'Hands Off Zuma' vigil turns into party of the year

An overnight vigil in support of beleaguered South African ex-president Jacob Zuma turned into a festival of song and dance on Thursday night.

Durban's Albert Park reverberated to the "Hands Off Zuma" rally, initially dubbed a vigil and "mother of all prayers" for the popular former leader who faced trial on 16 corruption charges at the city's High Court on Friday morning.

Those charges relate to allege kickbacks from the mammoth 1998 arms deal, struck before Mr Zuma was even a member of the national government. His supporters have called the reinstatement of the charges, which were thrown out of court in 2008 and finally dropped in 2009, a witch-hunt orchestrated by "White Monopoly Capital," common parlance for neo-colonial Western business interests looking to maintain their dominance of the South African economy.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) pressured Mr Zuma to resign in February, just over a year ahead of scheduled elections, and installed billionaire deputy Cyril Ramaphosa in his stead.
But comments by some ANC leaders and pro-opposition media over the past week have betrayed a fear that the show of solidarity with Mr Zuma could threaten the authority of the new president, who has already made himself unpopular with workers and small businesses. Police minister Bheki Cele warned ANC members attending the vigil and marches not to wear their party regalia -- an instruction they defied en masse.

Supporters from across the vast country of 50 million converged on the Indian Ocean east coast city and capital of KwaZulu Natal province on Thursday evening, with high spirits already evident on the buses.

Zuma supporters partying en route to Durban

Police warnings of blocked city streets on Friday morning already proved correct, as Zuma supporters danced and sang at junctions, blocking traffic.

Blocking the city streets

The event quickly turned into an open mic night as one impromptu speaker after another took the stage, interspersed with more spontaneous singing and dancing among the crowd.

At the vigil in Durban's Albert Park

The mystery of the Guanches

The origins and language of the indigenous people of the Canary Islands remain a mystery, writes Dr Sabina Goralski Filonov Translation by James Tweedie The guanches, the aboriginals of the Canary Islands whose origin, lost in the mists of time, still arouses intense and passionate debate and great controversy about their origins and the how the seven Canary Islands were populated – which according to some studies occurred between 10,000 and 8,000 years BC. Literally, the word ‘Guan’ means man or person and ‘Chenech’ or ‘Chinet’ is applied to the island of Tenerife, thus meaning a man or inhabitant of Tenerife – although according to Núñez de la Peña, the Spanish named them the Guanchos during the conquest of the islands. But with the passage of time, experts in the subject are questioning whether the word Guanche was used to designate the primitive inhabitants of all the islands in the pre-Hispanic period. The term ‘Guanche’ has also ceased to be applied to the di...

Homeless dogs’ home fights for compensation

Dingo Dogs owner Phil Nelson at his since-demolished home. DOGS’ home owner Phil Nelson has vowed to take legal action following his eviction from his Dingo Dogs animal sanctuary in August. by James Tweedie Indian-born Mr Nelson, along with former girlfriend and Dingo Dogs treasurer Leigh Crouch were left homeless by the court-ordered eviction and have been sharing a small hut in the mountains near Las Chafiras with ten dogs and three cats ever since. Mr Nelson’s dispute with his former landlord began in September 2004, after he officially registered his rented hillside finca as an animal sanctuary. It was a requirement of his registration that he keep proper financial records, including receipts for payment of rent. Mr Nelson says that despite having a rental contract and paying his rent “as regular as clockwork” for years, his landlord never gave him a receipt even after he began asking for one every month in 2004. In May 2005, after his landlord ha...

No 'day in court' for Zuma as supporters take Durban

The trial of South Africa's ex-president Jacob Zuma was postponed for two months on Friday pending his legal challenge to the resurrection of decade-old corruption charges. Outside the Durban High Court, thousands of Mr Zuma's supporters from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and other organisations brought the Indian Ocean port city to a standstill. Zuma supporters rally around a stage set up outside the Durban High Court The ANC Women's League, Youth League and Umkhonto we Sizwe Veterans' Association were present, along with the Black land First Campaign, National Interfaith Council of South Africa, the Commission for Religious Affairs. Revellers wore ANC t-shirts and other merchandise in defiance of warnings by Police Minister Bheki Cele Former minister Des van Rooyen and Eastern Cape ANC leader Andile Lungisa accompanied Mr Zuma to the doors of the court. Inside he sat smiling a few feet apart from Christine Guerrier, a representative of Fre...

Venezuela condemns MUD silence over terror attack

Venezuela’s foreign minister condemned the opposition and their foreign backers for their silence over Tuesday’s helicopter attack on the capital. At a press conference on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Samuel Moncada said Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition leader Henry Ramos’ only comment on social media was that the attack was “useless.” “Firstly that does not condemn it,” Mr Moncada said. “Secondly it appears he was condemning it because it didn’t have the desired effect, that is to say, that it would blow up the building.” And he asked why fellow Mud leader Henrique Capriles lacked the “moral courage to... repudiate a terrorist act.” The newly-appointed minster and former ambassador to Britain accused fellow members of the Washington-based Organisation of American States of “feigning ignorance” and so protecting the culprits. And he accused sections of the media of portraying the culprit — Police investigator and one-time action film star Oscar Perez — as a “Rambo ...

The Labour-Snatchers

WHAT do you call an event that would see a country lose a third of its population? A catastrophe? An apocalypse? In Europe they call it “Union.” According to the Vienna-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the “free movement of labour” between European Union member states will see that fraction of some countries' populations emigrate in the next 40 years. A recent IIASA study, reported on Friday by the EU Observer website, says Romania and Croatia's populations will fall by 30 percent by 2060, and Lithuania's by 38 percent. By contrast, eight years of the West's proxy war on Syria, when much of the country was overrun by terrorists who behead followers of other religious sects, has seen between 12 and 23 percent of the population flee the country. The 1983-85 Ethiopian famine killed about 1.2 million people and drove another 400,000 out of the country, about five per cent of the population at the time. Another 41 years of EU...

Search This Blog