Racist and xenophobic politicians have abused the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent national lockdowns to bang the drum for their chauvinism and propaganda. IN THE space of a few months, the coronavirus pandemic has significantly changed the world. It has cut across class, cultural and political lines and made a mockery of the borders used to separate humanity. Despite repeated warnings of imminent future pandemics, most governments were unprepared for the Covid-19 shock. With well over four million infections worldwide, and more than 300 000 people having lost their lives as a result of the virus, global institutions such as the…

COLIN CHAPMAN and PATRICK OMEJA HUMANITY faces unprecedented environmental challenges. Nowhere are the challenges greater than in Africa, the second most populous continent. Over the next century Africa will replace Asia as the driver of global population increase and the impact of climate change will be severe. Already, an area more than half the size of Nigeria has been deforested. And by 2100, more than half of all bird and mammal species in Africa are projected to be lost. With colleagues, we recently brought these strands together and linked them to the need for a significant improvement in the continent’s…

ON THE GROUND: Members of the Koglweogo self-defence group travel in convoy in Burkina Faso’s Center-East region. Photo: Sam Mednick/TNH SAM MEDNICK TIROQ Seydou wants his government to do a better job at fighting the extremist groups that are plaguing his country and encroaching on his town. But the 42-year-old trader from Burkina Faso worries that a new scheme to provide civilians with weapons is no answer to the well-armed militants. “It’s better to invest in the army than militia,” said Seydou, seated at a restaurant in Koupela, a town in the country’s Center-East region. Passed by parliament in January,…

AFTERMATH: Cameroon security forces torched over 100 homes and businesses in Bali, Northwest region, in February. Community members said no reason was given. Photo: Jess Craig/TNH) JESS CRAIG HUMANITARIAN organisations are struggling to keep pace with the increasing needs of civilians as conflict between the government and pro-independence groups escalates in Cameroon’s anglophone regions. Limited access to those driven from their homes, low levels of donor funding, and what aid workers have described as government “obstruction” means the majority of the 1.3 million people affected by the violence cannot be reached. Since November 2019, there has been a surge in…

WHEN hundreds of militiamen arrived in January at a government-run demobilisation camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s northeastern province of Ituri, there was a flicker of hope that more than two years of conflict might be abating. But a few weeks later, the fighters – from a group known as the Cooperative for the Development of Congo, or CODECO – deserted the camp with their children and wives, citing hunger, dismal conditions and broken promises by local authorities. Now violence is peaking again in a province where more than 1.2 million people have already been displaced by a two-year…

Stephen Onyeiwu COVID-19 is increasingly wreaking havoc on the health of Nigerians, but its economic impact may well be more devastating. Before the pandemic, the Nigerian economy was growing at an anaemic rate of 2%. The country has also been suffering from high poverty and unemployment rates. This is paradoxical for a country endowed with humongous natural resources. Determined to blunt the economic trauma of COVID-19 and minimise its impact on poverty, unemployment, insecurity and violence, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari announced the establishment of an inter-ministerial Economic Sustainability Committee. He gave it the remit to recommend measures that would prevent…

HOOLO 'NYANE EVER since Lesotho, the mountainous southern African constitutional kingdom of about 2.2 million, attained independence from Britain in 1966, its development has been punctuated by all manner of constitutional breakdowns. These have ranged from coups, dictatorships and military rule. Among the long list of factors that account for the long-running political instability in the country, the flawed constitution ranks high. It is now a matter of common course that successive interventions by the Southern African Development Community, in a bid to bring peace to Lesotho, have failed. One of the main reasons is that the solutions often provided…

JOVIAL RANTAO Whoever wrote that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely must have had individuals such as Pierre Nkurunziza, the former President of Burundi, in mind. Nkurunziza, who died this week from symptoms associated with Covid-19, went from being a national hero who led his country out of a civil war to democracy, then got drunk on power and became a dictator who killed opponents and led his country back into a civil war. Nkurunziza was a gifted footballer, a ball juggler par-excellence who dribbled his way into the hearts of the people of Burundi, who until then had…

ABDULRAHMAN AL-ANSI DESPITE six years of war and hardship in Yemen, Somali refugee Bader Hassan had stuck it out hoping for a better life than in his homeland. But the coronavirus pandemic has pushed his precarious existence to the edge, and now he wants out. "Me, my wife and my son want to live in a good place, like other people," the Somali-born 32-year-old said in the capital Sanaa. As a refugee he has lived his life in Yemen with no state or charity support, he said. He dropped out of school early to earn a living and now washes…

KHULU MBATHA ALFRED Babethuxolo Nzo would have turned 95 years old on June 19.  Bab’ Andrew Mlangeni, the only Rivonia trialist remaining, who celebrated his 95th birthday on June 6, would have taken a stroll to Comrade Nzo’s place and said, “Ntwana [young man], I am 13 days older than you!”  I am sure they would have hugged and laughed, and be the first nonagenarians to disobey in public the COVID-19 social-distancing dictates. I am also certain that a presidential pardon from President Cyril Ramaphosa would have been given on the same day, breaking all procedures for such legal applications.…