NEWS - The African Mirror

Jun

08

2026

The walls close in on Faye: Sonko’s reinvention as party colossus seals Senegal’s power reckoning

NEWS

In the long and turbulent theatre of West African politics, this week may be remembered as the moment the curtain began to fall on Bassirou Diomaye Faye's presidency — not through a coup, not through scandal, but through the slow, methodical democratic encirclement by the man who made him president. On Saturday, 6 June 2026, at a historic inaugural congress in Diamniadio outside Dakar, PASTEF-Les Patriotes — the Pan-Africanist movement that swept Senegal's political establishment from power in 2024 — held its first-ever party congress since its founding in January 2014. The outcome could not have been more decisive, or…

Jun

08

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENTS

How South Africa’s luxury car dealerships face scrutiny as fronts in the battle against money laundering

NEWS

WHEN Special Investigating Unit (SIU) agents, backed by the Hawks and uniformed South African Police Service officers, descended on Omar's Motor Den in Emalahleni on the afternoon of Friday, 5 June 2026, they were not just looking for a missing car. They were serving notice on an entire ecosystem of luxury vehicle dealerships across South Africa that the era of impunity is over. The target was a Bentley Continental GT - worth approximately R3 million and linked to Hangwani Morgan Maumela, the alleged mastermind of the most audacious healthcare heist in South African history. But the drama that unfolded outside…

Jun

06

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

SA: She sent her two daughers to their rapist – now a court has sent her to jail for life

NEWS

THERE is a word for what Vumani Rethabile Tshabalala and his lover did to three children in Bloemfontein over five years. That word is rape. But there is no adequate word — in law, in psychology, in language — for what the mother of two of those children did. The law calls it rape, too, and on multiple counts. The court has called it worthy of life imprisonment. History, and the daughters she violated, will have to find their own vocabulary for a betrayal this complete. On a day that was both ordinary and historic in the Free State Division…

Jun

06

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

NIGERIA: Oil magnate, two others face court over N691 m fraud, money laundering

NEWS

A federal court in Abuja, Nigeria, has remanded a prominent oil and gas executive in custody pending trial on 15 criminal counts alleging he conspired to defraud and launder more than N691 million — money prosecutors say formed part of the proceeds of corruption. Musa Farouk Abubakar, Managing Director of Abu-Haneefa Oil and Gas Ltd, appeared before Justice Obiora Egwuatu of the Federal High Court in Maitama on Wednesday alongside his company and a third defendant, Sandra Chizoba Attoh, after the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) filed an amended 15-count charge against them. All three entered pleas of not…

Jun

06

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENTS

Abdoulaye Wade turns 100: Senegal, Africa, pauses to honour the last great architect of the African Renaissance

NEWS

THERE are moments when history forces a nation to stand still. The centenary of Abdoulaye Wade - the "Pape du Sopi," the Father of Change, the street-fighting lawyer who finally won Africa's most emotionally charged democracy battle - was one of them. Across Senegal, and in pan-African capitals from Abuja to Addis Ababa, tributes poured in for a figure whose 100 years on earth span the twilight of colonial rule, the forge of independence, the long night of authoritarian entrenchment, and the difficult, still-unfinished dawn of democratic renewal. The official national celebration, held at the Grand Théâtre Doudou Ndiaye Rose…

Jun

06

2026

By SIMPA SAMSON, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Nigerian engineers are changing who gets to work in energy

NEWS

NKECHI Okenwa walked into her office, moving instinctively toward the window and pulled the blinds open. Outside, the city was already in motion: cars weaving through traffic, traders arranging their stalls, generators humming faintly in the distance. She paused for a moment and smiled quietly to herself. For Nkechi, energy had never simply been about electricity. It was about movement, opportunity, and the power to transform lives. Long before she stepped into a university lecture hall, Nkechi said, she had been fascinated by the way a single switch could completely change the atmosphere of a home. Growing up in Nigeria,…

Jun

05

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

One Continent, One Voice: Ramaphosa, Ruto issue a continental summons at the Tshwane summit

NEWS

IN the language of African statecraft, a state visit to the Union Buildings is never merely ceremonial. When President Cyril Ramaphosa stood before his Kenyan counterpart, Dr William Ruto, on Thursday morning and declared that "Africa must speak with one voice, guided by our own interests and aspirations," he was doing something more pointed than protocol demanded. He was issuing a continental summons. The Reciprocal State Visit - South Africa's response to Ramaphosa's November 2022 trip to Nairobi - comes at a moment of accelerating global disorder. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East continue to ripple through African…

Jun

05

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Zimbabwe’s liberation-era guardians turn on Mnangagwa – and the nation risks a constitutional rupture

NEWS

A cohort of retired military generals and former senior civil servants has publicly accused President Emmerson Mnangagwa of masterminding Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 3 (CAB3) to entrench personal power, setting up a fraught showdown that threatens to cleave the ruling party’s liberation-era consensus and deepen Zimbabwe’s political crisis. In a statement issued in Harare and signed by retired Air Marshal Henry Muchena, the group said recent private meetings with Mnangagwa left them unconvinced and alarmed. Their account paints a president dismissive of constitutional scruple - “whoever wins, wins,” they quote him as saying - and argues the parliamentary consultation process…

Jun

05

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Museveni hails Uganda’s economic shift, says 67% of households now in the ‘money economy”

NEWS

STANDING before the 5th Session of Uganda's 11th Parliament at Kololo Ceremonial Grounds in June 2025, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni delivered a State of the Nation Address that was, in equal measure, a victory lap and a forward charge. The numbers he laid before the nation were not rhetorical flourish - they were the statistical architecture of a country that has, quietly and determinedly, remade itself. Uganda's economy has reached an estimated $60 billion by the close of the 2024/25 financial year, up from $53.6 billion the previous year. The country now carries a GDP per capita of $1,263 -…

Jun

04

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

US sanctions FDLR, M23 commanders in bid to save DRC peace process

NEWS

THE United States Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has moved decisively, sanctioning two senior intelligence commanders driving violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo - one from each warring camp - in what Washington described as a firm signal that all parties to the crumbling peace process will be held accountable. The designations, announced simultaneously by Treasury and the State Department, target Gustave Kubwayo of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and John Imani Nzenze of the Rwanda-backed March 23 Movement (M23). Both are intelligence chiefs at the heart of…