NEWS - The African Mirror

Jun

27

2026

Uganda’s democracy by decree: How General Muhoozi Kainerugaba rules from his phone

NEWS

On the surface, Uganda staged the full theatre of democracy this year: ballots cast, results declared, President Yoweri Museveni sworn in for a seventh consecutive term. But the man who has done more than anyone to expose the hollowness of that theatre is not an opposition figure. It is the President’s own son. Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Chief of Defence Forces and the man widely regarded as Museveni’s anointed successor, has spent recent weeks demonstrating - in real time, on a platform anyone can read - that Uganda’s courts, parliament and security services answer to him before they answer to the…

Jun

27

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

From the bench to the dock: State attaches corruption-charged judge’s R6-million house

NEWS

FOR three decades, South African courts have stripped tenderpreneurs, fraudsters and cartel bosses of the houses, cars and bank balances bought with stolen or laundered money. This week, that same machinery - the Asset Forfeiture Unit of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) - turned on a woman who, until recently, might have been the one signing the order. A preservation order granted by the High Court in Pretoria has frozen a R6-million luxury property in Hartbeespoort registered in the name of Judge Portia Dipuo Phahlane, placing it under the control of a curator bonis pending forfeiture. It is alleged to…

Jun

26

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

SA: The Cat falls – and drags the generals down with him in multimillion tender fraud scandal

NEWS

FOR nearly two years, Vusimusi “Cat” Matlala played the untouchable. The Pretoria security boss and self-styled VIP-protection mogul faced down attempted-murder charges, parliamentary scrutiny and a presidentially appointed commission of inquiry without folding. On Thursday, before the Specialised Commercial Crimes Court in Pretoria, he finally did. Matlala pleaded guilty to fraud, corruption and money laundering arising from the irregular award of a multimillion-rand police health-and-wellness tender - and, in the same breath, handed prosecutors a sworn road map to the senior police officers he says he paid to get it. The about-turn was sudden, but not accidental. Twenty-four hours earlier,…

Jun

26

2026

By The African Mirror

Bandages, Bent Knees, Rolls Royce: “AAA” Sympathy Gambit Meets Uganda’s Reckoning

NEWS

THEY call her “AAA” with an affectionate wink — a tidy, sing-song shorthand for a woman who, until six weeks ago, occupied the third-highest office in the Ugandan state. Today the initials trail a rather different story: a former Speaker of Parliament confined to a heavily guarded compound in Nakasero, her bank accounts frozen, her passport withdrawn, and - if a viral TikTok broadcast is to be believed - her legs so swollen with a suspected blood clot that she can no longer stand. Welcome to the third act of Anita Annet Among’s political life, in which corruption allegations meet…

Jun

26

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENTS

South Africa’s immigration squeeze tests rule of law as anti-foreigner anger rises

NEWS

AS marches against undocumented migrants spread and the 30 June deadline set by vigilante-style groups approaches, President Cyril Ramaphosa and Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia are insisting that enforcement must stay in state hands and that South Africans must not resort to mob justice. But the government’s hardline migration response now faces a double test: whether it can restore order without inflaming xenophobia, and whether it can deliver real enforcement fast enough to calm public anger. South Africa’s government is trying to project control at a moment of rising public fury over illegal immigration, but the political stakes are growing…

Jun

25

2026

By The African Mirror

UN confirms 838 victims of sexual violence, warns of crimes against humanity in Darfur

NEWS

GENEVA/JOHANNESBURG — Behind every figure in the United Nations’ newest accounting of Sudan’s war lies a name, a face, and a family permanently altered. A report issued by the UN Human Rights Office on Tuesday documents at least 546 verified incidents of conflict-related sexual violence since fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted in April 2023, affecting at least 838 victims — a toll the UN itself insists is only a fraction of the true devastation. “A report we have just issued this morning lays bare the brutality and magnitude of conflict-related sexual…

Jun

25

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

SANDF’s camouflaged sentinels strike back against the syndicates bleeding South Africa dry

NEWS

UNDER a starlit Limpopo sky, soldiers lying in wait on the riverbed watched two sets of headlights cut through the bush toward the water's edge. Within minutes, gunfire cracked across the riverbank. By morning, two more stolen vehicles - a Toyota Fortuner and a Nissan Navara, together worth almost R1.7 million - had been wrestled back from a smuggling syndicate that had readied donkeys on the South African bank to haul the loot across the river into Zimbabwe. It was the kind of close-quarters, high-stakes confrontation that has come to define life along South Africa's most porous frontier - and…

Jun

25

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

43 doors in Dubai: How a Bongo heir built an empire while running Gabon’s treasury

NEWS

FOR half a century, the Bongo name was Gabon's shorthand for power without consequence. The 2023 coup that toppled President Ali Bongo Ondimba was meant to close that chapter. A new cross-border investigation suggests the family's appetite for offshore wealth never read the memo. According to a sweeping investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), carried out as part of its OpenLux project, Fabrice Albert Andjoua Ondimba Bongo — son of Gabon's late strongman Omar Bongo — quietly built a luxury real-estate empire in Dubai worth roughly $15 million, even as he sat at the very centre…

Jun

24

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

DRC Ebola outbreak surges: more than 1,000 confirmed cases and 267 deaths in first month, UN warns

NEWS

THE Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is spreading at an unprecedented rate, producing the largest number of confirmed cases recorded in the first month of any recent African outbreak, United Nations humanitarian agencies said. World Health Organization (WHO) emergency chief Dr Abdirahman Mahamud, who returned last week after a month in the DRC, said official figures show 1,048 confirmed cases and 267 deaths as of Monday. “This is the largest number of confirmed cases in the first month of an Ebola disease outbreak in Africa,” he said. The outbreak, declared on 15 May and caused by the…

Jun

24

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

After a year of mortuary limbo, courtroom combat, Lungu family wishes prevail

NEWS

EDGAR Lungu will be buried in South Africa, not Zambia, after Zambia’s government formally abandoned any further legal challenge to a Supreme Court of Appeal ruling that handed the late president’s family the final word on where he rests. The concession, delivered by Attorney General Mulilo Kabesha within hours of Tuesday’s judgment, removes the last procedural obstacle standing between the Lungu family and a burial they have fought for since the former president died in a Pretoria hospital on 5 June 2025. “We accept the judgment, although we don’t agree. But we respect the law. We accept and obey what…