WHO head Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus faces a challenge all humanitarians know well

The Democratic Alliance has been accused of inflaming racial tensions in Phoenix. Local residents belonging to a protection group stand watch in July 2021 at the height of the violence, writes Prof Steven Friedman.

When powerful regimes wish to sidestep the tag of being labelled practitioners of unilateralism in a globalised world, they are often quick to put together disguised forms of the same concept, using a different title.

For those of us who have read and reread, taught, and written about the fiction of Abdulrazak Gurnah, the Nobel Prize in Literature committee has confirmed what we knew all along. His superb writing deserves much wider recognition and readership.

Challenging the scepticism and resistance in the public response to the COVID-19 vaccine is deeply important to the state of public health. This is a critical conversation because people are protesting the COVID-19 vaccines not just in South Africa, but globally too.

From 5th – 8th October, the much-anticipated “Biennale of Luanda” will be held in Angola. Described as the “Pan-African Forum for the Culture of Peace”, the Biennale of Luanda is a joint initiative of the African Union (AU), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the government of Angola.

Political analyst Sanusha Naidu says the easing of coronavirus lockdown restrictions comes as no surprise given the need for political parties to campaign ahead of the Local Government Elections.

The popularity of the African National Congress (ANC), which has governed South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994, has slipped in successive elections from its high of over 60%. First it declined to under 60% , then to below 50% in the cities of Tshwane, Johannesburg, and Nelson Mandela Bay in 2016.

In 2013, the world stood at the precipice of a global war. The US President Barrack Obama had his finger on the trigger. He was enraged by the chemical attack in Ghouta, Syria, which he squarely blamed on the regime of the besieged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

President Cyril Ramaphosa says his government will crack the whip and punish public servants who benefited irregularly from the COVID-19 social grant relief.

Earlier this year the UK introduced a “traffic light” system in yet another attempt to contain and mitigate the effects of COVID-19.

During the 76th session of the UN General Assembly this week, Chinese President Xi Jinping made an impassioned plea to the international community to improve global governance and commit to practicing “true multilateralism”.

The number of COVID-19 cases in Ethiopia has been increasing. The Delta variant has been identified recently in the country, but officials are still investigating if it is driving the resurgence.

South Africa is rich in natural heritage, and that’s universally supported and appreciated.  But it’s also extremely rich in cultural heritage, but that is a double-edged sword, writes Janet Whitton.

The Institute of Election Management Services in Africa (IEMSA) says going to the local government elections, the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) will face many challenges, including the distribution of ballot papers.

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari is about to take over the presidency of the Pan-African Agency of the Great Green Wall – the continent’s effort to restore degraded cropland, grazing areas and woodlands bordering the Sahara Desert. He takes over from Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, president of Mauritania.

South Africans are heading to the polls to elect their local government leaders but with the current state of municipalities, more than anything, these elections will be futile because the very same leaders will campaign for the next five years instead of accounting for the last five, writes Vusi Gumbi.

A recent report by the global advocacy organisation Amnesty International painted a dire picture of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Somalia. Based on interviews with health workers, government officials, and finance and debt relief experts, the report concludes that the government’s response to the pandemic has been “wholly inadequate”

The phrase “Never Forget” is often associated with the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But what does this phrase mean for U.S. students who are too young to remember? What are they being asked to never forget?

The youth of the country need to be taught to be South African youth and accordingly behave like historical young people of South Africa. Rhetorical as it may sound, the current generation of South African youth are not behaving in tandem with the past young generations.

London-based GB News channel has ruffled feathers with its raw take on current affairs, paving a way for a far-right, pro-Brexit agenda that is set to dominate the UK politics for a while longer as long as the Conservatives are in power, write Abbey Makoe.

Market research firm, Ipsos, says a recent political opinion poll has shown a possible decrease in support for the African National Congress in the upcoming Local Government Elections.

Nigeria’s journey to the Petroleum Industry Act started in 2000 under President Olusegun Obasanjo, who inaugurated an oil and gas sector reform implementation committee. The committee’s report formed the basis of the first Petroleum Industry Bill eight years later.

In a rare no-holds-barred public repudiation, during which the traditional diplomatic decorum was temporarily placed in abeyance – the Chinese authorities in SA shred into pieces a US government report that persists on Washington’s standpoint that COVID-19 could have originated in Wuhan, China.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the way elections are conducted across the world. South Africa, too, is faced with an unprecedented situation of having to decide whether to postpone its municipal elections, scheduled for 27 October.

On the 20th of August 2021, Minister of the South African Police Service (SAPS), General Bheki Cele, announced the official release of the national crime statistics for quarter one (April - June) of the 2021/22 financial year period. The statistics revealed that contact crimes such as murder, attempted murder, sexual offences and all categories of assault registered a staggering 60,6% increase, compared to the corresponding period of the previous financial year.

The International Labour Organisation states that the world average ratio of informal to formal jobs is 2 to 1, yet in South Africa it is 1 to 2, suggesting that the majority of the 11 million missing jobs are in the informal sector.

Nigeria is sitting on a demographic goldmine that could transform the economy. About 60% of Nigeria’s 200 million people are under the age of 25, and that number is expected to increase significantly by 2050.

Images of scores of desperate Afghan men, women and children – some clinging to a slowly moving US plane in a bid to sneak in, painted a horrific picture of America’s gross foreign policy failure.

Since the record-breaking success of Ramsey Nouah’s 2019 sequel to the Nollywood classic, Living in Bondage, the Nigerian film industry has been overtaken by a frenzy of remakes and sequels of classics from the 1990s.

There’s been an increase in COVID-19 deaths across Africa since mid-July 2021. But the impact of the pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa remains markedly lower compared to the Americas, Europe and Asia.