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Tag: South African

  • Ebola: South African woman tested negative

    The South African woman suspected of the Ebola Virus Disease has tested negative.
    According to Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuch Chukwu, the test conducted on the woman came back negative.

    She is however being investigated for other disease.

    The South African woman, whose identity was not revealed, flew into the Murtala Muhammed International Airport from Morocco on Thursday.

    She was treated as a suspected case and was being taken to Lagos’ Ebola treatment centre for tests to see whether she actually had the virus, Reuters reports.

    The traveller, who lives in Cape Town, filled out a health questionnaire on her arrival at Lagos in which she acknowledged suffering from diarrhea and vomiting, both possible symptoms of the Ebola hemorrhagic virus.

    “This person has been in Guinea and Sierra Leone since April and she has symptoms,” Dr. Morenike Alex-Okoh, director of Port Health Services at MMIA, told Reuters.

  • Pupils excel at South African festival contest

    Pupils of St. Jude’s Private School, FESTAC Town, Lagos, have emerged winners at this year’s International Marimba and Steelpan Festival in South Africa.

    The Proprietress of the school, Mrs Ijeoma Jato, made this known in Lagos.

    She said the 16 pupils that represented Nigeria beat their contemporaries from about 71 other educational institutions in the Steelpan category of the musical competition held in Johannesburg earlier this month.

    Mrs Jato said the school also emerged third in the ‘’Battle of the Bands’ (High School: Small Ensemble) as well as won an award for the band that travelled the longest distance.

    Jato noted that the pupils, who were the only contingent from West Africa, qualified for the competition by excelling at the Nigerian Junior Steelpan competition held on November last year.

    According to her, Nigerian Junior Steelpan Competition is being organised by the Steelband Panorama, Nigeria, headed by Chief Bowie. S. Bowie.

    She said the International Marimba and Steelpan Festival in South Africa was organised by Education Africa, headed by Mrs Joan Lithgow.

    Jato added that the school’s drummer and guitar player won the best player’s award with a cash award of 3,000 Rand. The proprietress said  there were about 220 song performances at the competition, adding that schools from Zimbabwe, Botswana, France, Lesotho, among other countries participated.

    She said St. Jude’s participants presented Nigeria’s P-Square’s ‘Chop My Money’, Shakira’s ‘Waka Waka’ and South Africa’s Yvonne Chaka Chaka’s ‘Uquombothi’ at the competition.

    She said the school was committed to developing students’ potential to enable them to contribute meaningfully to societal development.

    She noted that many Nigerian children were talented and needed development through quality education.

  • Abil rescued by South African Reserve Bank

    South Africa’s central bank has stepped in to run troubled lender African Bank Investments Limited (Abil) temporarily.

    The South African Reserve Bank has said it wants to introduce a recovery-plan that will ensure the lender has financial security in the future.

    Abil said it had incurred serious financial losses in the past year and needed nearly $800million (£480million) to survive.

    Abil’s chief executive has resigned and the bank’s shares have been suspended on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

    They have fallen by 50 per cent in recent days.

    The largest shareholder in Abil is the Public Investment Corporation, which looks after money on behalf of government pension funds.

    Others who are affected are ordinary people who have deposited their savings.

    Together, they make up 3.2 million customers.

    Until recently, Abil was held up as a model for a new way of banking in Africa.

    It targeted the mass market made up of previously unbanked South Africans, who are largely the poor and the working class.

    However, some have accused Abil of making reckless loans without checking properly whether customers could afford it.

    In 2005, South Africa introduced the National Credit Act, imposing strict regulations for lending.

    The case of Abil will be a litmus test for banking in a new South Africa, where it is necessary to cater for communities that were previously excluded from the economy because of apartheid.

    The Reserve Bank is the last port of call for troubled banks, but its involvement here may be seen as a first step to nationalising a local bank.

  • Tourism to improve South African economy

    Tourism to improve South African economy

    GROWTH in the tourism sector, with its substantial job creation spin-offs, could act as a partial antidote to the sluggishness of the economy, South Africa Tourism Minister, Derek Hanekom, says.

    However, he warned that the hospitality sector’s positive effect could be undermined by South Africa’s new visa and immigration regulations.

    Mr Hanekom told parliament’s tourism portfolio committee that the visa and immigration regulations issued six weeks ago by Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba could have a negative effect on the sector.

    In terms of the new rules, people wishing to visit South Africa would only be able to apply for visas at the country’s foreign missions, which in the case of a large country like China would mean only in Shanghai and Beijing.

    “It could potentially have a negative impact on tourism. We have to make it as easy as possible for person to come to our country,” said Mr Hanekom.

    “We are dealing with a very, very competitive international environment and people have choices. At this stage where we are getting a good share, with close to 10-million arrivals annually.

    “We can increase that share, but if we do the wrong thing that share can drop. We don’t want to slip backwards; we want to maintain it and we want to grow it.”

    Mr Hanekom stressed that it was “critically important” to remove unnecessary bottlenecks and said discussions were taking place with the Department of Home Affairs.

    Many significant role players, both local and foreign, had raised their concerns with Mr Hanekom and Mr Gigaba, pointing out that the new requirements would place quite onerous burdens on visa applications. This included the need for an unabridged birth certificate for children and the accessibility of South African missions.

    Mr Hanekom emphasised the importance of improving the road network to key tourist attractions such as the Kruger National Park.

    South African Tourism CEO Thulani Nzima said a key focus would be growing the domestic market, with the aim of increasing the number of domestic tourists to 18-million over the next five years. The agency had an “aggressive” strategy to grow the African market and planned to have five marketing offices in key African countries by 2020. There is an office in Nigeria.

  • We want to beat Guinness Book of Records—Couple touring Africa in an old Benz that uses vegetable oil

    We want to beat Guinness Book of Records—Couple touring Africa in an old Benz that uses vegetable oil

    Mr Mark Sampson and his wife are South Africans of British origin. The two environmentalists left their jobs in Cape Town, South Africa to embark on a trip round the entire circumference of Africa with their two children. And this they are doing in a 1978 model of Mercedes 911 which uses vegetable oil instead of petrol or diesel. They had travelled by land for six months when OKORIE UGURU met them at the 2013 edition of Carnival Calabar, where they spoke about their mission. Excerpts:

    Mrs. Sampson:

    What is Africa Clockwise all about?

    Africa Clockwise is an indication of the direction we are travelling in. We left Cape Town six months ago, and we are travelling clockwise round Africa. We are trying to go around the coast as much as we can; around the circumference of the continent. We planned it would take us two and a half years. And it is a climate-change project because this truck does not run on petrol or diesel; it runs only on used waste vegetable oil or palm oil. At the moment, it is palm oil. We’ve run on sunflower oil, soya beans oil and coconut oil.

    How did you develop the vehicle? I know that most vehicles run on petrol or diesel?

    It is not common in Africa, but in Europe, it is happening quite a lot. People are adapting their diesel engines. Oil engines are easier to convert. It is not a complicated process and does not pollute.

    What is the idea behind Africa Clockwise?

    The idea is that we are going clockwise because of the direction and we are going clockwise because we are trying to point out that we have to be aware of the time. Time is running out on us. Climate change is coming and the impact is going to be huge and we in Africa are going to be hit hardest. We need to prepare. We are also trying to beat the Guinness Book of Records for the longest journey made on alternative fuel, and to draw attention to the fact that we need to find ways of living without polluting. So, we are attempting to do 60,000 kilometres around the continent. At the moment, the world record is 40,000 kilometres, so we hope to smash that record.

    So, how many kilometres have you travelled so far? Which countries have you passed through to get to Calabar in Nigeria and what are the challenges?

    We have done about 10,000 kilometres so far. We are already a quarter of the round the continent. We have passed through Namibia, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Congo-Brazzaville and Cameroon to reach here. We are enjoying Nigeria immensely.

    When you leave Nigeria, where will you head for?

    We will head along the coast. So, we will go to Benin, Togo, Ghana and further down to Senegal and so on, then to Morocco before we cross into Europe briefly. My brother is getting married, so we are hoping to tie all these together. Then we come down to Northern Africa and then go down the East coast for another year.

    And then back to South Africa?

    We hope to get home by the end of 2015.

    Did you time it so that you would be in Calabar, Nigeria for the carnival?

    Absolutely. My husband is a stand-up comedian. That is his job. He has written a show about climate change. But my job is carnival. I run a carnival in Cape Town. That is my job. So, I have timed it beautifully to be here at this time because I really wanted to see the biggest carnival in Africa which is the Calabar Carnival.

    Can you confirm that?

    Absolutely! I don’t think there is any doubt. Well, I personally have not seen any bigger one. In Cape Town, we have an enormous carnival tradition. It has been happening for 100 years. But in terms of the type of band and so on, I don’t think there is anything to touch it on the continent.

    What are the challenges you have had on the way?

    I think my husband should address it.

     

    Mr. Sampson:

    The challenges so far are firstly, mechanical challenges. A 1978 Bull Mose Mercedez 911 is an old truck you find everywhere, especially in Nigeria. We have never seen so many trucks. Every bush mechanic along the village anywhere we go, people could always fix this truck.

    The challenge for me has been learning to be a diesel mechanic and also the challenges with our health. I have been ill and my daughter has been ill. You know it is the tropics and the weather has been hot. And working hard filtering cooking oil, going to pick up 50 litres, 100 litres everywhere, lifting it up to the roof, making our fuel everywhere we go, it is physical.

    I have lost nearly 15 kilos in six months and yet I have to stay strong and well because we are working ourselves really hard. It is much harder than we ever expected in terms of having to collect fuel. A lorry that weighs 10 tonnes uses a lot of fuel. So, we are constantly looking for fuel, constantly fixing the truck and constantly fixing ourselves.

    You chose the difficult option when you could have done that more easily with petrol or diesel…

    I think it is an example for everybody and also the practicality, because we are not rich people. The thing is that if you are not rich, you have to be adaptive and adaptable, creative and resilient. That is where the people of Africa come in. This is why we think Africa can inspire the rest of the world when it comes to coping with these challenges from the environment, because climate change problems like flood and so on. You know all these problems that we have because of climate change; a lot of people having to move and under a lot of stress due to climate change.

    So, to be able to adapt to that, you’ve got to be resilient and creative. Poor people have had to do that. In Africa, people have struggled for so long; struggling with all sorts of problems, AIDS, poverty, war and crime. And I think having to struggle on this journey in an old vehicle using cooking oil is just another example of people in Africa making a plan. We can do it in Africa.

    People come and help us wherever we are. If we are in some million-dollar vehicle, all rich, we would not need anybody’s help and we will never meet the people. But we need help all the time. The same way Africans need one another. It is Obuntu we call it in South Africa; that is the spirit of the people. I am because you are. We are all connected. What I do affects you and what you do affects me because we are one big family.

    We are all in this together. As species, we need each other. This has been a great example of that. The further we travel into Africa, the more we realise that everybody is willing to help. Everybody is friendly. Nowhere in West Africa is dangerous. We have been treated with such respect and love. We are singing the praises of Nigeria. It is a fantastic place.

    What has the reception been like in other countries?

    It has been an amazing reception in every country and the big surprise was the Congo-Brazzaville and the DRC where we thought we were just going to go through as quickly as possible because of problems. But it turned out that the people were so friendly and there was no problems. Even in the rural areas, we are always finding people who know how to work on the trucks, people who are interested in what we are doing, other families. Because we have children, we end up staying with a family in a little village somewhere, eating cassava with them, eating fish with them or whatever we could find in a natural setting and living as they live.

    We don’t have a lot of money. We spent everything to put this together and we gave up our jobs and now we are living purely on the rent from our house which enables us to pay for visas and everything else. We have lived cheaply. It means we live connected with people. You know that rich people don’t connect with each other or anybody else. I think that is something we see in our community in South Africa. A lot of rich white and black South Africans are isolated from one another.

    Could you talk about yourselves?

    I moved to South Africa from England 20 years ago to work in the Red Cross children’s hospital in Cape Town. I have a scientist background and about 15 years ago, I became a professional comedian. And now I do shows often based around science projects about genetics, about our shared African heritage, that we all evolved from Africa and that we are one family and there is no such thing as race.

    My son is black and I am white, but he is adopted and he is also my family because we are all one family. So, I did shows about climate change because I want to talk about the family because my children are now going to inherit what we leave in this planet; the mess that we leave through being greedy and taking too many of the resources and squandering our connection with nature. We are not connected with nature anymore. I like to do a lot of that with jokes, at five schools, colleges and for businesses. That is how I make my living, just telling people facts, but in a humorous way.

    I find that really fascinating in South Africa because people are really very receptive to comedy and there are some good messages to put out there about the strength of being South African and being African. A lot of people look down on it and say they want to be European, they want to be American. But coming from Europe, I’ve had the best life I could have had because of Africa, and it has made me a strong, better and most spiritual person.

  • South African varsity wins Pan-African debate

    South African varsity wins Pan-African debate

    The University of Cape Town (Team A), South Africa has lifted the trophy at the sixth Pan African Universities Debating Championship (PAUDC).

    They went home with a star prize of $1000 after defeating seven other African countries at the championship hosted by the University of Calabar (UNICAL) in collaboration with the Independent Corrupt Practices and Related Offences Commission (ICPC).

    Two teams from the University of Botswana won the second and third prizes of $500 and $250 at the competition. They debated on the theme: “Conflict, insecurity and good governance in Africa.”

    The eight African countries that participated in the competition included South Africa, Ghana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Tanzania, Botswana and Nigeria with Australia as trainee.

    Speaking during the awards, the chairman of the occasion and UNICAL’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Academics, Prof. Austin Obiekezie, congratulated all the participants on their outstanding efforts.

    He urged those who did not win to work harder and learn from their mistakes in subsequent editions.

    “This debate was not only to compete and win, but an opportunity to network and maintain long-lasting partnership within Africa, one thing we should go home with is unity let’s shun favouritism, nepotism and any act capable of dwindling the continent,” he said.

    He described the championship as the best of its kind since inception, adding: “I see this championship as the best behaved debating community in Africa.”

    Convener of the championship, Prof. Eze Bassey Eze, said: “It is high time students started to think positively and share ideas that can bring development to the region.

    Speaking on the ICPC support, which was essential to Nigeria’s getting the hosting rights for the first time ever, Eze thanked the Commission for what he described as its relentless efforts aimed at curbing corruption at all strata of the society. He, particularly, praised the ICPC for partnering with institutions and other stakeholders to initiate the education sector system review, debates and public enlightenment programmes.

    “The ICPC should be commended for its efforts to encourage national and continental debates among university students since this will enable the students to discuss issues of governance and also have the potential of enriching their knowledge on governance, transparency and accountability and prepare them to speak out against acts of corruption at all levels of the society,” Eze said.

    Speaking with journalists, the leader of the South African debating group and student of University of Cape Town, Mr. Daniel Corder, said: “This was my first experience in participating in debating championship and with hard work and persistence I contributed to our victory.”

    Corder described the city of Calabar as the best within the sub- Western region in Africa.

     

  • Nigeria has got a lot better, says South African agribusiness entrepreneur

    Cassava, a woody shrub with an edible root that looks like a large sweet potato, is one of the most widely grown crops in Nigeria, produced largely by small-scale farmers. Although cassava roots can be processed into a variety of products – including cassava flour, starch, ethanol and glucose syrup – the crop has not been a great commercial success.

    A South African-born businessman is, however, at the forefront of commercialising cassava in Nigeria. Louw Burger is the man behind Thai Farm International, a 90-ton a day cassava processing company, located 120km from the country’s commercial hub of Lagos. The plant turns cassava into flour, although the company is looking to move a step up the value chain by producing starch. In 2012, Flour Mills of Nigeria, a Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) listed company and one of the country’s largest wheat millers, bought a controlling stake in Thai Farm.But why would a wheat milling company all of a sudden be interested in cassava? Well, they don’t really have choice.To reduce dependency on imported food and to boost Nigeria’s agricultural sector, the government has issued a directive that requires bakers to add a certain percentage of high-quality cassava flour into their mixes. Cassava flour is also much cheaper than wheat flour.Burger spent his early career in banking, first with Citibank in South Africa, and then looking after South African lender Absa’s business in Asia for many years. He came to Nigeria a decade ago, on what was supposed to be a brief stay to turn around a struggling business owned by one of his Asian friends. After this he took on an assignment at a local Nigerian bank. It was during this time that he met and married his current wife, a Thai businesswoman running a trading company in Nigeria.When his work at the bank was done, Burger needed something to do. He looked at a few options, until someone suggested to him to get into the cassava business.”I had never heard of cassava, but Thailand is the world’s largest exporter of starches made from cassava. We went to Thailand a lot anyway, so we went back and saw that in Thailand, starch from cassava is a US$5billion a year industry. In Nigeria cassava is an indigenous plant and very widely cultivated, mainly on a peasant farming basis. It is like bringing a factory into a country that already cultivates a massive quantity of the stuff. So these elements all came together, and we started the project,” he explained to How we made it in Africa.The concept was birthed to bring Thai cassava farming and processing technology to Nigeria to increase the production and processing of cassava roots.

    Burger says that although reliable numbers are scarce, there are probably around five industrial scale cassava processing companies throughout Nigeria, existing alongside numerous smaller producers and backyard operations.Thai Farm sources the majority of its cassava from commercial farmers in the central part of the country. It used to get most of its crops from smallholder farmers, but these days, due to a steep rise in food prices, farmers prefer to sell their crops to local women entrepreneurs who use the cassava to produce an indigenous food called garri. “The garri buyers are paying silly numbers because the price of their food has gone up by 250 per cent,” Burger noted. Thai Farm has, however, started investing money in its own farming operations.

    Despite Thai Farm’s success, Burger said there are many challenges of operating in Nigeria.

    One of his headaches is finding suitable people to work at the factory. Cassava factories need to be situated close to the farms due to the crop’s short shelf life. After it has been taken out of the ground, cassava needs to ideally be processed within 48 hours before it goes bad. This means that once the crops come in, the factory often needs to operate 24 hours a day.

    “Finding people in these villages that actually have an education, that actually have a work ethic, that can apply themselves, that have a place to sleep during the day, so that when they are on night shift they have rested during the day – these are all major challenges,” Burger explained.

    Transport is also a challenge. “Transport in Nigeria is hellishly expensive, and typically run by small companies – one, two, three truck people that are not that reliable. With the unreliable transporters, you’ve got bad roads, you’ve got harassment by government officials on the roads. This afternoon I counted my permits that I carry with me in my vehicle – 48 different documents. And then they stop you on the road, and they count your documents, and they say, you don’t have this paper, and that paper, and they try and squeeze money out of you by selling you another permit.”

    Despite these troubles, Burger believes Nigeria’s business environment has improved considerably over the past decade. “I’ve seen a vast, vast improvement in ten years. I mean 10 years ago if you went out on a Sunday, you got stopped at a police roadblock with the policeman literally putting a gun to your head and demanding your vehicle papers to try and intimidate you into giving him money. Now that doesn’t happen anymore. It has improved a lot. I mean in the last six months I’ve driven 30,000km on the roads across southwestern Nigeria – and they’ve started putting money into fixing up the roads. There are still vast areas where the roads are still really, really bad – but the roads have gotten better.”

    Burger is also encouraged by the fact corruption is a daily debate in the press. “It is openly talked about, and openly condemned.”

    “I think Nigerians have reached the bottom of the pit, they’ve been through the deepest, deepest dark dip, and they saw what happened to their lives and they said, ‘hell no, we don’t want this’. It remains a challenging environment, but I’m of the opinion, that in the ten years that I’ve been here, it has gotten a lot better. If they continue on the path that they are on now – this is not going to be a bad place to be in another five to ten years’ time,” he said.

     

    •Culled from How we made it in Africa

  • South African Tourism congratulates CHAN 2014 qualifiers

    SOUTH AFRICAN TOURISM (SAT) has congratulated each of the 16 teams that qualified for the African National Championship 2014(CHAN). SAT said all was set to welcome them to South Africa

    “The passion and energy of AFCON 2013 – as Africa came together in South Africa and celebrated the game of soccer as one – was incredible. CHAN moves to three new host cities in South Africa and they are eagerly preparing for the tournament next year. We invite all soccer enthusiasts to come to South Africa to support their teams and to enjoy the diverse leisure and lifestyle activities here in South Africa,” says South African Tourism Chief Executive Officer, Thulani Nzima.

    The cities: Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Polokwane were announced by the Local Organising Committee (LOC). The three cities offer soccer fans limitless choices for adventure, culture and heritage, shopping, dining, nightlife, wine tasting and scenic beauty… and opportunities aplenty to make new friends.

    “African tourists are the backbone and lifeblood of South Africa’s tourism industry, and they are highly valued by the destination. African markets are critical markets, and South Africa invests heavily in growing its share of visitors from the rest of the continent. In 2012 tourist arrivals from regional Africa grew by 8.5%. The individual markets performed really well: Nigeria grew by 13.8%t, Ghana grew by 23.8 %, Uganda grew by 7.4%, Kenya grew by 9 %, Angola grew by 21.7 % and Tanzania grew by 25.4 %.

    “CHAN gives South Africa an important platform to follow up on the awareness and visibility that AFCON afforded us earlier this year as we continue to entrench South Africa’s status as a welcoming, exciting, alluring, capable and accessible destination. We want to build on that momentum, push it forward and keep African tourist arrivals to South Africa growing strongly,” concludes Nzima.

    The 16 teams that will compete are: South Africa, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

  • Lesson in Mandela’s birthday for our leaders

    Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was the first black man to be elected South African president after the collapse of the apartheid regime, which prevented the natives from taking charge of the political destiny of their country.

    Becuase of his activities against apartheid, Mandela was arrested in 1962 and convicted for conspiracy to overthrow the government. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. After serving 27 years on Robben Island, Madiba, as Mandela is fondly called by his countrymen, was released in 1990 following international pressure on the apartheid leadership.

    For not yielding to several offers by oppressors to trade his struggle for freedom, Mandela etched his name indelibly in the hearts of his countrymen and Africans. His will to continue the struggle forced the world to acknowledge the right of the people of South Africa whose dignity and right to determine the destiny of their country were restored when Mandela was released from the prison.

    Mandela, in a transparent process, was elected his country’s president and served a single term from 1994 to 1999. For forgiving his jailers, Mandela received international praise, which culminated in his being jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize alongside the last president of the Apartheid regime in 1993.

    During and after his term as the South African president, he equally received several recognition awards from the United States Presidential Medal Freedom Award to the Soviet Order of Lenin among others.

    Having left the political scene for more than 10 years, Mandela’s influence and popularity continue to soar, despite that he no longer wields power as the godfather of South African politics or founding father of modern South Africa. He still commands the respect of world leaders. His medical travail in the past eight weeks is a pointer to this fact.

    The torrential outpouring of prayers and well wishes for his recovery even at 95 by his countrymen and people outside the continent of Africa shows that Mandela, a leader that served one term in office without leaving a record of corruption, is the most respected African on earth.

    But can this be said of Nigerian leaders – past and present? No. Politicians don’t retire here; they play the game till they breathe their last. Some of Nigerians leaders, who had spent several years in power, still want to come back to govern because they feel that nobody has the idea to lead the country apart from them.

    Even as he lies feebly on his hospital bed battling lung infections, which may have resulted from his years of incarceration and struggle to free the South Africa, Mandela is never taken out of the country for treatment abroad despite his status. It speaks of legacy of good governance he left behind for his country to move forward after retrogressive Apartheid rule.

    Going for medical checkup and treatment abroad even for a slight injury is a common occurrence among Nigeria’s political class. Our hospitals have been turned to public cemetery only meant for the poor masses at the expense of whose the leaders spend resources to get medical attention in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Germany, US, United Kingdom and India.

    Nigerian leaders do not possess good leadership qualities found in Mandela. We have been blesses with corrupt leadership that pay lip service to anything that can make our country to move forward. The ongoing industrial action by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), inability of the poor to access quality healthcare and nose-diving economy show the level decadence in Nigeria as a country.

    Education system in Nigeria is handled with levity by the government with no blueprint to development the sector. Can we conclude that strike is the only action the government understands? With the level of insecurity, it is only in Nigeria that government allows universities to be shut, thereby making students to roam the street and join criminal gangs to aggravate the security situation.

    Our leaders must learn lesson from Mandela, who is still said to be in comma as I write this. Madiba has been praised for good leadership in South Africa. If it is possible, we would wish that people like Mandela live forever to serve as example to corrupt leaders on the continent of Africa.

     

    Ibrahim, 300-Level Arts and Social Sciences Education, UNILORIN

  • Mandela turns 95 in hospital

    Mandela turns 95 in hospital

    Nelson Mandela is spending his 95th birthday in hospital in Pretoria, as events take place around the world and in South Africa in his honour, BBC reports.

    South Africans are being urged to mark the former president and anti-apartheid leader’s 67 years of public service with 67 minutes of charitable acts.

    Mr. Mandela, who is in critical but stable condition with a recurring lung infection, entered hospital on June 8.

    President Jacob Zuma said his health was “steadily improving.”

    “We are proud to call this international icon our own as South Africans and wish him good health,” Mr Zuma said in a statement.

    “We thank all our people for supporting Madiba throughout the hospitalisation with undying love and compassion,” he said, referring to Mandela’s clan name.

    Mr. Mandela’s daughter, Zindzi, said on Wednesday he had made “dramatic progress”, and that she had found him watching television with headphones on and communicating with his eyes and hands when she visited him this week.

    “I should think he will be going home anytime soon,” she told the UK’s Sky News television.

    Mr. Mandela’s birthday is also Nelson Mandela International Day, a day declared by the United Nations as a way to recognise the Nobel Prize winner’s contribution to reconciliation.

    The former statesman is revered across the world for his role in ending apartheid in South Africa. He went on to become the first black president in the country’s first all-race elections in 1994.