A 55-year-old driver died from injuries sustained when his truck was stopped and set alight on the N3 near Heidelberg, south of Johannesburg on Monday.

More than 30 trucks have been targeted and at least a dozen of them torched since the weekend.

The trucks are stopped by vehicles blocking the four-lane highway. They are then looted before being set alight.

Drivers say they fear for their lives.

The highway carries mostly local trucks.

However much of the copper and other heavy cargo coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi is also hauled along the N3.

Leader of the All Truck Drivers Forum of South Africa Mandla Mngomenzulu insists his members are not responsible.

He blames criminal elements taking advantage of the local truck drivers’ grievances.

Local driver says they have been betrayed by transport firms who employ foreigners and pay them less than unionised truckers.

The attacks have been made for at least a decade both along the N3 and on the N1 motorway between Johannesburg and Cape Town

Police have not been able control the situation.

Sometime the attacks happen as trucks wait to pass through tollgates along the motorways.

The Road Freight Association, which represents the employers, is calling for government intervention to stop what it calls a war on its trucks.

Technical operation manager of the RFA Gavin Kelly says: “Truck drivers fear for their lives. We have seen trucks being shot at as they drove past assailants waiting on the side of the road and they’re not being apprehended.

“The drivers are just having random shots fired at them. It’s not just foreign drivers being attacked, it’s also local drivers in the firing line. 

“Obviously, people don’t want to send out their drivers if there is a chance that they are going to be injured or killed,.”

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This is heavy loss for the species number just over 1 000.

Conservationists in the Mgahinga National Park in Uganda found the bodies of the four gorillas -a male and three females, one of them pregnant – with gross lesions that showed they died of electrocution by a lightning strike.

They were part of a group of 17 known as the Hirwa family. 

Mountain gorillas are spread in heavily protected areas in Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration says it will take several weeks to confirm the post mortem finding.

The loss is particularly sad became of the potential of the females to contribute to the population of the endangered species.  

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The UN health are says its requires the information to make a proper risk assessment.

Heavily reliant on tourism, Tanzania is reluctant to be associated with the EBOLA outbreak in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo that has sickened  more than 3000 people and killed more than 2000.

The World Health Organization has sought confirmation from Tanzanian authorities about three cases in that country – one of them in the capital Dar Es Salaam.

The EBOLA outbreak in the Congo has been declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

At least four people have died from EBOLA  in Uganda, having carried the deadly hemorrhagic disease  across the border.  

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A nine-year-old girl who crossed the border with her mother seeking treatment has been confirmed to be infected with the deadly hemorrhagic disease and will be repatriated.

In June, three cases of EBOLA from the Democratic Republic of Congo were confirmed in Uganda.

The virus has infected more than 3000 people in the DRC and killed more than 1800.

Ugandan authorities say the girl is being treated while she awaits repatriation.

A specialist team is expected from the DRC to take her home in secure conditions where, the Ugandans say, she will be receive better treatment.

The EBOLA outbreak in the DRC has been declared a public health emergency of international concern having crossed into Uganda and Rwanda.

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Of course President Donald Trump would back his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsanaro.

They both put the short-term political benefit of climate change  denialism above the long-term interests of generations too young to vote for them. And the man known as the Trump of the tropics showed at the G7 summit in Biarritz last weekend that he shares the American leader’s convenient incoherence.

Without regard for the ten other countries in the Amazon region, Bolsanaro refused to accept the $22 million from the group of seven richest nations on Earth to help fight the thousands of forest fires threatening the area known as the planet’s tree lung.

Then he said, he would take the money if French President Emmanuel Macron withdrew that statement calling him a liar and hoping Brazil would get a better leader.

Finally he cast aside the need for an apology and agreed to accept the G7 help, provided Brazil given a free hand to determine how it would be spent.

Macron spoke at the meeting he hosted of the need to address the fires raging around Africa’s rain forests which are second largest lung on Earth.

There was no reticence expressed by any of the five African leaders – President Cyril Ramaphosa included –  invited to the G7 summit.

They have yet to hear details, most importantly the magnitude of the help.

Experts advise against making too easy a comparison between  the fires in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo showing up on  NASA maps and actually out numbering those in the conflagration in the Amazon basin.

The African fires are not actually in the rain forest. They are a seasonal phenomenon caused by farmers conducting slash and burn agriculture.

Denis Maclean of UN Disaster Risk Reduction   says the damage from fires is unacceptably high on both sides of the Atlantic. 

155000 square kilometers of rain forest have been lost  to fire in the last decade , commercial logging and palm oil cultivation in the past decade.

West Africa has lost 90% of its forest coverage in the past century.

Forest fires kill 300 000 people a year.

With population growth projected to increase fivefold by the end of the century, it impacts dramatically on the sustainability of the planet.

Any money directed to Africa should be used not only to immediately fight the fires but on educating people on their relationship with their environment.  

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Climate experts warn against over-simplifying comparisons.

ends intro

The 2127 fires in Brazil has leaders at the G7 summit in France in high dudgeon.

Yet NASA maps show there are currently 6902 fires in Angola and 3395 in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.

French President Emmanuel Macron says  the G7 which pledged R306 million to put out fires  in Brazil should step in to help in the 3,3 million square kilometers of African forests that is called the world’s second green lung. Experts say the African fires are not in rain forests, as they are in Brazil.

They are a seasonal phenomenon with framers burning brush ahead of planting. 

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In those heady, early days of democracy South Africa was often said to be punching above its weight diplomatically.

There was not a country that did not want to be the friend of Nelson Mandela’s success story.

Many sought help, hoping that rubbing  up against  it might bring some good fortune.

So, in addition to their considerable domestic commitments Mandela and his early successors were required to be counsellors and mediators.

They were expected to explain how they  achieved the seemingly impossible end of apartheid and the reconciliation that brought about the Rainbow Nation.

Northern Ireland is perhaps the best example of this

Many times, South African leaders were obliged to apply these lessons by actually stepping  in between parties in conflict and brokering a peace.

This applied mainly in Africa where South African mediation achieved settlements in Sudan, Comoros, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire and Lesotho.

The fact that things have lately gone pear-shaped in many of these nations is a debate for another day.

However badly things have fared, they are indubitably better off having  had South African mediation and peacekeeping at a time when the rest of the  world was either unwilling or incapable to intervening.

Thankfully, that is not the case in Sudan today.

The African Union has built the confidence and experience to make its presence felt by red-carding the Transitional Military Council until it hands power to a civilian administration.

The Arab nations are there, albeit misguidedly lending moral support to the military junta in Khartoum until the generals made the fatal error of deploying the former janjaweed against unarmed protestors.

The United States has got involved, sending Tibor Nagy its top envoy to Africa to urge an and to the violence.

It has also named Donald Booth as its special envoy to Sudan – the ninth since 2001.

Not only Washington, but Hollywood has skin in the game through activity actor George Clooney calling on the U.S. Treasury to use its muscle with international banks to dry up the financial stream to the junta in Khartoum and anyone seeking to prolong the conflict in the strategically place country bridging Africa and the Arab worlds.

Look for South Africa in this crowd and you will be disappointed.

Does this mean the days of Mzanzi mediation are over?

Probably not.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has his hands full pulling South Africa out of the economic swamp.

For him it is very much a case of charity beginning at home.

The sad reality is the wasted Zuma years of Zuma corruption has cut the moral high ground from under South Africa’s feet.

That is ironic, because Zuma himself was a good, although tough, mediator.

“Do you really think you can twist a man’s arm behind his back hard enough to  get him to sign a settlement with his free hand?” I asked him in jest after he had brought a reluctant  Pierre Nkurunziza into the Burundi deal.

“What do you think the did to us at Codesa?” he retorted.

ends

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A five-year-old Congolese boy, who travelled with his family into Uganda, has the hemorrhagic disease that has killed nearly 1400 people since last July in the second-worst outbreak on the planet.

There have been scares about EBOLA moving from the Eastern DRC into neighboring Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.

This first confirmed case was announced in a tweet from World Health Organisation Director General Tedros Ghebreyesus.

It was quickly detected but much will depend on the speed and efficiency of the Ugandan response.

More than 2 000 Congolese have been sickened by the latest outbreak of the disease.

This number has accelerated in recent weeks because of rebel attacks on medical facilities and resistance from suspicious local communities.

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Southern Californian Kimberley Endicott and guide Jean-Paul Mirenge were released unharmed after a ransom was paid.

President Donald Trump has tweeted his delight at the rescue of 56-year-old Kimberly Endicott who was taken by gunmen in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth Park bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The kidnappers demanded a half-a-million dollar ransom. It is not clear whether this is the amount they received.

The US State Department has advised American citizens to avoid the park.

Endicott and Mirenge were recovered in the DRC.

Their abductors are still at large, despite a manhunt by Ugandan military, police and wildlife authorities.

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Speaking on the sidelines of the African Union summit in Addis Ababa the UN chief says the continent could become an example to the world of solving and preventing conflict.

Antonio Guterres cites a peace deal between Ethiopia and Eritrea and the peace agreements signed in South Sudan and the Central African Republic to back his assertion that a wind of hope is blowing through the Africa.

As usual, the UN chief is one of the honored guests at the gathering of the heads of state and government from the 55 members of the continental grouping.

Guterres also mentions elections in Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mali as proof of the rise of democracy in Africa.

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