amadeus
Apply directly to the forehead
It’s been a while since Egypt’s military has been battle-tested, but historically the victories have been few in number from the wars I can recall.
The Africa Thread
- Thread starter Borachio
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Bonyduck Campersang
Staring into the distance
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2022
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Somalia expels Ethiopian ambassador amid Somaliland port deal dispute
Mogadishu also shuts down Addis Ababa’s consulates in Hargeisa, capital of the Somaliland, and Garowe in Puntland.
Comrade Ceasefire
Simmer slowly
My sister and friends playing dress-ups in Morocco during art/photography tours she conducts.
Is that a real business? One that supports her or a group of people?
Comrade Ceasefire
Simmer slowly
Yes, she lives there for 6 months with her partner and 6 months back in Australia.
I didn't mention the name of the business or any other details so I thought it would be Ok. Please remove if it's not allowed and accept my apologies.
Your post is fine. Good niche marketing on her part. Making a living doing what you love in places you want to be is especially nice. 
Comrade Ceasefire
Simmer slowly
Covid hit the country very hard, but it has bounced back.Your post is fine. Good niche marketing on her part. Making a living doing what you love in places you want to be is especially nice.
The third business partner is an Amazigh (Berber) guide whose family live in the Atlas Mountains. He is the one who convinced the other two it was a good niche business. He also arranges all the stop-off places where they can visit local artisans, stay overnight etc.
They usually have an invited arty/crafty expert: e.g. textiles, jewellery making, photography, painting, drawing.
Most of the tour members are retired art teachers from Australia, UK, US and Japan.
The worst group they had were self-entitled 30somethings from North Sydney, who sighed loudly every time they couldn't get their favourite brand of sparkling mineral water. On the edge of the Sahara, in some place with accommodation for 20!
After the earthquake, only one person has cancelled a booking: an American who wanted to know if there would be an earthquake in October 2025. Hrmmph!
pm me a link please.
It is a historic day in South Africa
With 99 percent of the ballots counted, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) is leading with just over 40 percent share of the national vote, three days after the country voted in national elections that could throw up the biggest challenge to the ANC’s political dominance since the end of apartheid in South Africa.
The Democratic Alliance (DA), the country’s principal opposition party, is currently in second place followed by the MK party and EFF.
With 99 percent of the ballots counted, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) is leading with just over 40 percent share of the national vote, three days after the country voted in national elections that could throw up the biggest challenge to the ANC’s political dominance since the end of apartheid in South Africa.
The Democratic Alliance (DA), the country’s principal opposition party, is currently in second place followed by the MK party and EFF.
Spoiler Map and stuff :
I wonder if he has or will solve the water and power problems.
My ignorant view is that power sharing can be a good thing, as leaders are forced to negotiate and drive towards a "common good" rather than extremes. Might even lower corruption given those around you aren't all "friends". Can anyone agree with this, or am I naïve?
There is a certain logic. Also getting an explicitly Marxist political party onto the government of a major world economy can be a good thing,or am I naïve?
Why might it be the EFF? The DA is losely the white party, and so the enemy. For many even on the right of the ANC may see an alliance with them as far more unpalatable that the EFF.
MKP is Jacob Zuma. He 99% cares about getting a pardon. Any deal with him will require that, then that will happen and he will care about the other 1% which may make him break the deal within the year. However bad this deal is I think it the most likely.
I suppose options are mathematically possible, depending how the voting system allocates the votes at thin tail, but I cannot see it be practically possible. That only leaves the EFF. That could be stable if everyone gets something, and does not require an ANC person to try and get votes after making a deal with someone associated by their voters with the old regime.
Spoiler EFF :
Spoiler Long form current results :
Last edited:
Power sharing with the DA is the obvious choice and would give them a 60% majority. But I do not know anything about their particular platform differences.
The first Mandela cabinet was ANC-NP-IFP. A slightly rebranded NP later merged into ANC. If the ANC can absorb the actual party of Apartheid, they should be able to deal with the DA.
But it was the NP habit of making deals with the ANC that partly caused the decline of the party (voters defected to the DA mostly). DA leaders would have this in mind.
South African President Ramaphosa set for re-election as DA gives backing
Cyril Ramaphosa is set for re-election as South Africa’s president after the country’s second biggest party said it would back the African National Congress (ANC) leader following a government coalition deal.
As the newly elected parliament convened on Friday, Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen said his white-led main opposition party had formally signed a coalition agreement with the ANC, and part of the agreement was Ramaphosa would be president.
“We will be supporting President Cyril Ramaphosa in his election for the president of the republic of South Africa,” Steenhuisen said during a pause in the opening session of parliament.
Lawmakers are due to elect a president later in the day and the ANC and DA together have a majority of lawmakers that would see the 71-year-old return for a second term. In the May 29 polls, the AND gathered 40 percent of the vote, followed by the DA with 21 percent.
Two smaller parties, the socially conservative Inkatha Freedom Party and the right-wing Patriotic Alliance, will also take part in the coalition government, they said.
The ANC was also facing a deadline to pull together a coalition agreement of some sort given parliament must sit for the first time and vote for the president within 14 days of the election results being declared. The deadline is Sunday.
Parliament will also convene in an unusual setting after a fire in 2022 gutted the National Assembly building in Cape Town. So lawmakers will decide the next leader of their country at a conference centre near the city’s waterfront.
Cyril Ramaphosa is set for re-election as South Africa’s president after the country’s second biggest party said it would back the African National Congress (ANC) leader following a government coalition deal.
As the newly elected parliament convened on Friday, Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen said his white-led main opposition party had formally signed a coalition agreement with the ANC, and part of the agreement was Ramaphosa would be president.
“We will be supporting President Cyril Ramaphosa in his election for the president of the republic of South Africa,” Steenhuisen said during a pause in the opening session of parliament.
Lawmakers are due to elect a president later in the day and the ANC and DA together have a majority of lawmakers that would see the 71-year-old return for a second term. In the May 29 polls, the AND gathered 40 percent of the vote, followed by the DA with 21 percent.
Two smaller parties, the socially conservative Inkatha Freedom Party and the right-wing Patriotic Alliance, will also take part in the coalition government, they said.
The ANC was also facing a deadline to pull together a coalition agreement of some sort given parliament must sit for the first time and vote for the president within 14 days of the election results being declared. The deadline is Sunday.
Parliament will also convene in an unusual setting after a fire in 2022 gutted the National Assembly building in Cape Town. So lawmakers will decide the next leader of their country at a conference centre near the city’s waterfront.
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Kenya death toll rises to 23 as protesters vow to keep up demonstrations against tax hikes
Nationwide protests calling for political overhaul over cost of living
Kenyan protesters vowed on Wednesday to keep up their demonstrations against new tax hikes, a day after violent clashes outside parliament and across the country left at least 23 people dead and scores wounded.As heavily armed police patrolled the streets of the capital, Nairobi, on Wednesday, supporters of the week-old protest movement took to X using the hashtag #tutanethursday, or "see you on Thursday" in a mix of Swahili and English.
An online outpouring of anger over tax increases has swelled into a nationwide protest movement calling for a political overhaul, in the most serious crisis of President William Ruto's two-year-old presidency.
Police opened fire on crowds that massed around parliament on Tuesday and later broke into the assembly's compound, minutes after lawmakers had voted through the contentious tax measures.
Protests in 35 counties
The Nation newspaper documented protests in at least 35 of Kenya's 47 counties, from big cities to rural areas — even in Ruto's hometown of Eldoret in his ethnic Kalenjin heartland.At least 23 people were killed across Kenya and another 30 were being treated for bullet wounds, the Kenya Medical Association said on Wednesday.
In the capital, the main public mortuary received the bodies of six people killed in Tuesday's protests, a police officer posted there told Reuters. Another two bodies and 160 people with injuries came into the Kenyatta National Hospital, two health officials said.
Many social media users focused on Ruto's speech after the clashes, in which he said the attack on parliament was the work of "criminals pretending to be peaceful protesters."
"Good morning fellow CRIMINALS Tupatane Thursday To do what CRIMINALS do," one X user posted.
Posts on social media urged people to occupy State House, the president's office and residence, on Thursday, and the local offices of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Friday, though it was not immediately clear if the calls came from individuals or a broader movement.
'It's our right to demonstrate'
In a televised address to the nation late on Tuesday, Ruto said the debate about the tax measures had been "hijacked by dangerous people."The government ordered the army deployed to help the police deal with a "security emergency," though there were no reports of troops on the streets of Nairobi on Wednesday.
Protester Wellington Ogolla said he would head back out onto the streets. "It's our right to demonstrate.... We are just expressing ourselves," he told Reuters as he walked through downtown Nairobi, where the smell of tear gas lingered in the air.
Lawmakers removed some tax hikes from the final version of the finance bill, including ones on bread and cooking oil, but inserted others in an effort to avoid a budget gap.
Protesters — who have no formal leadership and are primarily organized on social media platforms — say they want the entire bill scrapped, and many are now demanding that Ruto resign.
He won election almost two years ago on a platform of championing Kenya's working poor, but has been caught between the competing demands of lenders such as the IMF — which is urging the government to cut deficits to obtain more financing — and a hard-pressed population.
Aid group Médecins Sans Frontières said its staff were left hurt and traumatized when stones were thrown at one of its ambulances during Tuesday's unrest. The Kenya Red Cross also said its staff and vehicles were attacked, without going into further detail.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/kenya-protests-1.7246939
Tear gas fired at protesters after Ruto U-turn (rolling news)
“We need to realise that the [finance] bill is just a gateway to all the smouldering rage and the sense of despondency and marginalisation that the majority of Kenyans are feeling, but it is only very well articulated by the younger generation,” Abdullahi Halakhe, a Horn of Africa analyst, told Al Jazeera.
“So, the president saying he is walking back the bill does not solve the problems.
“However, we have to admit that also some of these are self-inflicted,” he added. “The president had all the time in the world to really make his proposals work. Yes, Kenya is in the middle of a serious debt crisis, where there are no windows for him to make any changes – for instance 7 out of every 10 shillings collected go to pay debt; Kenya’s debt to GDP ratio is almost 70 percent – so he has no options.
“But if they [the elite] are flaunting their ostentatious lifestyle; if the president is literally travelling every week; if close allies of his are walking around carrying money in carry bags, showing people the latest designer shoes and cars, then people will ask.
“We have got no problem in paying the debt, but we will ask for accountability.”
- Kenya’s security officials put up roadblocks and fire tear gas and rubber bullets in Nairobi as protesters gather in the capital.
- Developments come a day after President Ruto made a dramatic U-turn and withdrew contentious tax hikes.
“We need to realise that the [finance] bill is just a gateway to all the smouldering rage and the sense of despondency and marginalisation that the majority of Kenyans are feeling, but it is only very well articulated by the younger generation,” Abdullahi Halakhe, a Horn of Africa analyst, told Al Jazeera.
“So, the president saying he is walking back the bill does not solve the problems.
“However, we have to admit that also some of these are self-inflicted,” he added. “The president had all the time in the world to really make his proposals work. Yes, Kenya is in the middle of a serious debt crisis, where there are no windows for him to make any changes – for instance 7 out of every 10 shillings collected go to pay debt; Kenya’s debt to GDP ratio is almost 70 percent – so he has no options.
“But if they [the elite] are flaunting their ostentatious lifestyle; if the president is literally travelling every week; if close allies of his are walking around carrying money in carry bags, showing people the latest designer shoes and cars, then people will ask.
“We have got no problem in paying the debt, but we will ask for accountability.”
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