Tag Archives: Anti-Government Protests

Sporadic violence in Johannesburg as South Africans protest against Zuma

Demonstrators carry banners as they take part in a protest calling for the removal of South Africa's President Jacob Zuma in Johannesburg. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings

By Ed Stoddard and TJ Strydom

PRETORIA/JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Sporadic violence broke out in Johannesburg as more than 50,000 people marched in South African cities to protest against President Jacob Zuma on Friday, demanding he quit after a cabinet reshuffle triggered the latest crisis of his presidency.

Zuma’s sacking of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan in the reshuffle last Thursday has outraged allies and opponents alike, undermined his authority and caused rifts in the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which has governed South Africa since the end of white-minority rule in 1994.

Fitch on Friday followed S&P Global Ratings and downgraded South Africa to “junk”, citing Gordhan’s dismissal as one reason. S&P had issued its downgrade on South Africa in an unscheduled review on Monday.

In Johannesburg, police “fired rubber bullets at protesters who were attacking other protesters with stones. Four protesters sustained minor injuries,” Johannesburg Metro Police Department spokesman Wayne Minaar said. Some ANC backers were trying to breach a cordon separating them from members of the opposition Democratic Alliance.

Elsewhere in the city, the marches were peaceful.

Mmusi Maimane, leader of the DA, which had called for the marches, held a rally of more than 10,000 people that was calm, a few streets from the scene of the violence. Some held placards saying “Fire Zuma”.

“Our country is in crisis,” Maimane, who wore a bullet-proof vest under his shirt after the DA said it had received threats to the protest’s leaders, said. “The time to act is now.”

“We are unhappy about his leadership because he does not seem to care about the people,” said Syriana Maesela, 65, a retiree carrying a South African flag. “The irony is I did the same thing in 1976 when I was a student. I also marched then,” she said, referring protests against the apartheid regime.

About 10,000 gathered in a field outside the Union Buildings, the site of Zuma’s offices in Pretoria, South Africa’s capital.

A PROTEST SURVIVOR

Zuma, 74, has faced protests in the past. The ANC on Wednesday rejected calls for Zuma to quit, and analysts doubted marches would shake the president. It said its members in parliament would vote against a motion of no confidence in Zuma on April 18, a key rallying call for the marchers on Friday.

And Zuma supporters also gathered. About 300 camouflage-clad veterans of the ANC’s now-disbanded Umkhonto we Sizwe (MKMVA ) military wing ringed the party’s Luthuli House building in downtown Johannesburg, mounting mock parades and singing in support of the president.

Some clad in the yellow, green and gold colors of the ANC also danced, waving placards emblazoned with the words: “I’m prepared to die for my ANC” and “Hands off our President”.

“They are free to march freely but not to try and remove a government that was elected democratically,” said Kebby Maphatsoe, the head of the veterans group and also Deputy Minister of Defence and Military Veterans.

“Let them wait for 2019 and we will take them on, but the ones that want to remove it undemocratically, MKMVA will rise up to the occasion.”

The rand <ZAR=D3> weakened slightly after Fitch’s announcement. The currency has tumbled more than 11 percent since March 27, when Zuma ordered Gordhan to return home from overseas talks with investors, days before firing him.

“The bottom line is we are paying for the consequences of the political regime that has lost direction,” said Gary van Staden, analyst at NKC African Economics. The downgrade will add to pressure on Zuma to leave office, he said.

Capital Economics Africa economist John Ashbourne said in a note that although there was mounting opposition to Zuma “we think that the most likely outcome is still that Mr. Zuma will decide the timing of his own exit.”

PARLIAMENT

In Cape Town, motorists hooted in support of the march as about 10,000 people gathered at various points in the city, including outside parliament.

“It’s not simply a question of his removal. It is about the renewal of the ANC and democracy,” said Gerrald Ray, 56, a business strategist.

About 4,000 people were also marching in the coastal city of Durban, the main city in the KwaZulu Natal province, an ANC stronghold.

“We need to unite and fight this corruption,” said Michelle Fortune, 48, a manager who declined to say where she works. She wore a South African flag bandana.

Meanwhile, members of the ANC Youth League gathered in downtown Durban, singing “Awuleth’umshini wami”, a song popularized by Zuma, which means “bring me my gun” and held placards supporting the president.

(Additional reporting by Marius Bosch, Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo, Nqobile Dludla and Tanisha Heiberg in Johannesburg, Wendell Roelf in Cape Town and Rogan Ward in Durban; Writing by James Macharia; Editing by Larry King)

Protesters demand fall of Egypt’s government over islands deal

Egyptian Protests April 2015

By Ahmed Aboulenein and Eric Knecht

CAIRO (Reuters) – Thousands of Egyptian protesters angered by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s decision to hand over two islands to Saudi Arabia called on Friday for the downfall of the government, chanting a powerful slogan used in a 2011 uprising.

Sisi, who once enjoyed widespread support, has faced mounting criticism in recent months, including over his management of the economy.

“The people want the downfall of the regime,” the protesters yelled outside the Cairo press syndicate, using the same phrase heard during the 2011 revolt against president Hosni Mubarak who later stepped down.

They also chanted: “Sisi Mubarak”, “We don’t want you, leave” and “We own the land and you are agents who sold our land.”

Sisi’s government announced last week the signing of a maritime demarcation accord that put the uninhabited Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir, which lie between Saudi Arabia and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, in Saudi waters, prompting an outcry in Egyptian newspapers and on social media.

Saudi and Egyptian officials say the islands belong to the kingdom and were only under Egyptian control because Saudi Arabia had asked Cairo in 1950 to protect them.

In other parts of Cairo, police fired tear gas at protesters, security sources said.

A Reuters witness said a crowd was dispersed and riot police had taken control of an area outside a mosque in the Mohandiseen district of the capital. Four people were arrested, the security sources said.

Tear gas was also fired in the Giza area outside Cairo, dispersing about 200 people, security sources said.

Critics say the government has mishandled a series of crises from an investigation into the torture and killing of an Italian student in Cairo to a bomb that brought down a Russian airliner in the Sinai last October.

PATIENCE WITH SISI FADING

Many Egyptians, eager for an end to the turmoil triggered by the 2011 uprising against Mubarak, enthusiastically welcomed Sisi when he seized power from the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 after mass protests.

As military chief, Sisi toppled Egypt’s first freely elected leader, and then went on to become president on promises of stability after launching the fiercest crackdown on dissent in modern Egypt’s history.

Egyptians turned a blind eye as Islamists and other opponents of the government were rounded up, swelling prisons to about 40,000 political detainees, according to estimates by human rights groups.

But a growing number of Egyptians are losing patience over corruption, poverty and unemployment, the same issues which led to Mubarak’s downfall, while Sisi has appeared increasingly authoritarian in televised speeches.

“We want the downfall of regime. We have forced disappearances, all the youth are in jail. I just got out of jail a year ago after two years inside,” said Abdelrahman Abdellatif, 29, an air conditioning engineer, at the press syndicate demonstration.

“The youth of the revolution are still here. We are not gone. We want stability but that doesn’t mean sell our land and kill our youth. We are experiencing unprecedented fascism and dictatorship.”

There were also Sisi supporters, such as a woman with a shirt with an image of the former military intelligence chief on it.

In Alexandria, around 500 people gathered near a railway station. Meanwhile 300 Sisi supporters holding up photographs of him protested outside a mosque in the port city.

Calls for protests have gathered thousands of supporters on Facebook, including from the outlawed Brotherhood, which accused Sisi of staging a coup when it was ousted and rolling back freedoms won after hundreds of thousands of Egyptians protested five years ago in Cairo’s Tahrir Square against Mubarak.

(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Armed Militia Takes Over Oregon Wildlife Refuge

A wildlife sanctuary in rural Oregon is closed indefinitely after protesters took control of the facility.

A posting on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s website says “an unknown number of armed individuals have broken into and occupied” the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which is located approximately 30 miles southeast of Burns, Oregon, in the state’s southeast quadrant.

The service says there weren’t any employees in the refuge when it was overtaken.

According to The Oregonian, the group of about 20 military began occupying the refuge some on Saturday to protest how the government handled criminal proceedings against two ranchers.

In October, Dwight Lincoln Hammond and his son, Steven Dwight Hammond, received five-year prison sentences for allegedly setting fires on lands the Bureau of Land Management had leased to them for cattle grazing, the Department of Justice said in news release at the time. The Hammonds originally got a more lenient sentence after arguing the mandatory minimum of five years was unconstitutional, but an appeals court ultimately ruled the five-year term fit the crime, threw out their original punishments and resentenced them to the mandatory minimum.

The Hammonds were due to report to prison on Monday, according to The Oregonian, but that hasn’t stopped the militants from staging their protest.

CNN reported the group’s leader, Ammon Bundy, told the network they will not leave the land until the government meets their demands, and has threatened to use force in a self-defense capacity if authorities used force against them.

If the name sounds familiar, it could be because anti-government protests run in the family.

Bundy is the son of Cliven Bundy, who staged a widely publicized armed standoff with the federal government over land rights issues in Nevada in 2014. According to The Oregonian, attorneys for the Hammonds have said that Ammon Bundy does represent their clients.