Blogs
South Africa has an unenviable reputation of a high rate of crime, both violent and non-violent, with one of the highest murder rates globally. In 2022, 68 murders took place each day. Crime is seen as a crisis, a view reinforced by a grim assessment of crime risks in South Africa by the Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime.
South Africa’s “Daily Maverick” warns that the Liberation Front of Mozambique (Frelimo) government could be on the road to authoritarianism.
They spell it out; this status indicates highly concentrated, centralised power, political repression and cold shouldering of challengers.
The talks held in South Africa between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) after two years of bitter conflict, has had a positive result. On the second November, Olusegun Obasanjo, a former President of Nigeria and the African Union (AU) representative for the Horn of Africa, announced a ceasefire agreement between the parties.
How could one ignore the first female Prime Minister (PM) of Italy?
Not Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz nor France’s President Emmanuel Macron, even if their politics don’t march quite in step. No sooner was the journalist and politician Giorgia Meloni officially confirmed on October 22, 2022, forming a cabinet in a surprisingly short time, than these gentlemen let it be known that they would work with her.
The many issues bedeviling the planet never seem to cease.
And I’m not even looking at climate change with the hottest-ever summer in the UK and elsewhere, the wettest season in Australia, the frightening hurricanes in the US or drought in the Sahel. I’m looking at a few hotspots such as Iran, Ethiopia or Somalia.
The EU’s Foreign Ministers met in Luxemburg after Iran had erupted, with death-defying street protests causing alarm.
What ho!: Lesotho with its 2.1 million people has done it again!
The recent election changed the political landscape. A new party – Revolution For Prosperity – was formed just six months ago and its leader – top tycoon Sam Matekane – has ousted the establishment. The credibility of the new prime minister is that of a successful man.
A swift look at the suffering of the Sahel region, after the 30th coup d’état in Burkina Faso, which replaced the Interim President Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba by Captain Ibrahim Traore. This followed the January 2022 coup, allegedly because Damiba had failed do deal with Islamist jihardists. It thus poses the open question whether the new team will do better.
On the 26th of September, after a long but interesting reading tour, I finally came back to a rainy, dark skipsted. This trip, which had begun on August 25, had followed an equally long tour in June/July, with the highlight of the PEN Festbuch presentation in the former courtroom 600 of the Nuremberg court building. That had been extremely memorable.
Many times I have stayed in Osnabrück, but rarely twice in one year, and this year, after a first visit in the spring at the time of the impressive peace demonstration at the beginning of the war of aggression against Ukraine, now in September I was even given the special honor of putting my name in the Golden Book of the City of Peace!
Ruth Weiss had so much to tell about topics that are so important to us’ – commented students impressed after their encounter with Ruth Weiss at the Angell Montessori School Centre. At the Kepler Gymnasium in Freiburg, she also left behind enthusiastic young people who quickly got an autograph in her autobiography ‘Wege im harten Gras’. The press echo confirmed these impressions – see Badische Zeitung of 13.7. about the encounter with a woman who seeks intergenerational dialogue and knows how to share her rich experiences in a targeted manner.