Kenyan police arrested 5 000 people in a crackdown on a banned sect blamed for grisly murders, local media reported on Wednesday. Police swooped into Nairobi’s Mathare slum after the killings and subsequent beheadings of at least half a dozen people by the outlawed Mungiki sect.
The images are shocking, even by Iraqi standards: two dozen skeletal children, some tied to beds, others writhing in their own waste and some appearing, at first glance, to be dead. Such was the nightmare that greeted United States and Iraqi forces last week when they stumbled upon the al-Hanan orphanage in Baghdad.
A man has been arrested and is being questioned by police after causing a disturbance in the public gallery of the National Assembly on Wednesday afternoon. Shortly after proceedings began, the man began shouting at bemused MPs sitting below. Deputy Speaker Gwen Mahlangu, who was in the chair at the time, repeatedly told the man to stop.
As President Bingu wa Mutharika’s minority party faces the possibility of losing more seats in Parliament, Malawi’s civil society has expressed concern that this year’s budget, expected to be presented next week, might be stalled. Last week, the Supreme Court granted powers to the speaker of Parliament to expel defecting lawmakers.
It’s not cheap motels or the back seats of cars, but the marriage bed where the new high-risk sex takes place in Uganda, delegates attending a conference on scaling up Aids services, held in Kigali, Rwanda, heard this week. Dr David Apuuli, director general of the Uganda Aids Commission, warned that marital sex accounts for 42% of new infections.
Libya’s Supreme Court said on Wednesday it will issue its final verdict next month on six foreign medics on death row for allegedly infecting children with Aids, but an official involved in the case said an out-of-court settlement could be reached as early as this week.
Less than 5% of Zimbabwe’s industrialists believe the country will recover from its deepening economic crisis in the next three years, a survey showed on Wednesday. The Southern African country is in its eighth successive year of recession, marked by the world’s highest inflation rate at above 3 700% and which has left four in five people without jobs.
The National Assembly on Wednesday approved the controversial Public Service Amendment Bill, despite the objections of most opposition parties. Essentially, the Bill provides for a single public service at national and provincial levels and allows for secondment of employees.
When public-service trade unions decide whether to accept or reject the government’s final pay offer on Wednesday it will not be ”one union, one vote”. Voting rights are assigned by the Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council to unions according to the size of their membership, and a majority (50% plus one) is needed for a deal.
South African businesses had little good to say about the country’s schooling system, according to a survey released on Wednesday. Private-sector employers had ”grave reservations” about its overall quality, indicated the research by the Centre for Development and Enterprise survey.