violence - The African Mirror

Aug

2021

Violence against children carries a huge cost for Africa: governments need to act urgently

EVERY day, millions of children experience violence in one form or another. It is a global problem that cuts across colour, class, educational status, income, ethnicity and origin. RONGEDZAYI FAMBASAYI, Doctoral Researcher: Faculty of Law, North-West University It has immediate, long term and irreparable impacts on the life, survival, physical and psychosocial development and well-being of children. Violence against children also has financial implications for families and the state. The scale of violence against children, including recent forms such as cyberbullying and online abuse, is worrying. The impact of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions and closure of schools has also exposed children…

Jul

2021

By The African Mirror

Violence in South Africa: an uprising of elites, not of the people

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

FROM time to time, South Africa is rudely reminded that its past continues to make its present and future difficult. It does not always recognise this reality when it sees it. STEVEN FRIEDMAN, Professor of Political Studies, University of Johannesburg The latest – and most shocking – reminder is the violence which followed the imprisonment of former president Jacob Zuma. The mayhem devastated KwaZulu-Natal, the home of Zuma and his faction of the governing African National Congress (ANC), and damaged Gauteng, the economic heartland which also houses hostels in which working migrants from KwaZulu-Natal live. The violence was seen as…

Jul

2021

By The African Mirror

Chaos in South Africa points to failures in the project to build a democracy

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

THE spate of violence that’s engulfed South Africa shows that not all citizens have internalised constitutional democracy and the rule of law as the organising principle of the post-apartheid society. MASHUPYE HERBERT MASERUMULE, Professor of Public Affairs, Tshwane University of Technology Various interventions to institutionalise democracy were more focused on policy interventions and institution-building to safeguard it, but not on ensuring that it was embraced by the entirety of society, appreciating it as the basis of its evolution. The violence started in KwaZulu-Natal following the imprisonment of the former president Jacob Zuma to serve a 15-month sentence for contempt of…

Jul

2021

By The African Mirror

72 dead, 1 234 arrested as violence, looting continue

NEWS

AFRICAN MIRROR REPORTER THE violence and looting of shopping malls across South Africa have continued to spread causing damage running into billions of rands, destroying livelihoods, and leading to the loss of lives. A total of 72 people have died and 1 243 have been arrested as the South African army and the police battle with lawlessness. Crowds clashed with police and ransacked or set ablaze shopping malls in cities across SA, with dozens of people reported killed, as grievances unleashed by the jailing of ex-president Jacob Zuma boiled over into the worst violence in years. Protests that followed Zuma's…

Jul

2021

By The African Mirror

SA army deployed as looting, arson continue

NEWS

AFRICAN MIRROR REPORTER SOUTH Africa deployed soldiers today to quell violence that erupted in the wake of former president Jacob Zuma's jailing, after days of riots left at least six people dead. Police said disturbances had intensified and 219 people arrested as the controversial ex-leader challenged his 15-month prison term in the country's top court. Smoke from burning buildings swirled in the air as items from burgled shops lay strewn by the side of the road in Pietermaritzburg in Zuma's home province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). The sporadic pro-Zuma protests that broke out when he handed himself over last week have…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

‘COVID-19 drove Africa to 1st recession in 30 years’

NEWS

MUCH of Africa may have been spared the death toll that COVID-19 brought to other regions, but it now faces recession, growing violence and higher unemployment because of the pandemic, a report said released yesterday. "The global economic shutdown has driven Africa into recession for the first time in 30 years, with severe repercussions for unemployment, poverty, inequalities and food insecurity," said the 2021 Ibrahim Forum Report. It was released ahead of the annual conference this weekend of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which promotes good governance in Africa. African countries implemented strict travel restrictions and robust contact tracing when the…

Mar

2021

By The African Mirror

Six women of Asian descent among eight killed in shootings at Atlanta day spas

WORLD

RICH McKAY EIGHT people, six of them women of Asian descent, were shot dead in a string of attacks at day spas in and around Atlanta, and a man suspected of carrying out the killings was in custody on Wednesday in southern Georgia, police said. Although authorities in the southern U.S. state declined to offer a motive for the violence, the attacks on Tuesday prompted the New York Police Department's counter-terrorism unit to announce the deployment of additional patrols in Asian communities there as a precaution. South Korea's foreign ministry said its consulate-general in Atlanta had confirmed that the victims…

Aug

2020

By The African Mirror

A PICTURE AND ITS STORY-The despair of a Rio widow, in a city struggling with violence

WORLD

FOR Ricardo Moraes, a veteran photographer who for 11 years has documented for Reuters life in Rio de Janeiro's often dangerous cinderblock slums known as "favelas", work began at about 6 a.m. on Thursday, when he heard a radio report of a hostage situation in Sao Carlos, a sprawling tangle of hillside homes near the city centre. The images he would capture - a young woman, kneeling over her husband's body, overcome with grief and surrounded by heavily armed police - ultimately would appear on the front pages of Brazil's two largest newspapers. They resonated in a city fed up…

Aug

2020

By The African Mirror

Fear, rumours lead to hundreds of attacks on COVID-19 responders

NEWS

NELLIE PEYTON HEALTHCARE workers fighting coronavirus in dozens of countries are facing violence from fearful communities who have attacked doctors and burned down clinics, aid agencies said on Tuesday. In Colombia, ambulances were blocked from entering a town to screen for COVID-19 cases, said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which recorded 611 incidents targeting health workers, patients and facilities from February to July. In South Africa, a testing station and a clinic were torched by people who did not want responders in their neighbourhood, said medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). "It's a byproduct of the new,…