A picture taken on October 2004 shows a northern white rhinoceros named Fatu (C) at the Dvur Kralove zoo, east Bohemia. (Pic: AFP)
One of the last northern white rhinos on the planet has died in a reserve in Kenya, leaving the sub-species on the verge of extinction, experts said on Saturday.
The male, called Suni, “was probably the last male capable of breeding”, according to Dvur Kralove zoo in the Czech Republic, where the rhino was born in 1980.
There are only six of the very rare rhinos left, having been hunted by poachers in central and east Africa for their horns, which are highly prized for traditional Chinese medicine.
The Czech zoo is the only one in the world to have succeeded in breeding the sub-species in captivity.
Suni – who is thought to have died from natural causes in the Ol Pejeta reserve – was one of two males and two females from Dvur Kralove zoo reintroduced into the wild in Kenya in 2009, in an operation dubbed “the last chance of survival”.
It was hoped that the females’ hormones would normalise in the wild, but even attempts at assisted conception failed.
“One can always believe in miracles but everything leads us to believe that hope they would reproduce naturally has gone,” the zoo’s spokesperson Jana Mysliveckova told AFP.
Sperm from the males born at Dvur Kralove has been conserved at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin.
Another pair of the rhinos, too old to reproduce, live at the Wild Animal Park in San Diego in the United States, with another aged female remaining at Dvur Kralove, close to the border with Poland.
“The number of rhinos killed by poachers has increased incredibly in the past few years,” Mysliveckova said. “According to some scenarios, there will be no rhinos left in the wild in Africa in 10 years or so.”
Mozambicans queue outside a polling station in Maputo to vote in presidential and legislative elections on October 15 2014. (Pic: AFP)
Voters in neat lines started casting their ballots in the capital Maputo shortly after 7 am, with Frelimo facing growing discontent amid an apparent popular swing towards the opposition.
“We want change. We want to choose a new, young leader,” said student Erisma Invasse, who was queueing at the Polana secondary school in an upmarket suburb.
“We want someone with new ideas,” agreed her friend, Raina Muaria. Both are voting for the first time in presidential elections.
The presidential race pits Frelimo’s Filipe Nyusi (55), the former defence minister, against the veteran leader of former rebel group Renamo, Afonso Dhlakama (61).
Also in the running is Daviz Simango (50), founder of the Mozambique Democratic Party (MDM).
“I am convinced of a victory,” Nyusi told reporters after casting his ballot. “We have worked for a long time, very hard to prepare for this election.”
Dhlakama, who voted at the same polling station, has cried foul each time he lost in previous elections but expressed hope that this vote will be free and fair.
“Results will be accepted when they are clean. As you know on the African continent, results are often not clean,” he said.
“We hope for the first time in Mozambique results will be acceptable, proper and with credibility. I believe this.”
The government amended election laws earlier this year as part of peace negotiations with Renamo, which demanded that the opposition be given greater control over the electoral process in bid to improve transparency.
The third presidential aspirant, Simango, voted in the second biggest city Beira, where he is mayor.
Voter surveys cannot be published in Mozambique, but judging from the turnout at some campaign rallies, Frelimo could be in for a shock.
The party’s glitzy final rally in its southern fiefdom of Maputo failed to attract a capacity crowd.
Frelimo presidential candidate Filipe Nyusi supporters cheer during the party’s final campaign rally on October 12 on the outskirts of Maputo. (Pic: AFP)
Twenty-seven parties and two coalitions are competing for the favour of 10.9 million registered voters in the presidential race, plus polls for national and provincial assemblies.
Desire for change Analysts say that while Frelimo is expected to win the election, the opposition is likely to make significant inroads, reducing the ruling party’s overwhelming majority of 75 percent garnered in the last vote.
The desire for change has been driven by a wealth gap that persists despite huge mineral resources, with fast economic growth sidestepping the bulk of a population that is among the world’s poorest.
Renamo, which has lost all elections since the end of the country’s 16-year civil war in 1992, has made a comeback, trying to spruce up its image after emerging from a low-level insurgency waged in the centre of the country just weeks ahead of the election.
“The recent (September 5) peace agreement is an opportunity for Renamo,” said Nelson Alusala, a researcher with the Pretoria-based Institute of Security Studies.
“Mozambicans may be attracted to Renamo for the simple reason of wanting change,” he said.
At the same time the fledgling MDM, led by the mayor of the second largest city of Beira, is gaining popularity.
Formed five years ago, the MDM gained around 40 percent of the vote in Maputo in last December’s municipal elections.
If none of the three garners more than 50 percent of the vote, a run-off will be held within 30 days after official final results.
Official results are expected 15 days after polling.
Campaigners for the release of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls hold candles at a vigil for them on October 12 2014 in Abuja. (Pic: AFP)
Protesters calling for the release of 219 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram militants are set to mark the six-month anniversary of their abduction with a march on the presidency on Tuesday.
Members of the Bring Back Our Girls campaign are planning to walk to President Goodluck Jonathan’s official residence in Abuja to keep up the pressure on the government to bring the missing teenagers home.
The march is the culmination of a series of events in the past week, including a candlelit vigil, to keep the fate of the girls in the public eye, as media coverage and on-line interest wanes.
The daughter and niece of Enoch Mark, an elder in Chibok from where the girls were abducted, are among those missing.
“At one point we contemplated holding funeral rites for the girls as our tradition provides,” he told AFP.
Parents have run the gamut of emotions in the last six months, from initial hope to despair and back again, he added.
“But the discovery of a girl last month… who was kidnapped by Boko Haram in January gave us renewed hope that our girls would be found.
“If this girl could regain freedom after nine months in captivity all hope is not lost that our daughters would one day be free.
“This has rekindled our hope and strengthened our patience. We are ready to wait six years on hoping to have our daughters back with us.”
Some 276 girls were seized from their dormitories at the Government Girls Secondary School in the remote town of Chibok in Borno state, northeastern Nigeria, on the night of April 14.
Fifty-seven managed to escape and Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau later threatened to sell the remainder as slave brides, vowing they would not be released until militant prisoners were freed from jail.
In late May, Nigeria’s most senior military officer, Chief of Defence Staff Alex Badeh, said the girls had been located but ruled out a rescue because of the danger to the girls’ lives.
Since then, nothing has been seen or heard from the girls while back channel talks with militant leaders have stalled.
The girls’ initial weeks in captivity sparked a frenzy of media coverage and interest online, where the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls trended on Twitter and was retweeted the world over.
Worldwide efforts Nigerian Bring Back Our Girls campaigners have since held regular marches in Abuja, even as global attention shifted elsewhere and foreign missions involved in the search grew frustrated at the lack of progress.
“Globally, the movement has definitely slowed down,” acknowledged Molade Alawode, of the Washington-based non-profit organisation Act4Accountability, which spearheaded protests in the US capital to highlight the girls’ plight.
But she said efforts were continuing, including providing relief supplies for the tens of thousands of people displaced by the conflict in Nigeria’s far northeast.
An online petition on change.org launched earlier this year by Ify Elueze, a Nigerian student in Germany, has drawn more than one million signatures, with more names being added every day, many of them from the United States.
In Los Angeles, documentary filmmaker Ramaa Mosley keeps a running total of the number of days the girls have been held on her social media accounts, taking inspiration from the Nigerian protesters still on the streets.
“Of course, since there is less information to print, there is less of a focus in the news but my experience is that individuals that first came forwarded to organise events and rallies have held strong and continued to support the cause,” she said.
“Our followers on Facebook want to help and continue to take actions both big and small to keep the girl’s plight in the minds and hearts of their community.
“My feeling is, the pain of this travesty is so big and there are so much other painful world news but there are many, many who have not stopped working daily on behalf of the Chibok girls.
Former Malawian president Joyce Banda. (Pic: Reuters)
A Malawi court on Tuesday ordered a senior government official jailed for three years, in the first sentence to be handed down in the so-called Cashgate scandal that led to the suspension of foreign aid to the country.
Treza Namathanga Senzani, the former principal secretary in the tourism ministry, pleaded guilty to stealing $150 000 from state coffers, and was condemned to three years behind bars for money laundering and theft.
“Despite being a first offender, she does not deserve a suspended sentence,” ruled judge Ivy Kamanga.
The judge also ordered that the funds she pilfered be forfeited to government. The cash was part of a broader swindle worth at least $30 million.
The scandal prompted foreign donors – who provide around 40 percent of Malawi’s budget – to pull the plug on aid of around $150 million (118 million euros).
The Cashgate scheme is the biggest financial scandal in Malawi’s history, and helped push former president Joyce Banda out of power during elections in May.
The judge said that as a principal secretary, Senzani “was a custodian of money and willingly stole government money”.
“It was an illegal act that had an impact on the economy.”
Senzani (50), who looked composed after the two-hour long sentence ruling, was arrested last year after a probe found she issued two government cheques to her own company even though it did not provide any goods or services to the state.
She is one of the dozens of civil servants charged with theft and money laundering.
Defence lawyer Nector Mhura plans to appeal the sentence.
Uganda is probably the last place a gay holidaymaker would want to visit, but tourism bosses in the east African nation are nevertheless trying to achieve the seemingly impossible.
Earlier this year the country drew international condemnation after passing anti-homosexuality legislation – since struck down – that could have seen gays jailed for life.
Uganda’s tourism representatives and private sector businesses, however, have rallied to assure gay and lesbian travellers that they have nothing to fear.
“No one is actually being killed,” asserted Babra Adoso of the Association of Uganda Tour Operators.
“We are not aware of anybody who has been asked at the airport ‘what is your sexual inclination?’ or been turned away,” she told AFP.
In a move that raised eyebrows, members of the Uganda Tourism Board (UTB) and other industry representatives from Uganda met recently with the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association (IGLTA), a gay-friendly global travel network.
The September 8 meeting, organised by the Africa Travel Association (ATA) and held at their New York headquarters, came a month after Uganda’s constitutional court struck down the anti-gay legislation on a technicality.
Still, under a standing colonial-era Penal Code, anyone in Uganda – including expatriates and visitors – can in theory still be jailed for “carnal knowledge against the order of nature”. Ugandan MPs are also attempting to reintroduce the tougher bill in parliament.
Two Britons living in Uganda have been deported in the past 18 months for homosexuality-related crimes.
Adoso, however, is adamant that Uganda – known as the “Pearl of Africa” and before the outcry over the law designated by Lonely Planet as a top travel destination – is safe for gays and lesbians and that the country had been “misunderstood”.
The legislation, she said, was for the “protection of children” against paedophiles.
“Children have been recruited into acts,” Adoso said. “We’ve had stories of how children were forcefully taken to Kenya and recruited into the act and forced to actually, you know, pose nude and everything else.”
Gay rights groups, she said, were “possibly using exaggerated stories” about their own predicament in order to get funding from overseas.
Serious image problem The Ugandan Tourism Board admitted the country was now battling a serious image problem.
Sylvia Kalembe, the UTB’s officer in charge of product development, said she and others who attended the meeting in New York were “in shock at how people perceive us”.
“Someone has turned it around and used it against Uganda,” she said of the international condemnation – which included US Secretary of State John Kerry likening the law to anti-Semitic legislation in Nazi Germany.
John Tanzella, the head of the IGLTA, said the body appreciated being invited to meet with Ugandan authorities, but added that their 90-minute discussion was a “starting point only” – signalling the country still had a way to go if it wanted to attract gay and lesbian tourists.
“As with other destinations that have struggled with issues of homophobia, we advise LGBT travellers to exercise caution if they decide to visit,” he told AFP.
Ugandan gay rights activists are equally sceptical on the initiative, saying the country should first look at how it treats its own citizens who happen to be gay.
“It’s very difficult for us to even move from one town to another,” said activist Pepe Julian Onziema, adding that the pronouncements by Uganda tourism representatives gave the impression there was one law for locals and another for foreigners.
“The freedom has to begin with us,” he said.
Selling Uganda to gays is one of several curious initiatives the Ugandan Tourism Board has come up with this year as it tries to counter a drop in tourism – a key earner for impoverished Uganda that accounts for 8.4 percent of GDP.
In March, Stephen Asiimwe, chief executive of the UTB, announced a plan to create an “Idi Amin Tourism Trail” for those interested in Uganda’s murderous dictator who was ousted in 1979.
“Idi Amin is the most popular Ugandan ever but no one is making use of him. We have to develop this trail,” he was quoted as saying in the New Vision newspaper, saying this could rival other global tragedies-turned-tourist-spots like Holocaust sites in Germany and Poland or the genocide museum in neighbouring Rwanda.
More recently, the UTB has been promoting a Ugandan coming-of-age festival involving the traditional ritual circumcision of boys aged between 13 and 18 years of age.
