Surprise, concern as king changes Swaziland’s name to ‘eSwatini’
S. Sudan army chief dies
MBABANE, Swaziland, April 21, (Agencies): Residents of the tiny African kingdom of Swaziland on Friday weighed up their country’s new official name after the king unexpectedly announced it would now be known as “eSwatini”.
King Mswati III, one of the world’s few absolute monarchs, declared the name change at celebrations on Thursday marking 50 years since independence from British colonial rule.
Meaning “place of the Swazi”, eSwatini is the local Swazi language name for the nation landlocked between South Africa and Mozambique.
Critics of the king, who took the throne in 1986 aged 18, said the move was an example of his authoritarian and wasteful reign in a country that suffers dire poverty.
“We see here King Mswati’s autocratic style,” said Alvit Dlamini, head of the Ngwane National Liberatory Congress, a political party which, like others, is not allowed to run in elections.
King Mswati
S.Sudan army chief dies:
South Sudan’s army chief died on Friday, the government said, in a development that further complicates the running of President Salva Kiir’s administration amid a four-year-old civil war.
General James Ajongo died in Cairo after a short illness at the age of 64. He had joined the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in 1983, when it was still a rebel group fighting for independence from Sudan. “It is with a heavy heart that I announce the untimely death of Gen. James Ajongo Mawut, SPLA army’s chief of defence force,” government spokesman Michael Makuei Lueth said.
He was appointed to the position after his predecessor Paul Malong was sacked early last year amid resignations by some generals who alleged abuses by the military and tribal bias in the army ranks.
Malong has since formed his own organisation to challenge President Salva Kiir, accusing him of looting the country’s
resources and turning it into a failed state.
Bashir fires FM:
President Omar alBashir on Thursday fired Sudan’s Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour, state media reported, after he said that Sudanese diplomats abroad had been unpaid for months.
In a speech to lawmakers on Wednesday, Ghandour, who negotiated the lifting of decades-old sanctions with Washington in October 2017, said his ministry had also been unable to pay rents for several Sudanese diplomatic missions due to a government cash shortfall.
“President Omar al-Bashir issued this evening a decree sacking Professor Ibrahim Ghandour from his post of minister of foreign affairs,” the official SUNA news agency reported quoting the decree.
Nigeria gang violence kills 27:
A fresh outbreak of gang violence in northern Nigeria has left at least 27 people dead, locals told AFP on Friday, highlighting the volatile security situation in West Africa’s largest economy.
On Thursday suspected cattle thieves launched reprisal attacks on two villages in northern Nigeria’s Zamfara state, where security forces are battling to contain cattlerustling gangs. Gunmen on motorcycles attacked neighbouring Kabaro and Danmami villages in Maru district.
“Twenty people were killed in Kabaro and seven others were also shot dead in Danmami,” Kabaro resident Lawwali Usmanu told AFP. “We buried them this morning before the Friday prayers,” said Usmanu, who attended the funeral of the victims.
UN mourns death of I. Coast envoy:
The Security Council bid farewell Thursday to veteran diplomat Bernard TanohBoutchoue, the Ivory Coast’s ambassador to the United Nations who died just months after starting a two-year term on the UN’s most powerful body.
Council members opened their meeting by standing in silent tribute to their 67-yearold colleague, who diplomats said became ill Tuesday and was taken to a hospital where he died Wednesday.