With South Africa's national elections only days away, the killings of three political workers in KwaZulu-Natal Province this weekend have heightened concerns that a longtime struggle for power there may bubble over into further strife.
But political officials there all but ruled out the prospect of widespread violence like that of the early 1990s, when political warfare claimed thousands of lives -- or even like that just before the 1999 elections, when perhaps 200 died.
The political workers who died -- two from the African National Congress (ANC), one from the rival Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) -- were killed in two separate attacks on Good Friday, a national holiday here. The two ANC workers and two other party workers were abducted as they left a church in Mqedandaba, about 145km northwest of Durban. One man escaped with injuries, and a second remains missing.
One IFP worker was killed in an apparently unrelated incident on Friday elsewhere in the province, the third such death in two weeks.
At least 10 party workers from both parties have died this year in what are widely assumed to be politically motivated attacks.
The ANC is locked in a bitter fight with the IFP for political dominance of KwaZulu-Natal, the only one of South Africa's nine provinces not under ANC control. The IFP has broad support among Zulus in the province's rural areas, while the Xhosa-dominated ANC holds a majority in Durban, the biggest city. With far more money and control of the national government, the ANC has undertaken an all-out effort to dislodge the Inkatha majority, sending President Thabo Mbeki and his Zulu deputy president, Jacob Zuma, to campaign there.
In the province's predominantly Zulu region not far from the scene of Friday's killings of the ANC workers, Mbeki told an ANC rally on Saturday that security would be tightened for Wednesday's vote.
"We must allow everybody in the country to decide who to vote for without fear of being killed or their houses being burned down," he said.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
FAKE NEWS? ‘When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,’ a civic group said The top US broadcast regulator on Saturday threatened media outlets over negative coverage of the Middle East war, after US President Donald Trump slammed critical headlines from the “Fake News Media.” The US president since his first term has derided mainstream media as “fake news” and has sued major outlets over what he sees as unfair coverage. Brendan Carr, head of the US Federal Communications Commission — which oversees the nation’s radio, television and Internet media — said broadcasters risked losing their licenses over news coverage. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
INFLUTENTIAL THEORIST: Habermas was particularly critical of the ‘limited interest’ shown by German politicians in ‘shaping a politically effective Europe Jurgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96. Habermas’ publisher, Suhrkamp, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich. Habermas frequently weighed in on political matters over several decades. His extensive writing crossed the boundaries of academic and philosophical disciplines, providing a vision of modern society and social interaction. His best-known works included the two-volume Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas, who was 15 at the time of Nazi Germany’s defeat, later recalled the dawn of
RSS