In what is being hailed as one of the most significant legal decisions in South African history the Constitutional Court has jailed disgraced former President Jacob Zuma for 15 months for contempt of court.

Zuma has five days to hand himself in to police.

Failing this, Police Minister Bheki Cele is ordered to do whatever necessary to ensure Zuma goes to jail.

This is a first time a former South African president has been sentenced to imprisonment,

Not even leaders during the apartheid era suffered such punishment.

Zuma defied a Constitutional Court order to appear before the Zondo Commission into state corruption.

He had earlier walked out of the commission, refusing to appear again if Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, whom he claims has close familial ties with him, recuses himself.

sub head Accuses state of politically motivated camapaign

Zuma accuses the state of mounting a politically motivated campaign  against him.

Zuma faces corruption charges in the KwauluNatal High court involving five billion euros misappropriated before he was president

He has rounded on the Constitutional Court saying it behaved like an apartheid institution

Acting Chief Justice Sisi Khampepe, reading the 7-2 majority judgment,  regretted that Zuma “has elected to make unmeritorious, vituperative remarks calculated to impugn the integrity of the judiciary called his remarks

She said it would serve no purpose to impose a suspended sentence on Zuma in the hope of getting him to comply because that would only give him further reason to delay.

She awarded unitive costs against Zuma.

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Even the Constitutional Court judges could not agree

The ex-president’s spokesman Mzwanele Manyi say if the nine Constitutional Court judges could not agree on a ruling, it was surely not possible for a layman to accept it.

He would not comment on the whereabouts of Zuma who was not in the Constitutional Court and said a more comprehensive response to the judgement would be made later

Split judgements are commonplace in the Constitutional Court and even the minority judgment agreed that Zuma was guilty of contempt of court.

The ANC military win Umkhonto We Sizwe has sent members to Zuma’s at Nkanadla and vowed to protect him from arrest.

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Daughter says he is in good spirits

Zuma’s daughter Dudu Zuma Sambudia says he has spoken to her father since the judgment and found him him in good spirits.

He plans to hand himself to  police at  Nkandla and members of his family will accompany him to Gauteng, which is currently closed to outsiders because of stricter COVID 19 lockdown restrictions imposed this week.

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The Democratic Republic of Congo announces that the world’s worst measles outbreak which killed more than 7000 children under five-years-old is over.

The announcement by Health Minister Eteni Londondo  still requires authentication by the World Health Organization which a day earlier 

declared Africa free of wild polio.

The measles outbreak occurred 25-months ago in the south-eastern corner of the DRC and then spread to all 26 provinces.

It infected 335 000 children who suffered blindness, brain swelling, diarrhea and respiratory infection. 

Congo’s hard-pressed medical infrastructure mounted a massive vaccination programme targeting millions of children.

Fighting measles, they were also combatting an EBOLA outbreak that killed 2287 people, vaccine-induced polio, COVID 19, which has killed 251 of the nearly 10 000 people it sickened, and even the bubonic plague. 

The end of the Congolese outbreak doesn’t allow medics to take their foot off the gas there or in any low income country.

An article in The Lancet earlier this year quoted  Tanja  Ducomble and Etienne  Gignano of Medecins Sans Frontieres saying outbreaks occur every two years in the DRC another countries that have a gap in vaccinations and poor access to health care.

Madagascar, Chad and Nigeria are African countries still fighting outbreaks and further afield the Philippines, Yemen and Ukraine are currently experiencing extensive measles infections.

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There should 47 Presidents involved in the virtual fest. But Mali’s Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta who was deposed in a military coup last week, remains in detention.

The WHO’s Africa region doesn’t include North Africa. However, there has not been a case of wild polio there  since  2004 so WHO Africa director Matshidiso Moeti correctly declares the entire continent free of the disease that used to paralyze 75 000 children a year.

That leaves only Afghanistan and Pakistan as the only countries on the the planet still reporting polio cases.

Vaccines are very much front and centre of public consciousness with the race to find one against COVID 19.

The politicians are taking the lead in this battle with Donald Trump maintaining a COVID 19 vaccine could still arrive in time for the November 3 U.S. Presidential election he is desperate to win.

Both China and Russia maintain they have actually produced a vaccine but there is no rush by the public to avail themselves of such poorly tested measures.

The scientists  maintain that COVID 19 will be with us for some time, even after a reliable vaccine is produced.

So far in medical history, smallpox is the only infectious disease to have been eradicated by vaccine. That was 40 years ago.

Rinderpest, spread among animals, is the other.

The World Health Organization lists 17 vaccines against dangerous and deadly diseases.

The polio eradication efforts led by Gates and Dangote began almost three decades ago and failed to meet its millennium target.

A 2003 boycott of the vaccination programme in Nigeria led to the disease spreading to 20 other countries in the next five years.

The eradication programme looked like it had succeeded in 2015 but four new cases were reported in 2016.

The Nigerian problem was focused on Borno State where the Islamist terror group Boko Haram prevented medical access to the population.

The authorities used the army to back up vaccination teams that used guerrilla tactics to get their job done.

They moved into areas made safe, even for a few days, and vaccinated children accompanying their parents to markets.

The children immunized in this way passed this on to their peers through drinking water.

Unfortunately some of the vaccine viruses muted and spread to villages where immunization was not total.

That strain is much less virulent – one in 200 cases results in paralysis.

In 2018, 68 children were infected. This number increased to 320 last year.

The WHO fears that this number may increase because of the COVID 19 lockdown preventing access by polio vaccination teams.

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In journalism 101 we were taught never to give the oxygen of publicity to quack remedies for dreaded diseases.

That’s why you don’t read, hear or see about cures for cancer in anything approaching responsible media.

Believe me, these emerge daily from the crazies and the con-artists seeking attention or a fast buck.

So it was to be expected that miracle antidotes to COVID 19 would be flung at editors very early on in the pandemic.

They could safely ignore almost all them –  until heads of state got involved.

Madagascar’s deejay turned President Andry Rajoelina seeks international endorsement of a remedy for COVID 19 made from the leaves of the artemisia which has provided relief to some malaria sufferers.

He could have saved his blushes had he sat in on my journalism cadet course all those years ago.

And the bench next to him could usefully have been occupied by the United States television game show star turned President  Donald Trump who advocated another outdated malaria remedy, the outdated chloroquine,  for curing COVID 19.

That was before he  threw the medical reins between the horses last month and urged COVID 19 patients to inject disinfectant and shine ultra violet light into their bodies.

Time magazine reports the American Association of Poison Control Centres finding a 121% increase in poisoning from bleach and other disinfectants in April 2020 over the same month the previous year. 

Rajoelina cannot match Trump’s lethal milestone. However his angry assertion that the African Union has rejected the herbal remedy known as COVID ORGANICS only because it was not developed by a European company shows he has a sense of the ridiculous every bit as well-developed as his Washington counterpart.

And he evidently shares the Donald’s penchant. for disregarding the media that does not reflect his  views.

How else could he have overlooked the storm last month when two French doctors suggested that the COVID 19 vaccine be tested on poor Africans because they have not taken protected measures?

Doctors Camille Locht and Jean-Paul Mira have had the good sense to apologize for hurt and offense they caused.

The Africa’s continental body was furiously adamant that it citizens would not be used as guinea pigs.

So has the World Health Organisation,  Like the AU the WHO give the thumbs down to COVID ORGANICS  which has reportedly been tested on 20 people for two weeks. Hardly decisive.

Rajoelina can draw some comfort from the favorable attention his peers have given the Malgash remedy.

Tanzania’s President John Magafuli,  who evidently believes that his chemistry qualification  entitles him to be a COVID 19 maverick, sent a plane to collect a load of the remedy  in Antananarivo.

Guinea Bissau, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Niger  have also bought consignments.

Health Minister Zweli Mkhize is quoted as saying South Africa will help test and analyse COVID ORGANICS.

I fully support African solutions to African problems. But this is surely a classical case for caution. 

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This only days after frustrated US hospitals said they could not find ventilators to buy anywhere.

Donald Trump hasn’t tweeted it, but according to Nigeria’s Information Minister Lai Mohammed it’s official.

In a telephone conversation the US President told his Nigerian counterpart Muhammadu Buhari that he stood in solidarity with the Nigerian people at this time of COVID 19..

He promised send ventilators to Nigeria to help COVID 19 patients breathe.

His willingness to do this will have to be gauged by officials.

America’s ability to keep the promise becomes a matter for the hard-pressed medical professionals — and the fact checkers.

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The World Press Freedom Index puts it top of the continental list and ranks it 23rd in the world.

The Paris based non-profit organisation Reporters Without Borders has been publishing its annual world press freedom index for 25 years.

This year the Scandinavian countries Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden are judged to be the freest in the world.

For the eighth successive year Eritrea is at the bottom of the list of 180 countries.

South Africa is in 31st position – the same place it occupied last year.

The organisation calls 2020 a decisive year for the world media and says its difficulties have been exacerbated by the COVID 19 pandemic.

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Hopes of become an international energy player have been delayed at least five years as Exxon Mobil put the hold on investing in the vast resource beneath Cabo Delgado.

Exxon Mobil made an intermediate decision last year to invest in the exploitation of liquid petroleum gas in Mozambique.

According to Mozambique analyst Jo Hanlon that was for the benefit of President Felipe Nysui’s election campaign.

Now the real ink on the dotted line has been delayed five years, meaning production cannot start until 2030.

The depression caused by the COVID 19 pandemic has stalled investment everywhere.

Gas prices, which follow oil prices, halved between 2018 and 2019 and then halved again this year as Saudi Arabia and Russia boosted production to push U.S. shale out of the market.

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Angry locals stoned health workers disinfecting  the home of the first identified new case.

The three new cases of EBOLA – after a seven-week period of no infections – are a 26-year-old electrician, and girls aged 11 and 7.

They are all connected to the Horizon Healthcare Centre in Beni.

Authorities say all the medical workers dealing with the outbreak that killed more than 2 200 people have been vaccinated.

Battling COVID 19 and the worst measles outbreak on the planet, these workers are at full stretch trying to prevent EBOLA taking hold again.

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The ban applies to 150 people rescued by then German NGO Sea Eye a week ago.

The Italian authorities say any rescued migrant hoping to enter Italy must be transferred to another ship where they will be screened and quarantined.

Last week Italy closed its ports to rescue ships from NGOs for the duration of the national health emergency combatting COVID 19..

Authorities say admitting the rescued migrants, without first ascertaining their health status places too much pressure on Italy’s over burdened health service.

Last week Libya, which is currently faced with 700 000 would be migrants, refused top allow re-entry to 280 people who set off the from that North African state and later required rescuing 

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This means the Democratic Republic of Congo is simultaneously battling EBOLA, the COVID 19 pandemic and world’s worst measles outbreak.

The new case of EBOLA reported in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is the first since February.

The outbreak that started almost two years ago has killed 2 200 people and sickened more than 3 400.

Fighting it has been made extremely difficult because of military action in the affected area where rebels are fighting government troops.

Widespread denial of the outbreak and hostility towards medical personnel has also made the treatment extremely dangerous 

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