Discussion on High Rate of Divorce in Zimbabwe

Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, son of Moammar Gadhafi, killed in Zintan, Libyan officials say

Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son and one-time heir apparent of Libya ’s late dictator Moammar Gadhafi, was killed in the northern African country, Libyan officials said Tuesday.

Traveling across three continents, Justin Rowlatt investigates the spread of Chinese influence around the planet and asks what the world will be like if China overtakes America as the world's economic superpower. In the first of two films, he embarks on a journey across Southern Africa to chart the extraordinary phenomenon of Chinese migration to Africa, and the huge influence of China on the development of the continent.

While many in the West view Africa as a land of poverty, to the Chinese it is seen as an almost limitless business opportunity. From Angola to Tanzania, Justin meets the fearless Chinese entrepreneurs who have traveled thousands of miles to set up businesses.

Justin Rowlatt crosses Brazil and the United States on an epic journey as he continues to investigate the spread of Chinese influence around the planet.

In Rio, local industries, including bikini factories, are threatened by cheap Chinese imports, and in the Amazon, Justin witnesses the phenomenal impact of the Chinese hunger for resources on the indigenous people and the environment.

In the US, from California to the rust belt, Justin encounters the rising undercurrent of American fury over their own decline in the face of competition from China.

Louis Theroux journeys to the centre of the controversial South African hunting industry. It's big business, attracting thousands of holiday hunters annually. Keeping wild animals fenced in on farms has made it cheaper and easier to hunt than ever before, but Louis discovers that this industry, instead of endangering species, has actually increased animal numbers. Staying at a safari hunting lodge, Louis hears that each kill has a price. The potential shopping list is endless, ranging from $250 for a porcupine to $100,000 for a rhino. It's a hunter's paradise.

This is a very popular tourist attraction - particularly among Americans. Louis meets such visitors and tries to understand their motivation to kill for pleasure, joining them as they go hunting. He meets novice hunter Ann-Marie, who originally only came to accompany her husband but gets caught up in the excitement and decides she wants to try to hunt an animal herself. She tells Louis that, apparently, your first kill is a total rush - although she would worry about killing a zebra as it's too much like a horse.

Two of the local landowners, Piet Venter and Piet Warren, breed animals for hunting and have a perhaps surprising sensitivity towards the animals they've raised. They take particular care to try to ensure any animal is killed swiftly so they suffer minimal trauma. Former vet Lolly Fourie, who allows hunting on his land, explains how he no longer hunts as he gets no pleasure from it nowadays. Hearing their arguments in favour of the industry, Louis arranges to go on a hunt of his own. Unsure if he really can pull the trigger, as he looks at a wart-hog down the arrow of a crossbow he faces his beliefs head on and must make the decision.

The first episode uncovers life in the Olusosun rubbish dump. Here, around 1,000 people live on top of the rubbish in houses built from scrap. The film follows the daily lives of two men who have become skilled at turning rubbish into gold. Eric, aka Vocal Slender, is a musician, and every bit of scrap he finds brings him one step closer to his dream of launching his music career, but a serious fight nearly ruins his chances.

VICE News correspondent Danny Gold (https://twitter.com/DGisserious) joined On The Line to discuss the Burundi’s controversial presidential election.

In April, Burundi’s incumbent president, Pierre Nkurunziza, announced plans to run for a third term in office — a move many claimed was unconstitutional. The political maneuver sparked violent clashes between Nkurunziza's supporters and those opposed to his third term, triggering a wave of government-sponsored repression and intimidation. Danny Gold traveled to Burundi for VICE News where he spoke to citizens on both sides of the political divide for “Burundi on the Brink.”

Gukuna, the elongation of the labia minora, has been practiced for centuries in Rwanda, albeit not overtly. Some older women have now made it their job to teach young girls the controversial practice of labia stretching.

#DWAfrica
#taboo
#education

Thousands of residents were forced to escape into the bush while others fled to other cities in January when rebels and armed forces fought for the control of Grimari.

A documentary which is exploring the impact of racism on a global scale, as part of the season of programmes marking the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. Beginning by assessing the implications of the relationship between Europe, Africa and the Americas in the 15th century, it considers how racist ideas and practices developed in key religious and secular institutions, and how they showed up in writings by European philosophers Aristotle and Immanuel Kant.

Looking at Scientific Racism, invented during the 19th century, an ideology that drew on now discredited practices such as phrenology and provided an ideological justification for racism and slavery. These theories ultimately led to eugenics and Nazi racial policies of the master race. Some upsetting scenes.

The third and final episode of Racism: A History examines the impact of racism in the 20th Century. By 1900, European colonial expansion had reached deep into the heart of Africa. Under the rule of King Leopold II, The Belgian Congo was turned into a vast rubber plantation. Men, women and children who failed to gather their latex quotas would have their limbs dismembered. The country became the scene of one of the century’s greatest racial genocides, as an estimated 10 million Africans perished under colonial rule. Contains scenes which some viewers may find disturbing.

Robert Gabriel Mugabe 21 February 1924 – 6 September 2019) was a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987 and then as President from 1987 to 2017. He chaired the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) group from 1975 to 1980 and led its successor political party, the ZANU – Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF), from 1980 to 2017. Ideologically an African nationalist, during the 1970s and 1980s he identified as a Marxist–Leninist, and as a socialist after the 1990s. His policies have been described as Mugabeism.

Mugabe was born to a poor Shona family in Kutama, Southern Rhodesia. Following an education at Kutama College and the University of Fort Hare, he worked as a school teacher in Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Ghana. Angered that Southern Rhodesia was a colony of the British Empire governed by its white minority, Mugabe embraced Marxism and joined African nationalist protests calling for an independent state led by representatives of the black majority. After making anti-government comments, he was convicted of sedition and imprisoned between 1964 and 1974. On release, he fled to Mozambique, established his leadership of ZANU, and oversaw its role in the Rhodesian Bush War, fighting Ian Smith's predominantly white government. He reluctantly took part in the peace negotiations brokered by the United Kingdom that resulted in the Lancaster House Agreement. The agreement ended the war and resulted in the 1980 general election, in which Mugabe led ZANU-PF to victory. As Prime Minister of the newly renamed Zimbabwe, Mugabe's administration expanded healthcare and education and—despite his professed Marxist desire for a socialist society—adhered largely to mainstream, conservative economic policies.

Mugabe's calls for racial reconciliation failed to stem growing white emigration, while relations with Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) also deteriorated. In the Gukurahundi of 1982–1987, Mugabe's Fifth Brigade crushed ZAPU-linked opposition in Matabeleland in a campaign that killed at least 10,000 people, mostly Ndebele civilians. Internationally, he sent troops into the Second Congo War and chaired the Non-Aligned Movement (1986–89), the Organisation of African Unity (1997–98), and the African Union (2015–16). Pursuing decolonisation, Mugabe emphasised the redistribution of land controlled by white farmers to landless blacks, initially on a "willing seller–willing buyer" basis. Frustrated at the slow rate of redistribution, from 2000 he encouraged black Zimbabweans to violently seize white-owned farms. Food production was severely impacted, leading to famine, economic decline, and international sanctions. Opposition to Mugabe grew, but he was re-elected in 2002, 2008, and 2013 through campaigns dominated by violence, electoral fraud, and nationalistic appeals to his rural Shona voter base. In 2017, members of his own party ousted him in a coup, replacing him with former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa. He died in Singapore.

Having dominated Zimbabwe's politics for nearly four decades, Mugabe was a controversial figure. He was praised as a revolutionary hero of the African liberation struggle who helped free Zimbabwe from British colonialism, imperialism, and white minority rule. Critics accused Mugabe of being a dictator responsible for economic mismanagement, widespread corruption in Zimbabwe, anti-white racism, human rights abuses, and crimes against humanity.

Stephen (Steve) Bantu Biko was not alone in forging the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM); he was nevertheless its most prominent leader, who with others guided the movement of student discontent into a political force unprecedented in the history of South Africa. Biko and his peers were responding to developments that emerged in the high phase of apartheid, when the Nationalist Party (NP), in power for almost two decades, was restructuring the country to conform to its policies of separate development. The NP went about untangling what little pockets of integration and proximity there were between White, Black, Coloured and Indian people, by creating new residential areas, new parallel institutions such as schools, universities and administrative bodies, and indeed, new ‘countries’, the tribal homelands.

The students that launched the South Africa Students Organisation (SASO) belonged to a generation that resisted the process of strengthening apartheid, in any manner they could.

Biko’s rise to prominence is inextricably tied to the development of the BCM.