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Nigerian president dies after long illness
Africa
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Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua, long plagued by poor health, has died at age 58, almost three months after his vice-president assumed control of Africa's most populous nation, Yar'Adua's spokesman said.
Yar'Adua died Wednesday at the Aso Rock presidential villa with his wife Turai at his side, presidential spokesman Olusegun Adeniyi told The Associated Press, his voice cracking with emotion. Adeniyi did not give a cause of death.
A Muslim, Yar'Adua will be buried before sundown Thursday afternoon in his home state of Katsina, said Ima Niboro, a spokesman for Acting President Goodluck Jonathan.
Thursday will be a national holiday and the country will observe seven days of mourning for Yar'Adua.
In a statement, Jonathan said all the nation could do is "take solace in the fact that the Almighty is the giver and taker of all life."
"Nigeria has lost the jewel on its crown, and even the heavens mourn with our nation tonight," Jonathan said.
Nigeria's national security adviser and other ministers flooded into the presidential villa late Wednesday night to meet with Jonathan, who offered condolences to Yar'Adua's wife before beginning work as the country's head of state, Niboro said.
"The acting president is very sad with what has happened," Niboro told reporters. "The nation is mourning."
Yar'Adua took office in 2007 in a country notorious for corruption and gained accolades for being the first leader to publicly declare his personal assets when taking office — setting up a benchmark for comparison later to see if he misappropriated funds. But enthusiasm for his presidency waned as time passed and he made no headway in fighting entrenched corruption.
He had tried to peacefully end an insurgency in Nigeria's oil-producing Niger Delta that had attacked the petroleum infrastructure, allowing Angola to overtake Nigeria as Africa's number one oil exporter. Those efforts frayed after Yar'Adua became gravely ill.
Yar'Adua went to a Saudi Arabian hospital on Nov. 24 to receive treatment for what officials described as a severe case of pericarditis, an inflammation of the sac surrounding the heart that can cause a fatal complication. He failed to formally transfer his powers to Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan, sparking a constitutional crisis in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation with 150 million people.
Jonathan assumed the presidency Feb. 9 after a vote by the National Assembly while Yar'Adua was still in Saudi Arabia.
Lawmakers left open the possibility for Yar'Adua to regain power if he returned to the country in good health. He returned on Feb. 24 but never appeared in public and did not assume power again.
Eugene Terreblanche killed in South Africa
South African white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche has been killed on his farm in the country's north-west.
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Mr Terreblanche, 69, was beaten to death after a dispute over unpaid wages, local media reports said. Two people are said to have been arrested.
President Jacob Zuma has appealed for calm, saying the killing should not incite racial hatred.
Mr Terreblanche, who campaigned for a separate white homeland, came to prominence in the early 1980s.
He became the champion of a tiny minority determined to stop the process that was bringing apartheid to an end.
"Mr Terreblanche's body was found on the bed with facial and head injuries," AFP news agency quoted a police spokesman as saying.
The report said he had been killed after a payment dispute with two workers, aged 21 and 15, who have been arrested in connection with his murder.
"He was hacked to death while he was taking a nap," a family friend in the town of Ventersdorp was quoted as telling Reuters news agency.
Mr Zuma condemned the killing as a "terrible deed".
"The president appeals for calm... and asks South Africans not to allow agent provocateurs to take advantage of this situation by inciting or fuelling racial hatred," his office said in a statement reported by South Africa's SAPA news agency.
"The murder of Terreblanche must be condemned, irrespective of how his killers think they may have been justified. They had no right to take his life."
Prison sentence
The murder comes amid growing anxiety about crime in South Africa and what opposition politicians say are irresponsible and racially inflammatory sentiments from a minority of the ruling ANC party, says the BBC's Karen Allen in Johannesburg.
Farming organisations in the Ventersdorp area have called for calm as they are worried that rising tensions may escalate out of control.
Our correspondent says it is too soon to say whether Saturday's killing was politically motivated.
However, a spokesman for Mr Terreblanche's Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement - AWB) linked the killing to the recent singing of an apartheid-era song by the head of the ANC's youth league.
"That's what this is all about," Andre Visagie told Reuters news agency. "They used pangas and pipes to murder him as he slept."
A spokeswoman for the opposition Democratic Alliance party pointed to racial tension.
Juanita Terblanche, who is no relation, said: "This happened in a province where racial tension in the rural farming community is increasingly being fuelled by irresponsible racist utterances."
Mr Terreblanche was released from prison in 2004 after serving three years of a five-year term for attempted murder.
He had founded the white supremacist AWB in 1973, to oppose what he regarded as the liberal policies of the then-South African leader, John Vorster.
His party tried terrorist tactics and threatened civil war in the run-up to South Africa's first democratic elections.
In the 1980s, the government of PW Botha considered a constitutional plan allowing South Africa's Asian and coloured (mixed-race) minorities to vote for racially segregated parliamentary chambers.
For the likes of Mr Terreblanche, this was the start of the slippery slope towards democracy, communism, black rule and the destruction of the Afrikaner nation, analysts say.
Claiming on occasion to be a cultural organisation - albeit one with sidearms and paramilitary uniforms - Mr Terreblanche and his men promised to fight for the survival of the white tribe of Africa.
An ill-fated military intervention into the Bophuthatswana homeland in 1994 ended with three AWB men being killed in front of TV cameras in a PR disaster that diminished further the seriousness with which Mr Terreblanche's movement was taken.
Mr Terreblance continued to campaign to preserve the apartheid system but lived in relative obscurity since it collapsed.
The AWB was revived two years ago and there had been recent efforts to form a united front among white far-right groups.
'Pirate' death puts spotlight on 'guns for hire'
BBC News
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The death of a suspected pirate off the coast of Somalia has drawn attention to the use of armed private security contractors on board merchant vessels.
The incident, which involved guards aboard the Panamanian-flagged MV Almezaan, is believed to be the first of its kind.
But several organisations, including the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), have previously expressed concerns over the use of armed security contractors.
"While we understand that owners want to protect their ships, we don't agree in principle with putting armed security on ships," IMB director Capt Pottengal Mukundan told the BBC News website.
"Ships are not an ideal place for a gun battle."
One argument is that the use of armed operatives could encourage pirates to use more violence when taking a ship.
But Mr Mukundan said he had seen no evidence that there had been much of an increase in the use of armed guards by merchant ship owners.
Dozens of warships patrol the waters off the Somali coast, but this has not deterred the pirates. The amount of ocean to patrol is extremely vast and pirates have responded to the increased naval presence by moving attacks farther out to sea.
"The naval forces are displacing the threat - they can't be everywhere at once," says Nick Davis, chief executive of Merchant Maritime Warfare Centre, a not-for-profit organisation.
"Almost the whole of the Indian Ocean region - some 5 million square nautical miles - is a security risk."
Prevention
But the shipping industry has, so far, largely resisted arming their boats - not least because this would deny them port in some nations. Furthermore, arming the ships can raise liability issues and increase insurance costs.
Christopher Ledger, director of security firm Idarat Maritime, says the use of private operatives is not necessary and that ship owners can find other ways to protect themselves, such as boosting training, carrying out more drills and purchasing equipment that could prevent pirates boarding a vessel.
"Private security guards are not necessary, they simply muddy the water," he said. "They are often foreign to the crew themselves and they don't know the ship well.
"Many are former soldiers that have been in Iraq or Afghanistan and they think they can shake the dust off their shoes and make it as a private security guard. Their day rate is pretty high and the crew have to find ways to get them on and off the vessels."
Their presence, he said, would only lead to "more spilt blood".
This month, international shipping law firm Ince and Co released a report highlighting the issues arising from the use of armed guards. It pointed out that a fundamental question arose as to who would authorise the use of force.
Stephen Askins, a lawyer with Ince, told the BBC News website that the debate on the use of armed guards was one that polarised the industry.
"Most industry bodies and ship-owners are against them," he said. "But no ship with an armed guard has been hijacked, so there are those - particularly those who have had hijacked ships - who think they are necessary."
He said private security companies had come into their own in places like Iraq and had seen seen the maritime sector as potentially lucrative.
"Many have moved across but there is no system of accreditation, so there is no way of knowing the good from the bad," he said.
Legal status
Most security operatives are former British servicemen, but there are also operatives from the US, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Mr Askins said some firms provided armed escort vessels, but that these did not have any status in international law.
"The various conventions dealing with piracy relate to states and their navies," he said. "The rights that they are given, like the right of innocent passage relate to military ships. There are also issues over the use of armed force. The relevant law is the law of the flag state, but a merchant ship could, for example, be Panamanian and the escort ship could be, say, UK flagged."
But he also pointed out that there were some very good companies that had "robust rules of engagement".
"Lethal force for them would come after a series of steps including warning shots. The good companies would follow that procedure. Normally that would be enough to deter an attack."
In May 2009, the US Coast Guard drafted a maritime security directive that would require US-flagged ships sailing around the Horn of Africa to post guards, and ship owners to submit anti-piracy security plans for approval.
At the time, the Coast Guard's director of prevention policy, Rear Admiral James Watson, said that they expected to see "additional security" that could "involve the use of firearms".
He added that they were "looking for things that work but that don't make the situation worse".
Educated African Ladies Dont Know How To Cook - Public Comment
They Only Speak Grammar - Comment and Get A Chance To Win A Free Week Trip To Africa
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Educated ladies can speak only grammar, but cannot cook
I have argued with my mom several times, why the only thing she pressures my sister about is the idea of: Learning how to cook, cook, cook, as if woman-hood was synonymous with cooking. My mom makes this “you must know how to cook this and that” gospel look as if its the most important skill.
What an over reaching comment. I must say that this would likely not stand any serious public scrutiny, however this is the topic we have for today. Please send in your comments and we would publish your selected responses. Let us know if your agree or disagree and state your reasons. If your Comments are selected and published you would be added to our monthly draw, and get a chance to Win a weekend Get away in Lagos, Abuja or Calabar for two Courtesy of Embassy Court Hotels and Hertz Rent a Car, worth over $5,000. Enter as many Times as you can, please give name and country you are corresponding from or you currently reside.
Email your Comments to publicforum@ttimesmail.com
African Writer's Honored in France
Black Culture and Civilization Highlighted
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In the first issue of the journal, Diop defined its goals: to publish Africanist studies on black culture and civilisation, to publish African texts, and to critique works of art or thought concerning the black world.
Although Diop first insisted that Présence Africaine would not be held to any philosophical or political ideology, by 1955 he clearly redefined the journal's objectives. “All articles will be published on the condition that they are in good taste, that they concern Africa, that they neither betray our antiracist and anticolonialist will, nor our solidarity with colonised peoples,” he wrote.
Within the first two years a publishing house was created, and in 1953 the group produced the radical anticolonial film Statues also die. It was banned in France for ten years. There were black writers' and artists' congresses, a cultural association was created, and Diop and his friends were active participants in the organisation of the First Festival of Negro Arts in Senegal, in 1966. The exhibition at the Quai Branly focuses on the major role played by Présence Africaine in the political and cultural history of black Francophone, English-speaking, and Portuguese-speaking intellectuals. To give you an idea of its importance, among the guests at the opening was Wole Soyinka, the first African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Soyinka has been involved with Présence Africaine for decades. Through the encounters organised by the group, intellectuals, writers and artists can meet and exchange notes on the cultures of the black peoples, he told RFI. That helps them become better known and can influence thinking.
Soyinka describes the impact of Présence Africaine as “diffusive”.
As for the exhibit itself, he says, “There is something both beautiful and sad about it – many of these precursors in the humanities have gone. It’s nostalgic, and a sweet-sour feeling at the same time.”
The exhibition last until the end of January
Oprah Book Circle Winner Author Uwem Akpan To Speak in Michigan
The Jesuit Priest and Winning Author
The Oprah book circle winner, author Uwem Akpan will speak at 4 p.m. Friday at the University of Michigan's Hatcher Graduate Library. Uwem Akpan will talk about his best-selling short story collection at the University of Michigan. Akpan's 2008 book "Say You're One of Them" contains fictional accounts of people seeking normality in the face of often extreme circumstances. He speaks Friday afternoon at the Ann Arbor school's Hatcher Graduate Library.
Akpan studied philosophy and English at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., and Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., and theology at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. He earned a master's degree in creative writing at Michigan in 2006. "Say You're One of Them" won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book and the PEN/Beyond Margins Award.
Detective Agency to be serialised
The best-selling book The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is to be made into a television series.
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Alexander McCall Smith's novel, which follows the adventures of detective Precious Ramotswe, is to be made into 13 episodes.Singer and actress Jill Scott will star in the lead role.A 90-minute pilot directed by Anthony Minghella and co-written with Richard Curtis is to be screened on BBC One this Easter.Minghella is famed for winning an Oscar in 1996 for directing The English Patient, and he was also Oscar-nominated for writing the screenplay for 1999's The Talented Mr Ripley.Curtis has written screenplays for Bridget Jones's Diary and the sequel The Edge of Reason, Love Actually, Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral. He has also been behind TV series including Blackadder and The Vicar of Dibley.US television network HBO is partnering the BBC, which is part-funding it, to make the series. Filming will begin this summer.
'Highly entertaining'
"Alexander McCall Smith's wonderful books have been a sensation around the world for years, and we're thrilled to be teaming up with the BBC to adapt these highly entertaining stories for HBO," said HBO's co-president, Richard Plepler."And needless to say, the opportunity to work with the exceptionally gifted Anthony Minghella and Richard Curtis makes this project all the more exciting."Joining Jill Scott on the series will be Dreamgirls star Anika Noni Rose as Precious' highly-efficient, yet rather peculiar, secretary Mma Makutsi.It is not yet confirmed whether British actors Colin Salmon, David Oyelowo and Idris Elba who starred in the pilot, will return for the series.The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency chronicles the adventures of Precious Ramotswe, the proprietor of the only female-owned detective agency in Botswana.Aided by Mma Makutsi, Mma Ramotswe investigates cases, helps people solve problems in their lives, and begins a special friendship with the owner of a local garage.McCall Smith has had global success with the nine novels he has written about Mma Ramotswe.
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