•A woman waits for a jars to be filled with water from a tank in an informal settlement in Hammanskraal on May 23
A grieving family gathers in their yard in a town near Pretoria, the epicentre of a deadly cholera outbreak, mourning the death of a relative, one of 17 people killed by the disease in just days.
They are seething with anger, blaming the government in Africa’s most advanced economy for failing to solve their perennial water woes.
Kagiso Sadiki cannot remember a time when Hammanskraal’s tap water was fit for consumption. His 53-year-old cousin Michael Sadiki died within a week of falling ill.
The tap water is brown and dirty, the 37-year-old told AFP.
“Everybody has the right to have clean water,” he said, visibly distressed, sitting under a lemon tree.
“I hope my cousin’s death is not in vain.”
South Africa recorded its first two cholera cases in February on the back of outbreaks in nearby Mozambique and Malawi, the two most severely affected countries in 2023, according to the UN.
On Wednesday, the provincial department of health said since last week, 165 people have visited a local hospital in Hammanskraal with symptoms including diarrhoea, nausea and vomiting.
Lab tests have confirmed two dozen cases of cholera and 17 people have died, the department said.
The infection is showing “a very high fatality rate,” said Sandile Buthelezi, health ministry director general.
– ‘Overburdened’ –
The deadly disease is contracted from a bacterium generally transmitted through contaminated food or water.
Sadiki said his cousin died after being turned away from a local hospital due to a shortage of beds and staff.
Nurses “are overburdened (and) are not given enough support,” Mogomotsi Seleke, a spokesman for nursing union DENOSA told AFP outside the Jubilee Hospital, which is handling most of the cases.
“Nurses only have two hands… and when they are not enough at some point patients suffer,” he said.
Anger at the government is widespread and growing in the small town 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Pretoria where residents battle power and water outages for several hours a day.
Many residents are unemployed and spend their time sitting outside homes made from mud or sheet metal, behind barbed wire fences.
The cholera outbreak is a symptom of dysfunctional wastewater treatment, poor piping infrastructure and municipal graft, locals say.
‘We don’t have water’ –
Following public outcry, the government announced it would probe the causes of the Hammanskraal water crisis.
Sitting legs crossed, Sadiki described how his cousin developed diarrhoea and constant vomiting before he quickly became weak, unable to walk, sleep or wash himself.
After being rushed to hospital a second time, he died in the emergency room.
The water crisis is “a problem that could have been solved a long time ago,” a frustrated Sadiki said.
He added that the family was struggling to raise money for the funeral and now “has to bear the brunt.”
Municipal authorities have urged Hammanskraal residents not to drink tap water, promising that tankers would distribute water, but residents say these only show up once or twice a week.
“We don’t have water, we don’t have houses… we have nothing,” said Rosa Kovani, collecting water from a tanker on a dirt road in a neighbouring township.
With a baby strapped on her back and a water bucket in her hand, the 61-year-old said she had lost hope of seeing a tap installed at her house, a shack with sheet-iron walls.
Some have capitalised on the water crisis, setting up shop to sell purified water, which many residents cannot afford.
Cholera has seen a global resurgence since 2021 after a decade of steady decline, according to the UN, which this week warned one billion people in 43 countries were at risk. (AFP)
The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence is offering soldiers to support armed police in London after dozens of police officers stood down from firearms duties, BBC reports.
More than 100 officers have turned in permits allowing them to carry weapons, a source told the BBC, in support of a fellow officer who has been charged with murder over the fatal shooting of a young Black man, Chris Kaba.
The officer, named only as NX121, who appeared in court last week, has been charged over the death of Chris Kaba in September 2022.
Kaba died hours after he was struck by a single gunshot fired into the vehicle he was driving in the Streatham area of South London.
It later emerged that the Audi Mr Kaba was driving, which did not belong to him, had been linked by police to a gun incident the day before.
His death prompted a number of protests and renewed allegations of racism within the force.
The Ministry of Defence said it received a request, known as Military Aid to the Civil Authorities, from the Home Office to “provide routine counter-terrorism contingency support to the Metropolitan Police, should it be needed”.
A MACA is offered to the police or the NHS in emergency situations. The military helped medical staff in the Covid pandemic and covered for striking border staff and paramedics last year.
The Met said it was a “contingency option” that would only be used “in specific circumstances and where an appropriate policing response was not available”.
Military staff would not be used “in a routine policing capacity”, it added.
On Saturday, the Met said its own officers still make up the vast majority of armed police in the capital but they were being supported by a limited number of firearms officers from neighbouring forces.
Announcing the review, Home Secretary Suella Braverman said the public “depend on our brave firearms officers to protect us”.
“In the interest of public safety they have to make split-second decisions under extraordinary pressures.”
She said that officers have her “full backing”.
“I will do everything in my power to support them,” she added.
In his letter to the home secretary, the Met Police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, said that a system where officers are investigated for “safely pursuing suspects” should not have been allowed to develop.
Sir Mark said he would “make no comment” on any ongoing legal matters, but “the issues raised in this letter go back further”.
He said firearms officers are concerned that they will face years of legal proceedings, “even if they stick to the tactics and training they have been given”.
“Officers need sufficient legal protection to enable them to do their job and keep the public safe, and the confidence that it will be applied consistently and without fear or favour,” he wrote.
But in instances where officers act improperly, Sir Mark said the system “needs to move swiftly” rather than “tying itself in knots pursuing good officers through multiple legal processes”.
The Congo Brazzaville Government headed by President Denis Sassou Nguesso has denied rumours of a coup attempt against his government.
On Sunday, several social media accounts claimed a coup attempt was ongoing in the country while the president was away.
But the country’s Minister of Communication and Media, Thierry Moungalla, hurriedly debunked it via his X (Twitter) page.
“The Government denies this fake news. We reassure public opinion about the calm that reigns and invite people to calmly go about their
activities,” the minister tweeted.
The country’s president is a former military officer who has been in power since 1997.
This handout picture provided by the office of Libya’s Benghazi-based interim prime minister on September 11, 2023 shows a view of destroyed vehicles and damaged buildings in the eastern city of Derna, about 290 kilometres east of Benghazi, in the wake of the Mediterranean storm “Daniel”. (Photo by The Press Office of Libyan Prime Minister / AFP)
At least 2,300 people were killed in Libya and thousands more were reported missing after catastrophic flash floods broke river dams and tore through an eastern coastal city, devastating entire neighbourhoods.
As global concern spread, multiple nations offered to urgently send aid and rescue teams to help the war-scarred country that has been overwhelmed by what one UN official labelled “a calamity of epic proportions”.
Massive destruction shattered the Mediterranean coastal city of Derna, home to about 100,000 people, where multi-storey buildings on the river banks collapsed and houses and cars vanished in the raging waters.
Emergency services reported an initial death toll of more than 2,300 in Derna alone and said over 5,000 people remained missing while about 7,000 were injured.
“The situation in Derna is shocking and very dramatic,” said Osama Ali of the Tripoli-based Rescue and Emergency Service. “We need more support to save lives because there are people still under the rubble and every minute counts.”
The floods were caused by torrential rains from Storm Daniel, which made landfall in Libya on Sunday after earlier lashing Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey.
Derna, 250 kilometres (150 miles) east of Benghazi, is ringed by hills and bisected by what is normally a dry riverbed in summer, but which has turned into a raging torrent of mud-brown water that also swept away several major bridges.
The number of dead given by the Libyan emergency service roughly matched the grim estimates provided by the Red Cross and by authorities in the east, who have warned the death toll may yet rise further.
“The death toll is huge and might reach thousands,” said Tamer Ramadan of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, three of whose volunteers were also reported dead.
“We confirm from our independent sources of information that the number of missing people is hitting 10,000 persons so far,” Ramadan added.
Elsewhere in Libya’s east, aid group the Norwegian Refugee Council said “entire villages have been overwhelmed by the floods and the death toll continues to rise”.
“Communities across Libya have endured years of conflict, poverty and displacement. The latest disaster will exacerbate the situation for these people. Hospitals and shelters will be overstretched.”
‘Catastrophic’ Situation
People look at the damage caused by freak floods in Derna, eastern Libya, on September 11, 2023. (Photo by AFP)
The storm also hit Benghazi and the hill district of Jabal al-Akhdar. Flooding, mudslides and other major damage were reported from the wider region, with images showing overturned cars and trucks.
Libya’s National Oil Corporation, which has its main fields and terminals in eastern Libya, declared “a state of maximum alert” and suspended flights between production sites where it said activity was drastically reduced.
Oil-rich Libya is still recovering from the years of war and chaos that followed the 2011 NATO-backed popular uprising which toppled and killed longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
The country is divided between two rival governments — the UN-brokered, internationally recognised administration based in Tripoli, and a separate administration in the disaster-hit east.
Access to the east is limited. Phone and online links have been largely severed, but the administration’s prime minister Oussama Hamad has reported “more than 2,000 dead and thousands missing” in Derna alone.
A Derna city council official described the situation as “catastrophic” and asked for a “national and international intervention”.
Aid Offers
Libya’s UN-backed government under Abdelhamid Dbeibah announced three days of national mourning on Monday and emphasised “the unity of all Libyans”.
Aid convoys from Tripoli were heading east and Dbeibah’s government announced the dispatch of two ambulance planes and a helicopter, as well as rescue teams, canine search squads and 87 doctors, and technicians to restore power.
Rescue teams from Turkey have arrived in eastern Libya, according to authorities, and the United Nations and several countries offered to send aid.
Egypt announced three days of mourning “in solidarity” with Libya and earthquake-hit Morocco and offered to send aid to both countries.
Algeria said it was sending aid aboard eight military planes and Italy said it was “responding immediately to requests for support” with an assessment team on the way.
The United States embassy said it had “issued an official declaration of humanitarian need in response to the devastating floods in Libya”.
