People-smuggling gangsters jailed
SOUTH AFRICA’S ruling African National Congress has elected Cyril Ramaphosa as its new president, meaning the nation’s deputy president is likely to become its next leader.
Outgoing president Jacob Zuma’s second and final term as party leader has ended after a scandal-ridden tenure that has seen the popularity of Nelson Mandela’s liberation movement plummet.
Despite being part of Mr Zuma’s administration, the 65-yearold Mr Ramaphosa has styled himself in recent months as a reformer who will steer South Africa away from the corruption scandals that have hurt the economy and briefly sent it into recession this year.
One of South Africa’s richest businessmen, Mr Ramaphosa is a veteran of the struggle to end the country’s former apartheid system of white minority rule and helped negotiate the transition to democracy.
He turned his connections as a former union leader into business ventures which at times have proven controversial.
Many South Africans remember that Mr Ramaphosa was a board member of the Lonmin mining group at the time of the Marikana killings in 2012, when police shot dead 34 striking mine workers.
Mr Zuma’s term as South Africa’s head of state ends in 2019.
It is not clear if Mr Ramaphosa, as the ANC’s new leader, will call on Mr Zuma to resign as the country’s president.
Mr Zuma’s administration has been mired in scandal and corruption allegations.
Africa’s oldest liberation movement, which celebrated its 105th anniversary this year, led the fight against white minority rule and has governed South Africa since the first democratic elections in 1994.
Under Mr Zuma, unemployment has risen to nearly 30 per cent and economic growth has slumped.
His rival Nkosazana DlaminiZuma, former chairwoman of the African Union Commission and Mr Zuma’s ex-wife, had promised to bring more black South Africans into the fold through “radical economic transformation”.
Antony Butler, professor of political studies at the University of Cape Town said of the election: “This is the last generation where candidates were prisoners, prominent trade unionists or exiles. Increasingly actors have emerged from provincial politics.”
A court in northern Greece has sentenced 23 people to prison terms ranging from eight to 1,489 years for smuggling Iraqi and Syrian refugees in 2015 and 2016.
The Thessaloniki court imposed the longest sentence on a 54-year-old Greek man convicted of running a smuggling ring that arranged the transport of more than 500 refugees in 43 separate cases.
Under Greek law, the maximum prison term that can be served is 25 years, regardless of the length of the sentence.