Mauritius, a volcanic island of lagoons and palm-fringed beaches in the Indian Ocean, has a reputation for stability and racial harmony among its mixed population of Asians, Europeans and Africans.
The island has maintained one of the developing world's most successful democracies and has enjoyed years of constitutional order.
It has preserved its image as one of Africa's few social and economic success stories.
Once reliant on sugar as its main crop export, Mauritius was hit by the removal of European trade preferences but has successfully diversified into textiles, upmarket tourism, banking and business outsourcing.
The strategy helped the island's economy weather the world financial crisis of 2008-9 better than expected.
Various cultures and traditions flourish in peace, though Mauritian Creoles, descendants of African slaves who make up a third of the population, live in poverty and complain of discrimination.
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At a glance
Politics: Navin Ramgoolam became premier in July 2005, having already held the post from 1995 to 2000. Changing coalitions are a feature of politics
Economy: Political stability and efforts to diversify have helped Mauritius become one of Africa's most prosperous economies.
International: Mauritius claims the Chagos Islands, administered by Britain and home to a US military base on Diego Garcia.
Mauritius was uninhabited when the Dutch took possession in 1598. Abandoned in 1710, it was taken over by the French in 1715 and seized by the British in 1810.
It gained independence in 1968 as a constitutional monarchy, with executive power nominally vested in the British monarch. It became a republic in 1992. The island of Rodrigues and other smaller islets also form part of the country.
Mauritius claims sovereignty over the Chagos islands, which lie around 1,000 km to the north-east. The British territory, which was separated from Mauritius in 1965, is home to the US military base on Diego Garcia. The British government oversaw the forced removal of the Chagos islanders to Mauritius to make way for the base.
The country is home to some of the world's rarest plants and animals. But human habitation and the introduction of non-native species have threatened its indigenous flora and fauna.
The dodo – a flightless bird and a national symbol – was hunted into extinction in the 17th century.
BELA BELA, South Africa – The shantytown called Vingerkraal seems trapped in South Africa’s apartheid past. Tin shacks resemble those hurriedly built by blacks evicted from white territory. Women and children are left on their own for most of the year by men working in faraway cities. Poverty lies tucked between game resorts.
But Vingerkraal’s is a different story in the sinister saga of racially divided South Africa. It is the story of blacks who fought blacks in the service of apartheid.
In the two decades since apartheid crumbled, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission has brought about a measure of reconciliation between blacks and their former white rulers. The divisions among blacks, however, engineered or exacerbated by a system of divide-and-rule often have been slower to heal. Vingerkraal is a glaring example.
Its history begins in neighboring Namibia, once South African territory, where guerrillas were waging a war for independence. Other black Namibians were hired by white-run security forces in a unit called Koevoet, meaning crowbar, and its fighters were paid bonuses for what became known as “cash for corpses.”
Koevoet’s goal, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, was to “gather intelligence, track guerrillas and then kill them.” It was, the commission said, “a race war,” and apartheid South Africa lost.
In 1990, with Namibia independent, hundreds of black Koevoet veterans suddenly found themselves trapped in the midst of their adversaries. Many fled to South Africa, where their former officers helped them find jobs in security and get South African citizenship.
Four years later white rule ended, and the black Koevoet veterans were on the losing side again. Some of them retreated to Vingerkraal, near the town of Bela Bela in the north of the country. Some 6,000 people now live here, in the dry bush, chronically short of water and electricity, and still haunted by a 2010 tragedy that killed 11 of their children.
Sisingi Kamongo, 45, was among the founders of Vingerkraal. Asked about his past, he begins by saying he was just 18 and desperate for work when he joined Koevoet in 1984. Later, he talks about stories he heard of guerrillas kidnapping village children and forcing them to fight.
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” he says. “We were protecting the people.”
Slowly, war stories emerge. Kamongo recalls interrogating villagers, being told they had not seen fighters for years, and then coming under attack.
“What do you expect us to do?” Kamango said. “Of course there’s going to be trouble. We were heavy-handed. But … it was for a reason.”
Kamango, who has used a wheelchair since 2002 because of an old war injury, says he knows of a prisoner who was summarily executed, but insists white officers made the decision over their black subordinates’ objections.
Namibia was not the only place where whites set blacks against blacks. The so-called bantustans also played a part, set up by the white government as black-ruled homelands to remove their populations from white areas.
Here, there has been reconciliation exemplified by Bantu Holomisa. In 1987 he seized power in the bantustan of Transkei, the homeland of Nelson Mandela, while the leader of the anti-apartheid struggle was in prison.
When apartheid ended and the bantustans were abolished, Mandela’s African National Congress accepted Holomisa as a member. Later Holomisa had a falling out with the party, but he remains a member of Parliament.
John Kani, a leading actor and playwright, explores the personal effects of the divisions among blacks in “Nothing But the Truth,” about two brothers, one of whom dies in exile, a hero of the liberation struggle, while the other stays in South Africa and away from politics.
The 2002 play explores the tensions that arise over who did more for the cause of black freedom.
It is a complicated history that Kani says needs to be understood better.
“I’m worried about this collective amnesia. We’re afraid, even in our own house, to talk about dark times,” he said in an interview. “Forgiving is OK. Forgetting, never.”
Vingerkraal felt the pain of its marginalization in July, 2010, when a brush fire broke out. The shortage of water was compounded by the lack of good roads that slowed the arrival of rescue services, and 11 children died. The seven survivors, some horribly scarred, struggle to raise money to pay for transport to hospitals for treatment. It took more than a year for the maimed to get specialized care.
But the elders of the community see hope in their children. Their young people attend school with other South Africans, while many have followed their fathers into private security work, two are at the University of Pretoria, studying to be teachers.
Kamongo, the Koevoet veteran, wrote and published with the help of a South African army enthusiast a memoir of his fighting years. He said fellow veterans told him they found release reading his story, and now want him to help them tell theirs. He said it is a way of coming to terms with why they are seen as killers.
“It’s our own, personal TRC,” he said, referring to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The modern state of Cameroon was created in 1961 by the unification of two former colonies, one British and one French.
Since then it has struggled from one-party rule to a multi-party system in which the freedom of expression is severely limited.
Cameroon began its independence with a bloody insurrection which was suppressed only with the help of French forces.
There followed 20 years of repressive government under President Ahmadou Ahidjo. Nonetheless, Cameroon saw investment in agriculture, education, health care and transport.
In 1982 Mr Ahidjo was succeeded by his prime minister, Paul Biya. Faced with popular discontent, Mr Biya allowed multi-party presidential elections in 1992, which he won. He went on to win further presidential elections in 1997, 2004 and – after a clause in the constitution limiting the number of presidential terms was removed – 2011.
In 2008, Nigeria completed the transfer of control to Cameroon of the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula
In 1994 and 1996 Cameroon and Nigeria fought over the disputed, oil-rich Bakassi peninsula. Nigeria withdrew its troops from the area in 2006 in line with an international court ruling which awarded sovereignty to Cameroon.
In November 2007 the Nigerian senate passed a motion declaring as illegal the Nigeria-Cameroon agreement for the Bakassi Peninsula to be handed over to Cameroon.
Internally, there are tensions over the two mainly English-speaking southern provinces. A secessionist movement, the Southern Cameroon National Council (SCNC), emerged in the 1990s and has been declared as illegal.
Cameroon has one of the highest literacy rates in Africa. However, the country's progress is hampered by a level of corruption that is among the highest in the world.
In 1986 Cameroon made the world headlines when poisonous gases escaped from Lake Nyos, killing nearly 2,000 people.
Image by infomatique
Africa Day Dublin took in the Iveagh Gardens Sunday 16th May from 12 noon to 7pm and the organizers gave me access to all areas.
Irish Aid has chosen a food-related theme for its Africa Day celebrations in 2010, with a particular focus on issues such as food security and hunger.
Upon arrival at the Iveagh Gardens, visitors were greeted by the sights, sounds and smells of Africa. As expected the African Bazaar proved to be a hub of activity, showcasing the food, music and unique cultures of over 20 different African countries.
Music was the key feature of Africa Day 2010, with performances from high-profile African and Irish acts on the Main Stage. A new feature this year was the Music Tent, which featured interactive workshops over the course of the day.
KANO, Nigeria – Coordinated attacks claimed by a radical Islamist sect killed at least 143 people in north Nigeria’s largest city, a hospital official said Saturday, as gunfire still echoed around some areas of the sprawling city.
Soldiers and police officers swarmed over streets Saturday in Kano, a city of more than 9 million people that remains an important political and religious hub in Nigeria’s Muslim north. But their effectiveness remains in question, as the uniformed bodies of many of their colleagues lay in the overflowing mortuary of Murtala Muhammed Specialist Hospital, Kano’s largest hospital.
A hospital official there said at least 143 people died in the attacks Friday. The count included some bodies already claimed by families for immediate burial per Islamic law, the official said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to disclose the figure to journalists.
Other bodies could be lying at other clinics and hospitals in the city.
In a statement issued late Friday, federal police spokesman Olusola Amore said attackers targeted five police buildings, two immigration offices and the local headquarters of the State Security Service, Nigeria’s secret police.
Nwakpa O. Nwakpa, a spokesman for the Nigerian Red Cross, said volunteers offered first aid to the wounded, and evacuated those seriously injured to local hospitals. He said officials continued to collect corpses scattered around sites of the attacks. A survey of two hospitals by the Red Cross showed at least 50 people were injured in Friday’s attack, he said.
State authorities declared a 24-hour curfew late Friday as residents hid inside their homes amid the fighting.
A Boko Haram spokesman using the nom de guerre Abul-Qaqa claimed responsibility for the attacks in a message to journalists. He said the attack came as the state government refused to release Boko Haram members held by the police.
Boko Haram has carried out increasingly sophisticated and bloody attacks in its campaign to implement strict Shariah law across Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people.
Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege” in the local Hausa language, is responsible for at least 510 killings last year alone, according to an AP count. So far this year, the group has been blamed for at least 219 killings, according to an AP count.
The sect’s targets have included both Muslims and Christians. However, the group has begun specifically targeting Christians after promising it will kill any Christians living in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north. That has further inflamed religious and ethnic tensions in Nigeria, which has seen ethnic violence kill thousands in recent years along the divide between the north and the largely Christian south.
Friday’s attacks also could cause more unrest, as violence in Kano has set off attacks throughout the north in the past, including postelection violence in April that saw 800 people killed. Kano, an ancient city, remains important in the history of Islam in Nigeria and has important religious figures there today.
Amid the recent unrest and attacks, at least two journalists have been killed in Nigeria. Journalist Enenche Akogwu, who worked as a correspondent in Kano for private news station Channels Television, was shot and killed Friday while reporting on the attacks, colleagues said. In central Nigeria’s city of Jos, Nansok Sallah, a news editor for a government-owned radio station called Highland FM, was found dead in a shallow stream Thursday, the victim of an apparent murder, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.
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Associated Press writer Salisu Rabiu in Kano, Nigeria contributed to this report.
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Jon Gambrell reported from Lagos, Nigeria and can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
After lurching from one military coup to another, Nigeria now has an elected leadership. But the government faces the growing challenge of preventing Africa's most populous country from breaking apart along ethnic and religious lines.
Political liberalisation ushered in by the return to civilian rule in 1999 has allowed militants from religious and ethnic groups to express their frustrations more freely, and with increasing violence.
Thousands of people have died over the past few years in communal rivalry. Separatist aspirations have been growing, prompting reminders of the bitter civil war over the breakaway Biafran republic in the late 1960s.
The imposition of Islamic law in several states has embedded divisions and caused thousands of Christians to flee. Inter-faith violence is said to be rooted in poverty, unemployment and the competition for land.
The government is striving to boost the economy, which experienced an oil boom in the 1970s and is once again benefiting from high prices on the world market. But progress has been undermined by corruption and mismanagement.
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At a glance
Politics: People's Democratic Party (PDP) has dominated since the return to civilian rule in 1999.
Economy: Nigeria is Africa's leading oil producer; more than half of its people live in poverty
International: Nigeria plays a prominent role in African affairs; has withdrawn troops from oil-rich Bakassi peninsula to settle border dispute with Cameroon
Country profiles compiled by BBC Monitoring
The former British colony is one of the world's largest oil producers, but the industry has produced unwanted side effects.
The trade in stolen oil has fuelled violence and corruption in the Niger delta – the home of the industry. Few Nigerians, including those in oil-producing areas, have benefited from the oil wealth.
In 2004, Niger Delta activists demanding a greater share of oil income for locals began a campaign of violence against the oil infrastructure, threatening Nigeria's most important economic lifeline.
Nigeria is keen to attract foreign investment but is hindered in this quest by security concerns as well as by a shaky infrastructure troubled by power cuts.
KHARTOUM (Reuters) – One international peacekeeper was killed and three others wounded in Sudan when gunmen ambushed their patrol in the troubled Darfur region on Saturday, UNAMID peacekeepers said.
The Western region is the scene of an almost decade-long insurgency by non-Arab tribes against the government in Khartoum, which they accuse of political and economic marginalization.
Unknown gunmen attacked the patrol near El Daein in South Darfur and killed one peacekeeper, a spokesman for the joint African Union/U.N. Mission UNAMID said.
Two of the wounded peacekeepers were in critical condition, he said, without giving the nationalities of the peacekeepers.
The United Nations has said as many as 300,000 people may have died in Darfur, where Khartoum has mobilized troops and mostly Arab militias to crush the uprising. Khartoum puts the death toll at 10,000.
Qatar brokered a peace deal which Sudan signed this year with the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM), an umbrella association of smaller groups. But major other rebel groups have refused to sign the document.
In November, Darfur's main insurgent groups and rebels in two border states said they had formed an alliance to topple Bashir.
(Reporting by Ulf Laessing Editing by Maria Golovnina)
The dhow, seen in the foreground, was identified as a known pirated vessel by the British crew
Capt Gerry Northwood leads the counter-piracy operation on RFA [Royal Fleet Auxiliary] Fort Victoria, which is based at Southampton.
He said: “This was a well-executed operation by Nato forces to locate a known Somali pirate group that was operating in international shipping lanes of the Indian Ocean.
“An effective boarding was safely executed by the Royal Marine boarding team based in RFA Fort Victoria and this has safely neutralised the effect of the pirate mothership.
“This firm and positive action will also send a clear message to other Somali pirates that we will not tolerate their attacks on international shipping.”
The lack of an effective central government in Somalia means the men cannot be sent back there for trial. Dr Douglas Guilfoyle, a senior lecturer in law at University College London, said the Royal Navy would be looking for one of the states in the region to take on the prosecution of the alleged pirates.
“Those states will be asking what kind of evidence package the Royal Navy can turn over,” he said.
“Kenya did initially make a sort of open ended commitment to taking piracy cases, then felt that once it had a 119 suspects in its criminal justice system, that was about what it could cope with. The Seychelles has taken about 10 cases and there are other states in the region that are looking at taking more.”
Last year, the Prime Minister David Cameron announced a conference on the piracy problem would take place in London in February 2012.
A month earlier, Mr Cameron said ships sailing under a British flag would be able to carry armed guards to protect them from pirates in future.
Dawn operation
This latest operation was carried out around dawn on Friday.
Capt Shaun Jones RFA, commanding officer on RFA Fort Victoria, said: “To manoeuvre such a large ship at speed in close vicinity of a nimble dhow takes extreme concentration and skill; my team were never found wanting.”
Capt James Sladden, who commanded the Royal Marines boarding party, added: “The moment of going on board the dhow was tense as we knew there were pirates on board who had refused to stop despite our warning shots.
“Through our weapon sights we could see there were about 13 pirates, mostly gathered in the area of the bridge. We quickly boarded and secured the vessel before mustering the pirates on the bow.”
Destiny Africa Choir visit the Pierhead / Côr Destiny Africa yn ymweld â’r Pierhead 18/5/2010
Image by National Assembly For Wales / Cynulliad Cymru
A choir of Ugandan orphans visited the Pierhead on 18 May 2010 to deliver a special performance.
The Destiny Africa choir is made up of 15 children, aged eight to16, who have been orphaned or left with a parent who can no longer look after them due to war, HIV and AIDS related illness. Watch the video here
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Daeth côr o blant amddifad o Uganda ar ymweliad â’r Pierhead ar 18 Mai i roi cyflwyniad arbennig.
Mae côr Destiny Affrica yn cynnwys 15 o blant rhwng wyth ac 16 oed, sydd wedi eu gadael yn amddifad neu gyda rhiant na all ofalu amdanynt bellach oherwydd rhyfel, HIV ac afiechyd sy’n gysylltiedig ag AIDS. Gwyliwch y fideo yma
KANO, Nigeria – A coordinated attack by a radical Islamist sect in north Nigeria’s largest city killed at least 143 people, a hospital official said Saturday, representing the extremist group’s deadliest assault since beginning its campaign of terror in Africa’s most populous nation.
Soldiers and police officers swarmed Kano’s streets as Nigeria’s president again promised the sect known as Boko Haram would “face the full wrath of the law.” But the uniformed bodies of security agents that filled a Kano hospital mortuary again showed the sect can strike at will against the country’s weak central government.
Friday’s attacks hit police stations, immigration offices and the local headquarters of Nigeria’s secret police in Kano, a city of more than 9 million people that remains an important political and religious center in the country’s Muslim north. A suicide bomber detonated a car loaded with powerful explosives outside a regional police headquarters, tearing its roof away and blowing out windows in a blast felt miles away as its members escaped jail cells there.
Authorities largely refused to offer casualty statistics as mourners began claiming the bodies of their loved ones to bury before sundown, following Islamic tradition. However, a hospital official told The Associated Press at least 143 people were killed in the attack.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release the death toll to journalists. The toll could still rise, since other bodies could be held at other clinics and hospitals in the sprawling city.
State authorities enforced a 24-hour curfew in the city, with many remaining home as soldiers and police patrolled the streets and setup roadblocks. Gunshots echoed through some areas of the city into Saturday morning.
Nwakpa O. Nwakpa, a spokesman for the Nigerian Red Cross, said volunteers offered first aid to the wounded, and evacuated those seriously injured to local hospitals. A survey of two hospitals by the Red Cross showed at least 50 people were injured in Friday’s attack, he said.
A Boko Haram spokesman using the nom de guerre Abul-Qaqa claimed responsibility for the attacks in a message to journalists Friday. He said the attack came because the state government refused to release Boko Haram members held by the police.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Saturday that he was “shocked and appalled” by the attacks in the former colony.
“The full horror of last night’s events is still unfolding, but we know that a great many people have died and many more have been injured,” Hague said in a statement. “The nature of these attacks has sickened people around the world and I send my deepest condolences and sympathies to the families of those killed and to those injured.”
The U.S. Embassy said it had canceled all staff travel to northern Nigeria after Friday’s attacks.
President Goodluck Jonathan also condemned an attack he said saw innocent people “brutally and recklessly cut down by agents of terror.”
“As a responsible government, we will not fold our hands and watch enemies of democracy, for that is what these mindless killers are, perpetrate unprecedented evil in our land,” Jonathan said in a statement. “I want to reassure Nigerians … that all those involved in that dastardly act would be made to face the full wrath of the law.”
But Jonathan’s government has repeatedly been unable to stop attacks by Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege” in the Hausa language of Nigeria’s north. The group has carried out increasingly sophisticated and bloody attacks in its campaign to implement strict Shariah law and avenge the deaths of Muslims in communal violence across Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people.
Authorities blamed Boko Haram for at least 510 killings last year alone, according to an AP count, including an August suicide bombing on the U.N. headquarters in the country’s capital Abuja. So far this year, the group has been blamed for at least 219 killings, according to an AP count.
Boko Haram recently said it specifically would target Christians living in Nigeria’s north, but Friday’s attack saw its gunmen kill many Muslims. In a recent video posted to the Internet, Imam Abubakar Shekau, a Boko Harm leader, warned it would kill anyone who “betrays the religion” by being part of or sympathizing with Nigeria’s government.
“I swear by Allah we will kill them and their killing will be nothing to us,” Shekau said. “It will be like going to prayers at 5 a.m.”
Friday’s attacks also could cause more unrest, as violence in Kano has set off attacks throughout the north in the past, including postelection violence in April that saw 800 people killed. Kano, an ancient city, remains important in the history of Islam in Nigeria and has important religious figures there today.
Amid the recent unrest and attacks, at least two journalists have been killed in Nigeria. Journalist Enenche Akogwu, who worked as a correspondent in Kano for private news station Channels Television, was shot Friday while reporting on the attacks, colleagues said. In central Nigeria’s city of Jos, Nansok Sallah, a news editor for a government-owned radio station called Highland FM, was found dead in a shallow stream Thursday, the victim of an apparent murder, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.
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Salisu Rabiu in Kano, Nigeria, and Raphael Satter in London contributed to this report.
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Jon Gambrell reported from Lagos, Nigeria and can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
In 2008, Nigeria completed the transfer of control to Cameroon of the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula
The dhow, seen in the foreground, was identified as a known pirated vessel by the British crew
