch, self-dealing autocrat, unfit to rule Ethiopia. Barely two years later, he was deposed in a revolution and a military coup. In today’s Ethiopia, echoes of that shameful time are growing deafening. In late December, footage…

Mar

12

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Tragedy in Goma: UNICEF worker went to save children. A drone killed her instead

NEWS

SHE was asleep in a two-storey expatriate residence in central Goma when the drone found her. At approximately 4:00 a.m., a strike attributed to the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC), operated with the assistance of foreign mercenaries, tore through the building. Karine Buisset, a French national and UNICEF employee who had given her working life to protecting children in one of the world's most dangerous conflict zones, died at the scene. She was not a combatant. She was not near the frontline. She was in a leafy neighbourhood - the kind that draws expatriates and…

Mar

11

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Grounded and running on empty: how the Gulf war is strangling Africa

NEWS

THE first sounds of war to reach Africa were not explosions. They were flight cancellation alerts - pinging across airports from Cairo to Cape Town, from Nairobi to Lagos, from Kigali to Blantyre - within hours of the United States and Israel launching Operation Epic Fury against Iran on the night of 28 February 2026. In the days since, the conflict has delivered Africa a double blow: its skies have gone dark, and its fuel pumps are running dry. Botswana's government has warned its 2.6 million citizens that the country holds fewer than nine days of national fuel reserves, with…