AFRICA

Harare, Zimbabwe | AFP |  Eighty-year-old Isobel Simons calmly narrated how she and her late husband lost their 728-hectare Zimbabwe farm two decades ago to Robert Mugabe’s controversial land reforms. Then she broke down and sobbed. “It was my home for 47 years,” she said. Her home is now a tiny …

Khartoum, Sudan | AFP |  Sudanese authorities have begun to recover billions of dollars of real estate illegally amassed by deposed dictator Omar al-Bashir’s regime, but other assets will be difficult to seize, experts say. “Initial estimates indicate that the real estate and properties owned by the former regime… range (in …

Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP |  Admired by some but berated by others for imposing a tight lockdown, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa faces a fresh leadership test over his handling of the coronavirus outbreak. Africa’s most industrialised nation is preparing to reopen its economy on Monday as it moves into …

Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP | “Seeing myself on Netflix, I have to punch myself every day. Like, is that really me?” asked actress Tendaiishe Chitima, star of the first Zimbabwean feature film acquired by the streaming pioneer. “Cook Off” was shot in 2017, just months before the fall of Zimbabwe’s …

Blantyre, Malawi | AFP | President Peter Mutharika has accused Malawi’s judiciary of agitating for regime change after the courts nullified last year’s presidential vote and ordered fresh elections by July 3. Malawi’s top court rejected Mutharika’s bid to overturn the landmark ruling quashing his controversial re-election, paving the way for a re-run, scheduled for …

Cape Town, South Africa | AFP | A deadly virus was ravaging South Africa when Belgian doctor Eric Goemaere first set foot in Cape Town’s sprawling Khayelitsha township on a chilly southern hemisphere winter of 1999. By then HIV had infected more than 5.6 million South Africans, causing thousands of deaths …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | Burundi’s first lady was in hospital in Nairobi on Friday, after being flown in on a late-night medical flight, according to sources at the airport and in the presidency. First lady Denise Bucumi was flown out of Burundi on a Pilatus plane by the AMREF air ambulance service, according to …

  Kampala, Uganda | RONALD MUSOKE | African governments will have to go slow on lifting some of the lockdown measures they instituted to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, senior officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and prevention have said. …

Dakar, Senegal | AFP |  Launching an airline in Africa is a notorious challenge in a continent and sector where opportunities are often crimped by regulations and national champions are dominant. Now, for plucky entrants, coronavirus has added to the checklist of problems, as a small Senegalese airline can attest. Transair, …

Abidjan, Ivory Coast | AFP | The African Development Bank (AfDB) on Thursday said “no decision” had been taken regarding a US push for an outside probe into its chief, accused by whistleblowers of ethics breaches. US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says Washington is dissatisfied with the outcome of an internal …