They burned their camp to which the authorities were trying to force them to return.

It is reminiscent of what happened in Pretoria and Cape Town last year.

Thousands of refugees from the conflict in Sudan  and Libya have been accommodated in Niger. 

The camp is in Agadez which is a major hub for Africans headed for Europe..

They say conditions are poor and the UNHCR must relocate them. They staged a sit-in outside the offices of the world organisation.

When authorities beat some of them and forced them into a vehicles to return them to their camp, it was burned down. More than 300 arrests have been made

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The gathering comes weeks after refugees besieged the United Nations High Commission For Refugees offices in Cape Town and Pretoria demanding to be moved away from xenophobic attacks in South Africa.

The Global Refugee Forum in Geneva brings together governments, business and relief agencies.

UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi says the burden of housing refugees must be shared more fairly.

The number of refugees  driven out by war in Africa and the Middle East, violent drug lords in Colombia and repressive regimes in Asia are now four times more than the people displaced by the Second World War.

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Non Governmental Organizations are urging the UNHCR and the South African Government to find an urgent solution to the impasse.

In the High Court tomorrow Judge Ranchod will decide when the application by Brooklyn and Waterkloof residents to move the refugees will be heard.

The refugees, in the third week of their protest that involves camping outside the UNHCR offices, are demanding to be sent to another country of safety to escape xenophobic attacks in South Africa.

The Kathrada Foundation has joined NGOs called for a humanitarian solution avoiding the police using water cannon, tear gas and stun grenades as they did against protesting refugees in Cape Town last week.  

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Local residents are being asked to contribute to the legal costs.

Papers are expected to be served today on the mainly Congolese refugees engaged in the sit-in.

This will give them time to respond before the urgent action in the Pretoria High Court next week.

The refugees are demanding to be moved to safety away from the xenopbobic attacks  they have suffered in South Africa.

Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi told a Parliamentary portfolio committee meeting this week that the sit-in outside the UNHCR offices in Cape Town and Pretoria are a matter for the South African Police Services.

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They will go to any country the United Nations decides is safe for them.

Compatriots in Cape Town of the demonstrating Congolese refugees has asked to be sent to a Australia, New Zealand or Canada.

In Pretoria, spokesman for the organization Women and Children in Crisis Alex Nkoy says they’re in no position to make any requests.

Asked if they would go to Rwanda, which is currently taking in African would-be migrants held in Libyan detention centers, Nkoy says they will go where the UNHCR decides to send them. 

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She’ll speak to Africa  ambassadors in Pretoria about it – as he predecessor Lindiwe Sisulu did five months ago.

South Africa’s High Commission in Abuja and consulate in  Lagos have been temporarily closed because they came under attack from youths angered by the xenophobic violence in Pretoria and Johannesburg.

South African diplomatic missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia have received similar treatment.

African countries are using boycott – the same tactic employed during the anti-apartheid struggle – to express their displeasure.

Nigeria has shunned the World Economic Forum hosted in Cape Town.

Madagascar follows Zambia in refusing to play a friendly fixture against Bafana Bafana.

Air Tanzania has suspended flights to South Africa.

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It offers students and other interested an opportunity got explore music and literature of the Spanish language and Mexican culture.

The  National Autonomous University of Mexico known as UNAM has bilateral agreements with two universities each in Johannesburg and Pretoria and another in Cape Town.

From its UNESCO heritage-site campus in Mexico City it  is the alma maters of Mexico’s three Nobel laureates. 

Chief representative in South Africa Arturo Mendoza says UNAM has links with seven other countries. 

“Particularly today what was important for us was to open the cultural corner from UNAM here at the Mexican Embassy in Pretoria,” he says.

The next UNAM cultural centre will opened at the University of the Witwatersrand where facilities have already been allocated.

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In the year under review the South African Commission on Human Rights dealt with more than 400 race-baed complaints.

It also handled more than 700 allegations of inequality.

The South African Human Rights Commission’s director Alexandra Fitzgerald says race-based discrimination presents the greatest challenge to the work of the body as evident by the volume and frequency of race related complaints received by the commission’s  head office in Gauteng – which is the busiest centre  – and provincial offices,  of which Cape Town carries the heaviest load.

This is the third year in which an increase in complaints has been recorded.

Fitzgerald says this does not necessarily reflect an increase in racism in South Africa.

Rather it shows  South Africans are becoming increasingly aware of their rights and that more and more people are being exposed to reports of unfairness, discrimination and racism on social media.

South Africa has a chequered  history with the declaration on human rights.

In 1948 the apartheid regime was one of eight governments  that refused to sign it.

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Davison, 57, who was arrested yesterday (Wednesday) has indicated to  the Cape Town court, through his lawyer, that he intends pleading not guilty.

The State did not oppose bail of 1,170 euros for Davison who came to prominence in 2011 after assisting his mother’s death in New Zealand by giving her morphine.

He served a five-month period of house arrest in New Zealand.

Davison, who founded Dignity SA, is charged with the murder of paraplegic Dr Anrich Burger in Sea Point five years ago.

He is due back in court on November 16.

Prosecutor Megan Blow told the court new information had come to light indicating that  Davison has committed other similar offenses of assisted suicides.

Dignity SA co-founder Willem Landman said serious crimes squad detectives had searched Davison house and seized is laptop and mobile phone.

Euthenasia is illegal in South Africa.

Two years ago the state appealed a High Court ruling granting a man the right to a medically assisted death.

The Appeal Court overturned that judgment that could have opened the way to assisted suicides.

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Having infamously scrambled for the continent 120 years ago, Western leaders are today seeking to dance here.

British Premier Theresa May twice skipped the light fantastic during her three-nation safari.

She danced her robot mash with Cape Town schoolchildren and with boy scouts and girl guides in Nairobi.

French President Emmanuel Macron boogied with musician Femi Kuti at the New Africa Shrine in Lagos last July.

Neither posed any immediate threat to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

But it showed the lengths they were prepared to go to make friends in Africa.

May was in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. She sought to reassure the African heavy hitters that Brexit will not affect their economic ties with Britain.

Macron’s visit was billed as more culture than policy.

But his return to Lagos, where he spent six months as an intern in 2002, was obvious.  He wishes to keep the lines of communication in good order.

Angela Merkel was also in  Africa in the last week of August. She did not pack her dancing pumps for Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria.

Her preoccupation was securing deals with her hosts curbing the stream of irregular migrants from African into Europe.

All  these leaders mentioned Africa’s enviable economic growth and the market potential presented by its growing young population.

But they dared no raise hopes either at home or at their African destinations.

There is a new player in the modern scramble for Africa – and it is one that dwarfs them.

China’s dominance of the African market will be demonstrated at the Forum for China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).

Meeting in  Beijing, it is expected to feature a number of eye-watering offers from China to help Africa’s infrastructure deficit.

At the previous FOCAC in Johannesburg, this amounted to $60 billion.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has recently embarked on his own safari.

He stopped  Senegal and Rwanda before arriving in South Africa for the BRICS summit. Then he visited Mauritius on the way home.

China’s belt and road programme, designed to give Beijing better access to foreign markets, dominated.

Africa, providing strategic resources, played a major part in transforming China to the world’s second largest economy.

It does business differently from Africa’s traditional partners.

It does not impose values like observation of human rights and rule of law.

It provides credit freely. Approaching $100 billion dollars has been loaned by China for building African roads, railways, ports and major buildings.

Critics say Beijing’s constructing an elaborate death trap.

Beijing responds that the critics are none other than the former colonialists, who have an axe to grind.

Who can blame cash-strapped countries being attracted to China’s credit honey pot.

South Africa is among the latest, taking a $2,5 billion loan for ESCOM.

All above board and properly thought out, is the assurance from President Cyril Ramaphosa. 

Question: could that loan have been secured safely and on better terms  from the more rhythmic recent visitors? 

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