Tag: AfricaNews

South African President Jacob Zuma has given up a legal case against a local newspaper over a cartoon depicting him about to rape a female figure representing justice.

His office said it saw the cartoon, by the artist known as Zapiro, as an affront but wanted to avoid a precedent that could limit free speech.

The lawsuit over the cartoon was dropped along with all claims for an apology and damages. The case was due in court on Monday.

Zuma’s lawyers had been demanding damages of 5m rand ($578,000; £369,000) for the cartoon.

It was published in 2008 before he became president but the claim was only filed two years later.

Last week, Mr Zuma was reported to have reduced his claim to 100,000 rand, before withdrawing it altogether.

“After careful consideration and consultation with his legal team, President Zuma has taken a decision to withdraw his claim against the respondents, and pay a contribution to their costs,” his office said in a statement.

“The president… would like to avoid setting a legal precedent that may have the effect of limiting the public exercise of free speech, with the unforeseen consequences this may have on our media, public commentators and citizens,” it added.

The cartoon showed a woman, wearing a sash with the words “Justice System”, being pinned down by four figures.

The International Criminal Court has rejected an appeal from former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo to be released from detention in the Netherlands while he awaits trial.

ICC judges said Friday that Gbagbo, who faces charges of crimes against humanity during the 2010 civil war in his country, posed a flight risk.

“In the case at hand, there can be no doubt that the charges that the prosecutor has brought against Mr. Gbagbo and for which the warrant of arrest against him was issued – crimes against humanity of murder, rape and other forms of sexual violence, as well as other inhumane acts and persecution – are serious and may lead to a lengthy sentence in case of conviction,” Judge Anita Usacka wrote in the decision from The Hague.

Gbagbo has been detained in the court since he surrendered on December 5, 2011.

He had sought release “to allow him to recover from the ill-treatment he is said to have suffered while in detention in Cote d’Ivoire, in order to be fit to stand trial,” the decision said, using the French name for Ivory Coast.

The eight deaths in the attack at St. Rita Catholic church in Nigeria, include the suicide bomber, an emergency official said.

The wounded had critical injuries and were taken to four hospitals in Kaduna, said Musa Ilallah, regional coordinator for the National Emergency Management Agency said.

As NEMA responded, angry Christian youth began “beating our staff and as a result broke the side glass of our ambulance that was on the scene to provide service,” said Ilallah, who spoke to CNN from the scene of the attack.

At least eight people were killed and 100 were injured in the attack, a spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency said. One man was also burned alive in a reprisal attack.

Scores of people have been killed in church bombings in the country in recent years.

The Boko Haram militant Islamist group has previously claimed responsibility for church bombings that killed dozens.

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Guinea-Bissau authorities say they are searching for Captain Pansau N’Tchama believed to have commanded the recently failed coup.

The Country’s military source said the country’s northern borders with Senegal were being “strictly controlled”.

“Some fugitives could cross into this neighbouring country. We have put all our units on alert,” the source said on condition of anonymity.

N’Tchama was the head of a commando unit that assassinated president Joao Bernardo Vieira in 2009. He returned last week from Portugal where he had been undergoing military training since July 2009, security sources said.

It was not immediately clear why N’Tchama might have carried out the assault, but the captain is also a former associate of the government overthrown in the April coup.

“The government considers Portugal, the CPLP (the Community of Portuguese Language Countries) and Carlos Gomes Junior as the instigators of this attempt at destabilisation,” said a statement read by Communications Minister Fernando Vaz.

Its aim was “to overthrow the transitional government undermine the political process that is under way with one objective, to bring Carlos Gomes Junior back to power and justify an international stabilisation force”, it said.

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CHINA does not seek the economic takeover of the West African region but is poised to assist in the realisation of the development of badly needed infrastructure as well as interconnectivity of the area.

The Vice Minister, Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, Li Jinzao, made the declaration yesterday in Abuja while signing an agreement on infrastructural development and economic cooperation with the leadership of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Under the terms of the agreement, China is to carry out two specific requests of the ECOWAS. They are the building of the trans-West African highway (which will go through nine states) and the construction of the ECOWAS headquarters building extension in Abuja.

Fielding a question from The Guardian at the high-level meeting on Economic, Trade, Investment and Technical Cooperation yesterday in Abuja, Jinzao said: “Chinese assistance is on humanitarian basis. We supported after and during the liberation struggles and during the fight against colonialism in the 1960s and early 70s.

China also supported Tanzania and Zambia to construct the Trans Sahara railway line and we did not do this in order to get anything in return.

“China has made sacrifices for Africa and our gain is justice and common experience of human beings, in sharing in the common aspiration of Africans.

From the time and now, China sees itself and the countries in Africa as both developing countries in poverty and that Africa is even more critical.”

Early this year, China announced the donation of its newly built $200 million state-of-the-art headquarter complex to the African Union. Nigeria also recently confirmed that it was taking a $1.1 billion loan from China, fuelling fresh fears about the Chinese grand design to penetrate African economies for a hidden futuristic gain.

Fielding questions, Jinzao said further: “Our gain is not in material or financial terms but the satisfaction that we are contributing to the progress and development of other people. Over the past decade, China has provided grants to African countries and has announced debt cancellations.

There are no political strings attached to our assistance packages and China does not seek to interfere in the domestic affairs of the nations that we have economic cooperation with”

The ECOWAS-China deal is part of the general Chinese development cooperation with the sub-regional organisation, chief of which is to help develop infrastructure partnership by mandating Chinese companies and financial institutions to develop priority projects.

It also stems from some of the general understanding reached in July this year during the China-African Forum in Beijing.

On this, the Chinese minister maintained yesterday that “China is willing to support this area of interest (infrastructure). All that is required is for there to be an understanding and support for the projects by the nine states that the road project would be linking.”

In his remarks, the ECOWAS Vice President, Toga McIntosh, said: “We do hope that in the implementation of the agreement, both sides would work diligently to allow for adequate access to the US$20 billion of credit line provided by the government of China to African countries to assist us in developing infrastructure, agriculture, manufacturing and small and medium sized enterprises.

We shall work hard on this and working together, West Africa as a region, stands to gain from our strategic partnership arrangement with our Chinese brothers and sisters.”

On the sustainability of the partnership, he said: “West Africa-China relationship is a win-win situation. We are prepared to work. The Chinese are already hardworking people. Now, if you have a partner who goes to work and thinks hard and you sleep off and metaphorically go to the drinking bar and drink yourself to stupor, that other partner would win.”

According to him, ECOWAS’ inspiration in working with China is “drawn from the knowledge that established Chinese companies and financial institutions are called upon to take part in transnational and trans-regional infrastructural development in Africa.”