Author: IGIHE

{South Africa buried the ‘spirit’ of one of its first rebel leaders Friday, 200 years after his death in Australia, where his bones were never found.}

A traditional ritual was performed by indigenous elders to bring Khoi San chief Dawid Stuurman’s spirit home, and a coffin symbolically carrying the spirit was buried on Friday in his rural hometown of southern Hankey.

Stuurman, the last Khoi San chief, resisted British colonial rule so was jailed at Robben Island from where he escaped three times before being sent to Australia in a convict ship to serve his term.

He died in Sydney in 1830 and is believed to have been buried under the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

But efforts to recover his remains were fruitless, forcing authorities to resort to so-called spiritual repatriation.

{{Reburial }}

A noisy crowd of 300 people, wearing traditional Khoi San and Xhosa clothing, converged behind a Hankey school in Eastern Cape province to witness the unveiling of the tombstone and the reburial of the spirit.

Khoi San men in headgear made from lion or leopard tails and wearing lion skin shawls, led the ceremony.

After song and dance, as well as the chanting of revolutionary poetry, the wooden coffin draped in leopard skin was lowered into the grave.

A clergyman sprinkled water over it using an ox-tail.

Described as the “last chief of the Hottentots” in eulogies, Stuurman was buried a few hundred metres from a Khoisan heroine, Saartjie Baartman.

Known as Africa’s “Hottentot Venus”, she was paraded in circuses in 19th century Europe like a sexual freak because of her large buttocks and genitals.

Stuurman died in Australia and was buried under the Sydney Harbour bridge, Khoi traditional chief Joseph Kreeling, said Friday.

{{Great grandfather back home }}

“We are here to celebrate and commemorate the life of a fearless, bold Khoi San hero,” said Kreeling.

“This closes a chapter which used to bother the Khoi San people. We are very happy our great, great grandfather is here today with us,” said Chief Kreeling.

Stuurman was born in 1773 in the Gamtoos River Valley in the Eastern Cape.

His activism started over conflict with his farm owner boss, Johan Vermaark. Unhappy with the way blacks were treated by whites, he organised his people and rebelled against the establishment.

At one point Vermaark tied him to a cart, brutally whipped him, sprinkled salt on his open wounds and left him in the sun to dry, according to the eulogy read at the graveside.

“It’s an emotional day for all South Africans, but most important for the Khoisan people,” said Christian Martin, a Khoi activist and senior politician in the ruling ANC party.

Martin was part of an eight-man delegation which travelled to Australia this week to repatriate Stuurman’s spirit.

In 2013 Martin vowed not to cut his hair until Stuurman’s remains or spirit were brought home. On Friday he knelt on the dusty ground next to the grave as traditional leaders and politicians took turns to shave off his dreadlocks.

Four white doves were set free at the gravesite as a sign of peace.

Source:AFP

{Hisham Barakat, who oversaw President Mubarak’s acquittal, was killed in a car bombing near his house in Cairo in 2015.}

An Egyptian criminal court has sentenced to death 31 people for their alleged part in the June 2015 assassination of the country’s top prosecutor, Hisham Barakat.

The ruling on Saturday, issued by judge Hassan Farid, referred the case to the country’s top theologian to get his non-binding opinion on the death sentences, a formality followed by courts in the case of capital punishment.

Delivering the verdict, Farid called Barakat’s assassination a “heinous and cowardly conspiracy”.

“They shed the blood of a Muslim while he was fasting in Ramadan,” Farid said, referring to the holy month for Muslims that fell in July in 2015.

“And whoever kills a believer intentionally, his punishment is hell,” the judge added, quoting a verse from Islam’s holy book, the Quran.

Barakat was appointed prosecutor-general by Egypt’s then interim-President Adly Mansour in July 2013, shortly after the military ousted the country’s first freely-elected president, Mohamed Morsi.

He oversaw the acquittal of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

He was killed in a car bombing near his house in Cairo on June 29, 2015, and was the most senior government official killed by armed groups since Morsi’s ouster.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The court will reconvene on July 22 to reaffirm the death sentences and issue its verdict on the 36 other defendants in the case. Of the 67 defendants, 15 are at large.

The other suspects on trial, out of a total of 67, have yet to receive their judgements.

Egyptian authorities have accused the Muslim Brotherhood movement and Palestinian group Hamas of involvement in the attack, an accusation strongly denied by both groups.

Dozens of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leaders and followers have been given heavy-handed sentences since Morsi’s overthrow.

Amnesty international has recently criticised the increasing number of mass death sentences handed down in Egypt.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Lesotho’s new Prime Minister Thomas Thabane has been sworn in, two days after his estranged wife was shot dead.}

There were doubts whether the inauguration would take place so soon after her killing.
Prime Minister Thabane’s ABC party defeated his bitter rival Pakalitha Mosisili’s party in a snap election earlier this month.

It was the third election in three years after a bitter power-struggle.

Mr Thabane’s party won 48 of the 80 directly contested seats in the 120-strong parliament but he had to form a coalition government with three other parties in order to reach a 63-seat majority to form a government.

“I sincerely hope that political reforms will bring stability in Lesotho and ensure that Lesotho governments last for a normal five-year term,” Prime Minister Thabane said in his inaugural speech, AFP reports.

Mr Thabane also commented for the first time about the recent death of his wife Lipolelo, who was shot dead on Wednesday night while travelling home with a friend.

“I am mourning her death, and the senseless killing of people like this… is one of many challenges that I am faced with as a new prime minister,” AFP says

The police say the motive for her killing is unknown and an investigation is continuing.
The couple had been living separately since 2012 and filed for divorce which hasn’t been granted yet.

Mr Thabane attended the swearing in with another wife, Ma Isaiah Ramoholi.

Source:BBC