标签： Africa

As conflict continues to drive thousands of Sudanese civilians across the border into South Sudan, a rapidly escalating water crisis has pushed already vulnerable displaced populations to the brink of survival in the remote Upper Nile State settlement of Chemedi Payam.

Long before the first light of day touches the arid landscape of Chemedi Payam, women and children clutching empty plastic buckets gather in long lines, waiting for water deliveries that may never materialize. For many of these displaced people, the daily fight for clean water consumes every waking hour, pushing other basic needs like meals to the background. “We wake up at 3:00 am local time and come here to look for water,” explained Amna Ibrahim, one of thousands of Sudanese refugees who fled cross-border conflict to seek safety in South Sudan. “We haven’t even had breakfast because we came early to fetch water.”

Today, Chemedi is home to roughly 58,000 people, the vast majority of whom are Sudanese refugees and South Sudanese returnees fleeing neighboring violence. What makes this crisis particularly stark is that the settlement sits in close proximity to the Nile, one of the continent’s largest and most reliable water sources. Aid workers and local administrators emphasize that the shortage does not stem from a lack of available water, but from a catastrophic gap in critical infrastructure needed to safely extract, purify and distribute water to the scattered communities that make up the settlement.

Most functional boreholes in the area are out of service, water storage capacity is drastically limited, and no large-scale water treatment systems exist to serve the growing population. Seasonal water collection points dry up entirely during extended dry seasons, leaving residents with two bad options: rely on sporadic water trucking deliveries, or turn to unsafe, unregulated water sources. For most households, consistent access to clean water depends entirely on aid-funded tanker operations, but humanitarian groups warn these life-sustaining services are being choked off by crippling funding shortfalls. “If the tanker doesn’t come, we don’t know what we will do,” said Zainab Yasin, another Sudanese refugee living in the settlement.

Local authorities note that the sudden, rapid influx of thousands of people fleeing Sudan’s ongoing violence has completely overwhelmed the region’s already overstretched water infrastructure, which was inadequate to serve local populations even before the refugee crisis began. Beyond the immediate threat of dehydration and hunger, the lack of reliable clean water is undermining life-saving critical services, particularly for malnourished children and new and expecting mothers.

At a primary healthcare clinic supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and its implementing partners, medical teams treat dozens of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition every day, alongside hundreds of pregnant and breastfeeding women. “Water is a major gap in Chemedi. Without it, our nutrition services cannot function properly,” said Jansuk Alex Sworo, a nutrition specialist working in the settlement. Sworo explained that the ongoing funding crisis for water services has left both the clinic and surrounding communities in a constant state of crisis. Currently, aid groups haul water 80 kilometers from the town of Renk to Chemedi, but this stopgap measure is financially unsustainable under current funding levels.

With no other options available, large numbers of residents have been forced to turn to unsafe water sources, including untreated water from shallow unregulated wells and seasonal holding ponds that dry up within weeks of the dry season starting. This puts the entire population at high risk of outbreaks of waterborne diseases like cholera and typhoid.

The impact of the crisis extends far beyond health outcomes, tearing apart access to education for refugee children. At the local primary school, 650 children are enrolled, most of them refugees, but classes are routinely cut short as early as 11 a.m. because of the lack of water for students and staff. “We have an issue with water here, and that is why we release learners at 11:00 am,” said head teacher Awadia Paulo Adowk. Some families have pulled their children out of school entirely, as every able family member is needed to join the daily search for water. “Sometimes we get water, and after two days, we don’t have anything to drink,” said Rasham Mohamed Sheikh Al-Din, a mother of eight whose children no longer attend classes regularly.

Local government leaders and international aid workers are now urgently calling for expanded global financial and logistical support to address the growing unmet water needs of Chemedi’s vulnerable population, warning that without immediate intervention the crisis could quickly turn deadly.

On the banks of Angola’s Kwanza River stands a 430-year-old white-washed church that holds a deeply layered, painful history: built by Portuguese colonizers as part of a 16th-century fortress complex, the Church of Our Lady of Muxima long served as a critical node in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Today, as Pope Leo XIV prepares to visit the site during his first papal tour of Africa, the stop has emerged as a symbolic moment of reckoning, reconciliation, and reimagining for the global Catholic Church.

For more than a century, a gap has sat in Zimbabwe’s national heritage: one of eight iconic ancient soapstone bird sculptures, looted by colonial invaders and scattered across the globe, remained outside the country’s borders. That changed this week, when the final missing Zimbabwe Bird touched down on home soil 137 years after it was ripped from its original place at the Great Zimbabwe ruins, in a landmark repatriation organized by neighboring South Africa.

Known globally as the Zimbabwe Bird, this stately eagle carving has been embedded in the country’s national identity for generations, featured prominently on Zimbabwe’s flag, banknotes, and official coat of arms. But few symbols carry as layered a history as this carving, one that traces a long arc of colonial theft, decades of diplomatic negotiation, and a growing global movement to return looted African cultural heritage.

The eight original bird sculptures were carved between the 11th and 15th centuries for Great Zimbabwe, a sprawling medieval stone city that gave the modern nation its name — Zimbabwe translates to “house of stone” in local languages, and the country remains celebrated worldwide for its contemporary stone carving tradition. The birds, ranging from 25 centimeters to 50 centimeters in height (and reaching more than a meter when mounted on their original columns), were placed on walls and stone monoliths to watch over the city.

Scholars have not reached a consensus on which ethnic group originally created the carvings, though many believe they are the work of ancestors of the Shona people, who make up Zimbabwe’s current majority population. The birds carry deep cultural and spiritual meaning: most experts agree they depict either the bateleur eagle (called *chapungu* in Shona, a sacred species to both Shona and Venda communities) or the African fish eagle. Plan Shenjere-Nyabezi, an archaeology professor at the University of Zimbabwe, calls the Zimbabwe Birds “the most significant archaeological treasures ever discovered in the country, powerful and cherished symbols of our national heritage.”

The theft of the final bird began in 1889, when European hunter Willi Posselt stumbled on the Great Zimbabwe ruins amid a wave of pre-colonial exploration. According to Posselt’s own writing, local people armed with spears and guns initially protested his removal of what he called the “best specimen” of the birds, but he ripped the carving from its column after exchanging blankets and other goods for access. He ultimately sold the sculpture to Cecil Rhodes, the infamous British imperialist who led the colonization of what is now Zimbabwe and Zambia. Rhodes displayed the bird as decorative art at his lavish Cape Town estate, where it remained for more than a century after his death in 1902.

Over the decades, the other missing birds slowly made their way home. After Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980, the new government launched a formal campaign to recover all eight carvings, with only two remaining within the country’s borders at the time. In a striking 1981 trade, South Africa’s apartheid government returned four birds it held in a national museum in exchange for a collection of 1,000 insect specimens from Zimbabwe’s Natural History Museum. Germany followed suit in 2003, repatriating a soapstone pedestal fragment that had been held in Berlin’s Ethnological Museum since 1907.

But the final bird held by South Africa was blocked for decades by a century-old legal barrier. When Rhodes died, his 1902 will vested his estate and all its contents to the South African government, and the 1910 Rhodes Will Act banned the sale or transfer of any of his possessions. Every request for repatriation from Zimbabwe was rejected on the basis of this law, according to South African Minister of Culture Gayton McKenzie.

This week, South Africa overcame that legal obstacle to complete the handover, alongside the repatriation of eight sets of Zimbabwean human remains exhumed by colonial researchers and held in a South African museum. McKenzie called the removal of the remains a product of “misguided colonial pseudoscience,” noting “these are not abstractions, but people… removed from their graves, their communities, and their homeland under the logic that their bodies were data.”

To get around the 1910 Act, South Africa initially arranged a two-year loan of the sculpture to Zimbabwe, but McKenzie has confirmed that the South African government is currently reviewing the century-old law to formalize permanent repatriation, and insists the bird will never be returned to South Africa. The handover was welcomed by Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who called the moment “the return of a national icon.”

The repatriation marks a rare milestone in the global movement for the return of looted African artefacts: while most repatriations to date have come from European colonial powers including France, the Netherlands, Germany, and the United Kingdom, this transfer sees an African nation returning stolen heritage to another African country. Zimbabwe continues to push for the repatriation of other cultural items, including the skulls of 19th-century anti-colonial heroes believed to be held in the UK.

For Zimbabwean leaders and scholars, the return of the final bird is more than a cultural victory — it is a spiritual homecoming. The carving will be placed on permanent display at an on-site museum at the Great Zimbabwe UNESCO World Heritage Site, where it will join the seven other recovered birds for preservation. “The bird is Zimbabwe’s heritage… one should not have to travel to other countries to enjoy their own heritage,” said Shenjere-Nyabezi.

Edward Matenga, one of Zimbabwe’s leading scholars of the Zimbabwe Bird sculptures, described the handover as a “win-win” for both nations, calling it a cathartic step for South Africa to confront its colonial legacy. The arrival of the bird also came just days ahead of Zimbabwe’s independence anniversary, with Mnangagwa noting the timely homecoming: “Let the people of Zimbabwe come and witness. Let the children of this great nation see with their own eyes the symbol of their identity and let the world know Zimbabwe is a nation that respects its past.”

JOHANNESBURG – In a high-profile legal development that echoes the long controversial legacy of Zimbabwe’s former authoritarian leader Robert Mugabe, Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe, the 28-year-old youngest son of the late president and his second wife Grace Mugabe, has avoided a serious attempted murder charge through a last-minute plea deal with South African prosecutors. Chatunga Mugabe and his cousin and co-accused Tobias Mugabe Matonhodze have been held in custody since mid-February, after the two were linked to a shooting that left Sipho Mahlangu, a domestic employee at a private residence, injured and hospitalized.

Under the terms of the agreement finalized in court on Friday, Chatunga Mugabe entered guilty pleas to two lesser charges: pointing an object that led another person to reasonably believe it was a loaded firearm in a separate incident unrelated to the shooting, and violating South African immigration law by entering and remaining in the country without valid documentation. Matonhodze, by contrast, pleaded guilty to five total charges, including the original count of attempted murder, along with unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition, obstructing the course of justice, and illegal immigration.

The pair’s legal representative Sinenhlanhla Mnguni confirmed to reporters outside the Johannesburg courthouse that the Section 112 plea deal under South Africa’s Criminal Procedure Act was reached after initial rounds of plea and sentencing negotiations fell apart. This legal mechanism allows defendants to avoid a lengthy, public full jury trial, streamlining the conclusion of the case. Defense attorney Advocate Laurence Hodes pushed the court for leniency during sentencing arguments, noting that neither man had prior criminal convictions. Hodes added that the pair had already reached a private financial settlement with the shooting victim Mahlangu, and confirmed they were prepared to pay any fine the court hand down.

However, the case remains marked by unresolved questions around the shooting itself. Lead police witness Lieutenant Colonel Raj Ramchunder testified to the court that investigators have yet to recover the weapon used to shoot Mahlangu, and that the two accused have refused to cooperate with authorities to locate the firearm. Ramchunder emphasized that the pair were present at the scene when the shot was fired that injured Mahlangu, and have clear knowledge of where the weapon is hidden. “The accused shows no remorse in assisting the police in any way to point out the firearm,” Ramchunder told the court.

The judge accepted the guilty pleas from both defendants and has scheduled sentencing for April 24, leaving the final legal outcome pending. This case is not the first time a member of the Mugabe family has faced legal controversy in South Africa. In 2017, Grace Mugabe was accused of assaulting a young South African model named Gabriella Engels, striking her in the forehead with an extension cord during an altercation at a Johannesburg hotel. The South African government granted Grace Mugabe diplomatic immunity amid widespread public outcry from opposition parties and human rights groups, allowing her to leave the country without facing prosecution.

An estimated 120,000 worshippers and onlookers packed into Douala’s Japoma Stadium on Friday to join Pope Leo XIV for an open-air Mass, marking the largest gathering of his 11-day pan-African apostolic journey. The event comes on the heels of the pontiff’s Thursday visit to Cameroon’s restive Anglophone region, where a separatist insurgency has gripped the area for more than a decade.

Jubilant crowds lined the route to the stadium as Pope Leo XIV traveled through the crowd in the Popemobile, greeting the throngs of waiting devotees with warm waves. Many attendees had gone to extraordinary lengths to secure a good vantage point, with some camping outside the stadium grounds as early as Thursday night – waiting more than 24 hours in total to see the pontiff. Despite sweltering tropical temperatures, devotees of all generations, including dozens of local clergy, turned out to participate in the historic occasion.

During his address at the Mass, Pope Leo centered his remarks on spiritual guidance for Cameroon’s youth, urging young people to nurture diverse talents and invest in the well-being of their local communities. “Reject every form of abuse or violence, which deceives by promising easy gains but hardens the heart and makes it insensitive,” he told the crowd. “Do not let yourselves be corrupted by temptations that waste your energies and do not serve the progress of society,” he added.

Many attendees who spoke to media after the service shared that they felt profound joy at the opportunity to see and hear from the Pope, reflecting widespread hope among Cameroonians that his visit will help advance peace efforts across the conflict-affected nation. Photographs from the event show worshippers adapting to the harsh heat: some held up umbrellas or books to block the harsh sun, while others wiped sweat from their brows throughout the service. Devotion took many forms across the packed crowd, with some clasping hands in quiet prayer and others prostrating themselves to honor the pontiff’s visit.

The Douala Mass falls on the fifth day of Pope Leo’s 11-day Africa tour, and his third full day in Cameroon. Before arriving in the Central African nation, the Pope launched his journey in Algeria, marking the first time any sitting Pope has visited the majority-Muslim North African country. Following his time in Cameroon, Pope Leo will travel to Angola on Saturday, before concluding his continental trip in Equatorial Guinea. Beyond the public Mass, the pontiff also made a pastoral visit to Douala’s St Paul Catholic Hospital during his time in the coastal economic hub.

Almost two months after his arrest over a shooting that left a 23-year-old security guard critically injured in South Africa’s Johannesburg, Bellarmine Mugabe, the youngest son of Zimbabwe’s late long-ruling former president Robert Mugabe, has entered guilty pleas to two of the charges against him: pointing a firearm and unlawful presence in South Africa. The 28-year-old entered the pleas following a pre-trial deal with prosecutors, leaving the original attempted murder charge against him unresolved as the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) of South Africa has not issued any public comment on the status of that count. Mugabe appeared alongside his 33-year-old co-accused Tobias Matonhodze at the Alexandra Regional Court on Friday, with both men having remained in custody since their arrest on 19 February. Matonhodze has pleaded guilty to four separate charges: attempted murder, defeating the ends of justice, unlawful immigration and illegal possession of ammunition. According to prosecution accounts, the shooting broke out following a heated altercation between the two accused and the victim at Mugabe’s residential property in Hyde Park, one of Johannesburg’s most affluent suburban neighborhoods. As the victim attempted to flee the scene, he was shot twice in the back, and was rushed to a nearby hospital in critical condition. Law enforcement officers launched a full search of the property following the incident, but have not yet recovered the weapon used in the attack. Lawyers representing both defendants informed the court that their clients are willing to voluntarily return to Zimbabwe at their own cost if the court chooses not to hand down custodial sentences. Sentencing hearings have been scheduled for 24 April, the NPA confirmed. This high-profile case has already been marked by multiple procedural delays, with two postponements of Mugabe’s initial bail application since his arrest. This is not the first time Bellarmine Mugabe, one of two children Robert Mugabe shared with his second wife Grace, has run afoul of the law. In 2024, he was arrested on allegations of assaulting a police officer at the Zimbabwean border town of Beitbridge. Though he was granted bail after that arrest, a warrant was subsequently issued for his detention when he failed to appear for scheduled court proceedings, according to Zimbabwe’s state-owned *Herald* newspaper. Just one year later, in June 2025, he was taken into custody again for an alleged assault on a security guard at a mining site in Mazowe, located roughly an hour’s drive north of Zimbabwe’s capital Harare. That case remains pending before Zimbabwean courts. Robert Mugabe, the former Zimbabwean leader, held presidential power for 37 years before he was removed from office in a 2017 military-led coup, and he died in 2019 at the age of 95.

ABUJA, Nigeria – A targeted attack on a civilian passenger bus traveling through Nigeria’s Benue State has left multiple university students, who were heading to sit for their final examinations, in captivity after gunmen intercepted the vehicle Thursday, state government officials confirmed. The abduction took place along the busy Otukpo-Makurdi highway, a major transportation route connecting communities across the central state, Governor Hyacinth Alia announced in an official statement released Thursday evening.

While Alia did not release an exact count of abducted individuals, local Nigerian news outlets have reported the bus was carrying 14 passengers total, all of whom were taken by the attackers. In his statement, Governor Alia strongly condemned the act of violence against vulnerable civilians. “The targeting of innocent citizens, particularly students on their way to sit for examinations, is unacceptable and stands against every norm of humanity and civil order,” he said.

Benue State, located in north-central Nigeria, has long been classified as a high-risk zone for armed violence in the country’s northern region. For years, criminal armed gangs operating in the area have routinely targeted isolated rural villagers and passing travelers, carrying out mass killings and large-scale kidnappings to extract ransom payments. No criminal or insurgent group has yet stepped forward to claim responsibility for Thursday’s abduction.

State security forces have already launched active search and rescue missions across the region, with the explicit goal of securing the safe release of all captives, Alia confirmed. The governor called on local residents to remain calm and maintain close cooperation with security agencies throughout the rescue operation and broader counter-insurgency efforts. “We will continue to take decisive actions to protect lives and property,” he added.

Widespread kidnapping of students has become one of the most visible markers of systemic insecurity across Africa’s most populous nation. Security analysts who study criminal violence in Nigeria note that gangs deliberately target students and educational institutions because they view these targets as strategically valuable: attacks on students draw rapid, widespread media and public attention, increasing pressure on authorities and families to pay large ransom payments quickly.

In the pre-dawn hours of Friday, a plane carrying 15 migrants deported from the United States touched down in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to legal counsel representing the group. This arrival marks the first operational delivery under a new controversial agreement between the Trump White House and the Central African nation that accelerates the U.S. government’s effort to remove non-African migrants through third-country partnerships.

All 15 people on the flight were born in Latin American nations, and the Congolese government has confirmed their stay in the country will only be temporary, explained Alma David, a U.S.-based attorney representing the deportees. A senior official from Congo’s national migration administration verified the arrival of the group to the Associated Press but declined to share further operational or personal details about the migrants.

David told reporters that every one of the 15 deportees had already been granted formal legal protection by U.S. immigration judges, who ruled they could not be forcibly returned to their home countries due to credible fears of persecution or harm. Since landing, the group has been housed in a local Kinshasa hotel while authorities work out next steps. The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM), the global body tapped to coordinate post-arrival support, will lead efforts to organize what the program terms “assisted voluntary return” to the migrants’ countries of origin.

David, however, raised sharp alarm over the framing of this next step, noting that the migrants spent months in U.S. immigration detention fighting specifically to avoid being sent back to their home countries. “For them to now be pushed toward ‘voluntary’ return after all that struggle is deeply troubling,” she emphasized. The IOM had not issued a public response to requests for comment from AP as of Friday.

Earlier this month, Congo’s Ministry of Communications confirmed in an official statement that it had agreed to accept migrants as part of the Trump administration’s third-country deportation initiative. The statement characterized the arrangement as a temporary measure that demonstrates the Congolese government’s commitment to upholding human dignity and practicing international solidarity. It also stressed that the deal would impose no financial burden on Congolese public funds, with the U.S. government covering all logistical and operational costs associated with the arrivals. Per the terms of the agreement, there will be no automatic mass transfer of deportees; each individual’s case will undergo a separate review aligned with Congolese national law and domestic security requirements.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is not the only African nation to have signed on to this policy. U.S. officials have struck identical third-country deportation deals with at least seven other African countries. Many of these partner nations are among those that have faced the strictest new restrictions on trade, aid and migration from the Trump administration, according to Senate records.

A recent analysis from Democratic committee staff on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee found that the Trump administration has spent at least $40 million in public funds to deport roughly 300 migrants to third countries outside their nations of origin since launching the program. The deals have drawn growing criticism from immigration lawyers and human rights activists, who point out that multiple participating African nations are ruled by notoriously repressive regimes with well-documented poor human rights records. Those problematic partners include Eswatini, South Sudan and Equatorial Guinea, according to public human rights reporting.