AFRICA

[kmaherali]

More than 60 percent of French speakers now live in Africa. Despite growing resentment at France, Africans are contributing to the evolution and spread of the French language.

French, by most estimates the world’s fifth most spoken language, is changing — perhaps not in the gilded hallways of the institution in Paris that publishes its official dictionary, but on a rooftop in Abidjan, the largest city in Ivory Coast.

There one afternoon, a 19-year-old rapper who goes by the stage name “Marla” rehearsed her upcoming show, surrounded by friends and empty soda bottles. Her words were mostly French, but the Ivorian slang and English words that she mixed in made a new language.

To speak only French, “c’est zogo” — “it’s uncool,” said Marla, whose real name is Mariam Dosso, combining a French word with Ivorian slang. But playing with words and languages, she said, is “choco,” an abbreviation for chocolate meaning “sweet” or “stylish.”

A growing number of words and expressions from Africa are now infusing the French language, spurred by booming populations of young people in West and Central Africa.

More than 60 percent of those who speak French daily now live in Africa, and 80 percent of children studying in French are in Africa. There are as many French speakers in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, as in Paris.

Through social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube, they are literally spreading the word, reshaping the French language from African countries, like Ivory Coast, that were once colonized by France.

“We’ve tried to rap in pure French, but nobody was listening to us,” said Jean Patrick Niambé, known as Dofy, a 24-year-old Ivorian hip-hop artist listening to Marla on the rooftop. “So we create words from our own realities, and then they spread.”

Walking down the streets of Paris or its suburbs, you can hear people use the word “enjailler” to mean “having fun.” But the word originally came from Abidjan to describe how adrenaline-seeking young Ivorians in the 1980s jumped on and off buses racing through the streets.

ImageA young woman in striped T-shirt and pants rapping as five young men listen closely to her on a rooftop surrounded by a low cinder block wall.

A young rapper who goes by the stage name Marla (left), practices her act with other rappers on a rooftop in Abidjan.Credit...Arlette Bashizi for The New York Times

Image
A man in headphones and a denim jacket, sits on a stool in a recording studio, speaking and pointing his finger.

Jean Patrick Niambé, known as Dofy, recording in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.Credit...Arlette Bashizi for The New York Times

The youth population in Africa is surging while the rest of the world grays. Demographers predict that by 2060, up to 85 percent of French speakers will live on the African continent. That’s nearly the inverse of the 1960s, when 90 percent of French speakers lived in European and other Western countries.

“French flourishes every day in Africa,” said Souleymane Bachir Diagne, a renowned Senegalese professor of philosophy and French at Columbia University. “This creolized French finds its way in the books we read, the sketches we watch on television, the songs we listen to.”

Speaking French in Africa

African countries where French is spoken by more than 10 percent of the population.

Map shows the African continent, highlighting countries where French is spoken by more than 10 percent of the population.

Tunisia

Morocco

Algeria

Mauritania

Mali

Niger

Senegal

Chad

Djibouti

Burkina

Faso

Gambia

Guinea

Benin

Ivory

Coast

Guinea-

Bissau

Central African Republic

Cameroon

Togo

Equatorial Guinea

Dem. Rep.

of Congo

Gabon

Rep. of Congo

FORMER FRENCH COLONY

OR PROTECTORATE

Madagascar

Note: Not all African islands are shown.Source: Organisation Internationale de la FrancophonieBy The New York Times
Nearly half of the countries in Africa were at one time French colonies or protectorates, and most of them use French as their official language.

But France has faced growing resentment in recent years in many of these countries for both its colonial legacy and continuing influence. Some countries have evicted French ambassadors and troops, while others target the French language itself. Some West African novelists write in local languages as an act of artistic resistance. The ruling junta in Mali has stripped French of its official status, and a similar move is underway in Burkina Faso.

Image
Youth on scooters take a joyride on a sandy beach as waves crash in the background.

Youth on Yoff Beach in Dakar, Senegal, once a French colony. The youth population in Africa is surging, and by 2060, demographers say, 85 percent of French speakers will live on the continent.Credit...Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York Times

Image
A group of students holding guitars look at a person sitting in the center.

Music students rehearse in a classroom in the Ecole Nationale des Arts et Culture in Dakar, Senegal.Credit...Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York Times

The backlash has not gone unnoticed in France, where the evolution of French provokes debate, if not angst, among some intellectuals. President Emmanuel Macron of France said in a 2019 speech: “France must take pride in being essentially one country among others that learns, speaks, writes in French.”

The language laboratory

In the sprawling Adjamé market in Abidjan, there are thousands of small stalls selling electronics, clothes, counterfeit medicine and food. The market is a perfect laboratory in which to study Nouchi, a slang once crafted by petty criminals, but which has taken over the country in under four decades.

Some former members of Abidjan’s gangs, who helped invent Nouchi, now work as guards patrolling the market’s alleys, where “jassa men” — young hustlers — sell goods to make ends meet. It is here that new expressions are born and die every day.

Germain-Arsène Kadi, a professor of literature at the Alassane Ouattara University in Ivory Coast, walked deep into the market one morning carrying with him the Nouchi dictionary he wrote.

Image
A view from up high of a busy street lined with buildings two to four stories high, with sidewalks full of pedestrians.

The Adjamé neighborhood in Abidjan where the Ivorian French known as “Nouchi” was created and developed.Credit...Arlette Bashizi for The New York Times

Image
A man in blue jeans and sunglasses stands in front of an outdoor market stall, looking down at a book he’s holding.

Germain-Arsène Kadi, a professor of comparative literature who has written a dictionary of Nouchi, at a street bookstore in the Adjamé market where he still goes to discover new words.Credit...Arlette Bashizi for The New York Times

At a maquis, a street restaurant with plastic tables and chairs, the owner gathered a few jassa men in their corner, or “soï,” to throw out their favorite words while they drank Vody, a mix of vodka and energy drink.

“They’re going to hit you,” the owner said in French, which alarmed me until they explained that the French verb for “hit,” frapper, had the opposite meaning there: Those jassa men would treat us well — which they did, throwing out dozens of words and expressions unknown to me in a few minutes.

Mr. Kadi frantically scribbled down new words on a notepad, saying repeatedly, “One more for the dictionary.”

It’s nearly impossible to know which word crafted on the streets of Abidjan might spread, travel or even survive.

“Go,” meaning “girlfriend” in Ivory Coast, was entered into the well-known French dictionary Le Robert this year.

In Abidjan this year, people began to call a boyfriend “mon pain” — French for “my bread.” Improvisations soon proliferated: “pain choco” is a cute boyfriend. A sugary bread, a sweet one. A bread just out of the oven is a hot partner.

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Two rappers speak into their microphones on a stage, under spotlights and beams of light that cast pink and green colors.

Marla, the rapper who practiced on a rooftop with friends, performs onstage at the Get Together festival with other rappers in Abidjan, in February.Credit...Arlette Bashizi for The New York Times

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A crowd of people attending a concert hold cellphones to capture a performance.

A crowd listens to Marla and her “Collectif Rap Group” at the festival in Abidjan.Credit...Arlette Bashizi for The New York Times

At a church in Abidjan earlier this year, the congregation burst out laughing, several worshipers told me, when the priest preached that people should share their bread with their brethren.

The expression has spread like a meme on social media, reaching neighboring Burkina Faso and the Democratic Republic of Congo, thousands of miles away. It hasn’t reached France yet. But Ivorians like to joke about which expressions French people will pick up, often years, if not decades, later.

“If French becomes more mixed, then visions of the world it carries will change,” said Josué Guébo, an Ivorian poet and philosopher. “And if Africa influences French from a linguistic point of view, it will likely influence it from an ideological one.”

Painful past, uncertain future

Le Magnific — the stage name for Jacques Silvère Bah — is one of Ivory Coast’s most famous standup comedians, renowned for his plays on words and imitations of West African accents.

But as a young boy learning French in school, he was forbidden to speak Wobé, his own language, he said. His French was initially so poor, he was reduced to communicating with gestures on the playground.

“We had to learn fast, and in a painful way,” said the 45-year-old Mr. Silvère one afternoon, before he took the stage at a standup comedy festival in Abidjan.

Across French-speaking West and Central African countries, French is seldom used at home and is rarely the first language, instead restricted to school, work, business or administration.

According to a survey released last year by the French Organization of the Francophonie, the primary organization for promoting French language and culture, 77 percent of respondents in Africa described French as the “language of the colonizer.” About 57 percent said it was an imposed language.

Sometimes the methods of imposing it were brutal, scholars say. At school in many French colonies, children speaking in their mother tongue were beaten or forced to wear an object around their necks known as a “symbol” — often a smelly object or an animal bone.

Still, many African countries adopted French as their official language when they gained independence, in part to cement their national identities. Some even kept the “symbol” in place at school.

Image
A man in blue standing alone onstage speaking, in front of a large crowd in a dark auditorium.

The standup comedian known as Le Magnific performs during the closing ceremony of a comedy festival in Ivory Coast called “Abidjan Capital of Laughter.” Credit...Arlette Bashizi for The New York Times

Image
Four people standing talking to each other at night, with a bright spotlight in the background.

Mohamed Mustapha, known as Mamane, the organizer of the standup comedy show in Abidjan. “What makes our humor Pan-African is the French language,” he said.Credit...Arlette Bashizi for The New York Times

At the festival, Le Magnific and other standup comedians threw jibes in French and ridiculed one another’s accents, drawing laughter from the audience. It mattered little if a few words were lost in translation.

“What makes our humor Pan-African is the French language,” said the festival’s organizer, Mohamed Mustapha, known across West Africa by his stage name, Mamane. A standup comedian from Niger, Mamane has a daily comedy program listened to by millions around the world on Radio France Internationale.

“It’s about survival, if we want to resist against Nollywood,” he said, referring to Nigeria’s film industry, “and English-produced content.”

Today, more than a third of Ivorians speak French, according to the International Organization of the Francophonie. In Tunisia and the Democratic Republic of Congo — the world’s largest French-speaking country — it is more than half.

But in many Francophone countries, governments struggle to hire enough French-speaking teachers.

“African children are still learning in French in extremely difficult conditions,” said Francine Quéméner, a program specialist in charge of language policies at the International Organization of the Francophonie. “They must learn to count, write, read in a language they don’t fully grasp, with teachers who themselves don’t always feel secure speaking French.”

Still, Ms. Quéméner said French had long escaped France’s control.

“French is an African language and belongs to Africans,” she said. “The decentralization of the French language is a reality.”

France notices

At the Hip Hop Académie, a youth program founded by the rapper Grödash in a Paris suburb, teens and children scribbled lyrics on notepads, following instructions to mix French and foreign languages.

Coumba Soumaré Camara, aged 9, tried out a few words from the mother tongues of her Mauritanian and Senegalese parents. She ended her couplet with “t’es magna” — you’re mean — combining French syntax and an expression from Mauritania.

Hip-hop, now dominating the French music industry, is injecting new words, phrases and concepts from Africa into France’s suburbs and cities.

Image
A music student holds out a cell phone while sitting at a table with a laptop and recording equipment.
Students at the Hip Hop Académie, a youth program founded by a rapper, in Les Ulis, a suburb of Paris.Credit...Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York Times

Image
Two dancers in front, and one just behind them, synchronized and in motion, stepping wide and about to clap, in front of a brightly colored wall with large graffiti letters.

Dancing at the Hip Hop Académie.Credit...Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York Times

One of the world’s most famous French-speaking pop singers is Aya Nakamura, originally from Mali. Many of the most streamed hip-hop artists are of Moroccan, Algerian, Congolese or Ivorian origins.

“Countless artists have democratized French music with African slang,” said Elvis Adidiema, a Congolese music executive with Sony Music Entertainment. “The French public, from all backgrounds, has become accustomed to those sounds.”

But some in France are slow to embrace change. Members of the French Academy, the 17th-century institution that publishes an official dictionary of the French language, have been working on the same edition for the past 40 years.

On a recent evening Dany Laferrière, a Haitian-Canadian novelist and the only Black member of the academy, walked the gilded corridors of the Academy’s building, on the left bank of the Seine River. He and his fellow academicians were reviewing whether to add to the dictionary the word “yeah,” which appeared in French in the 1960s.

Mr. Laferrière acknowledged that the Academy might need to modernize by incorporating entire dictionaries from Belgian, Senegalese, or Ivorian French.

“French is about to make a big leap, and she’s wondering how it’s going to go,” Mr. Laferrière said of the French language. “But she’s excited about where she’s headed.”

He paused, stared at the Seine through the window, and corrected himself.

“They, not she. They are now multiple versions of French that speak for themselves. And that is the greatest proof of its vitality.”

Image
Standing in a grand hall, with a stained-glass window behind him, a man looks toward the ceiling.

Dany Laferrière, a Haitian-Canadian writer and the only Black member of the French Academy, in the academy’s halls in Paris. He said there are now “now multiple versions of French that speak for themselves.”Credit...Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/12/worl ... guage.html

[kmaherali]

This year’s Africa Cup of Nations, like several previous editions, played out in Chinese-built arenas. It will end with familiar questions about their legacy

The Alassane Ouattara Stadium on the outskirts of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, struggled to fill its 60,000 Chinese-built seats in the early stages of the tournament.

The Alassane Ouattara stadium rises like a piece of sculpture from the dusty brown earth north of Ivory Coast’s largest city, its undulating roof and white columns towering over the empty landscape like a spaceship that has dropped onto a uninhabited planet.

On Sunday, the three-and-a-half-year-old stadium will host its signature moment, when the national soccer teams of Ivory Coast and Nigeria compete in the final of Africa’s biggest sporting event, in front of tens of thousands of fans chanting and cheering in a stadium financed and built by China.

While that is nothing new for the tournament, the Africa Cup of Nations, the arena is just the latest example of the contradictions that emerge from Chinese projects built on Chinese terms, and on African soil.

Stadiums have been a cornerstone of China’s diplomatic reach into Africa since the 1970s, but their number has increased since the early 2000s, part of a larger Chinese strategy to build infrastructure — from highways to railroads, ports to presidential palaces and even the headquarters of the African Union — in exchange for diplomatic clout or access to natural resources.

Through that trillion-dollar program, known as the Belt and Road Initiative, China has become a central partner to the developing countries that benefit from expensive projects they might not otherwise be able to afford. But Chinese construction has sometimes been accompanied by charges of local corruption, and critics have questioned the value of the big-budget projects, noting they deliver dubious long-term economic benefits but very real debts that governments can struggle to repay.

“China doesn’t ask why you need a stadium,” said Itamar Dubinsky, a researcher at the African Studies Program at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. “It just finances and builds it.”

ImageA stadium surrounded by empty roads.

The walk to the Ouattara stadium can take up to an hour because the road to it is not open yet. Critics say Chinese-built stadiums are rarely delivered with the infrastructure to support them.

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A soccer player kicks the ball while opposing team members react.

South African players during their match against Morocco.

Image
A man holds a flag above his head while standing in a crowd of fans, watching a match.

Guinea fans in Abidjan. The Cup of Nations is Africa’s biggest sporting event.

Over the past two decades, Chinese companies have built or renovated dozens of stadiums across Africa, including, in the past 15 years, nearly half of those that have hosted matches in the Africa Cup of Nations. That total includes three of the six used for this year’s tournament, whose showpiece is the 60,000-seat Ouattara stadium, designed and built by two Chinese state-owned companies.

Its exterior of white columns and curving arches — inset with panels tinted green and orange, the national colors of Ivory Coast — is a stylistic improvement from earlier projects on the continent, which critics have derided as drab concrete monoliths.

But three years after the stadium hosted its first game, the new road leading to it still hasn’t opened, forcing fans to walk for up to an hour to reach or leave the arena, and the sports city around it has yet to materialize. That, critics say, is another regular feature of the projects. Chinese-built stadiums are rarely delivered with the infrastructure to support them, or the know-how to maintain them.

Map locates the southern city of Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, as well as the town of San Pedro to the west.

MALI

BURKINA

FASO

GUINEA

IVORY COAST

GHANA

Abidjan

LIBERIA

San Pedro

Gulf of Guinea

100 MILES

By The New York Times
Yet for countless fans who watched games over the past month, what mattered lay elsewhere. Ivory Coast, bouncing back from civil war and boasting one of West Africa’s largest economies and a dynamic middle class, has showcased its ability to host a major tournament in state-of-the-art facilities.

“One can only be impressed,” one fan, Halima Duret, said as she scanned the stands on a recent evening. An interior designer living in Abidjan, Ms. Duret was attending a soccer game for the first time, and it was a special one. Her home country’s team, Guinea, had reached the quarterfinals. “What a beauty,” she added.

The partnership between China and Ivory Coast, a major producer of rubber and cocoa, is emblematic of the way China has eagerly pursued ties with resource-rich African countries.

As Chinese and Ivorian workers were building the stadium in Ebimpé, on the outskirts of Abidjan, President Alassane Ouattara visited his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Beijing in 2018 to strengthen the countries’ relations. Since then, Ivory Coast has increased its exports of rubber and crude oil to China, which has become Ivory Coast’s largest trading partner. China is also financing the expansion of Abidjan’s port, one of its largest Belt and Road Initiative projects in West Africa.

Image
A market vendor wearing a green-and-white curly wig blows into a long, plastic horn. Soccer clothing hangs from his stall while people walk by.

A vendor selling Ivory Coast paraphernalia at a market in Abidjan. The host nation will play Nigeria in Sunday’s final.

Image
A man walks across a bridge in Abidjan.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative has built bridges, railroads and ports in Africa.

Image
A soccer fan hoists a flag overhead and dances in the street while others watch.

Ivorians celebrating their victory over Mali in the quarterfinals of the Cup of Nations.

When China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, visited Ivory Coast during the Africa Cup of Nations last month, he thanked Mr. Ouattara for his country’s support to China’s “vital interests,” including on Taiwan. Mr. Ouattara vowed to deepen the bilateral relationship and said the countries shared a similar vision of the world order.

While stadiums might not be the biggest infrastructure projects, or the most worthwhile, they are popular, at least at first, experts on China-Africa relations said.

“A stadium is one of the most eye-catching signs of China’s ability to contribute to the development of African countries,” said Filomène Ebi, an Ivorian Sinologist and associate researcher at the National Taiwan University. “Most people in Ivory Coast know that China built the Ouattara stadium,” she said.

As mass consumption of sports booms in Africa, other countries have joined the game. A Turkish construction company built Senegal’s new national soccer stadium, which will host the Youth Olympic Games in 2026. And “Visit Saudi Arabia” is the main sponsor of a new pan-African soccer league.


Playing Soccer in $1.50 Sandals That Even Gucci Wants to Copy
In Ivory Coast, lêkê are the preferred footwear for amateur games and almost everything else.
Feb. 7, 2024

Western companies and governments are also playing: The French oil company Total Energies is the Africa Cup of Nations’ main sponsor, and the N.B.A. is a main backer of the Basketball Africa League.

But no country has poured more effort into embedding itself into Africa’s sports scene than China, and countries hosting the Cup of Nations have been favored recipients. All of the stadiums built for recent editions of the tournament in Angola and Gabon were built by Chinese companies. And in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, a Chinese company is renovating the stadium where President William Ruto was inaugurated, and which will host soccer games for the 2027 edition of the cup.

Most stadiums are donations from China, or financed through soft loans from Chinese banks. “A soccer stadium is a small price to pay for potentially much larger benefits,” said Simon Chadwick, a professor of sport and geopolitical economy at the Skema Business School in Paris.

But many African governments have let stadiums that were initially a point of pride fall into disrepair. A Chinese-built stadium in the capital of Gabon, Libreville, has been mostly abandoned since it hosted the final of the Cup of Nations in 2017. The Chinese-built national stadium of the Central African Republic, one of the world’s poorest countries, cannot even host the games of its own national team.

Image
Three soccer players kick around a ball on a dirt field.

A dusty field on the outskirts of San Pedro, Ivory Coast. Large stadiums are popular, but critics say they are not what the country needs most.

Image
A man sits alone in a row of mostly empty, green stadium seats.

Local government officials have handed out free tickets to try to fill the stands at the Chinese-built Laurent Pokou Stadium in San Pedro, Ivory Coast.

Image
A soccer player bounces a ball on his knee in a stadium as two people wearing purple shirts that read “ball kid” on the back look on.

The local club slated to take over the Pokou stadium after the cup said it would struggle to fill it.

Even Ivory Coast’s shiny stadium has imperfections: Its grass field doesn’t extend far enough beyond the playing surface, so organizers have had to patch its perimeter with artificial turf to keep players in cleats from slipping on the adjacent running track.

The future of the smaller stadiums built across Ivory Coast also appears uncertain.

Government officials said local teams would use the infrastructure once the tournament was over, but in the resort town of San Pedro, home to a new 20,000-seat stadium built by a Chinese company, the city’s main soccer club said the facility was too big for its needs.

“At best we might manage to fill it at 30 percent,” said Abdelkarim Bouaziz, an executive at F.C. San Pedro, which plays in Ivory Coast’s top league. “But we won’t be able to pay for its maintenance.”

Ivory Coast invested more than $1 billion in the organization of the tournament, but it has also struggled to fill its stadiums’ shiny seats, raising questions about whether it made sense to construct such large venues for a monthlong event.

During the opening game, which featured the host nation, the Ouattara stadium was about two-thirds full. In San Pedro, the town hall was recently awash with unsold tickets, which the mayor, Nakaridja Cissé, said she was distributing free in an effort to invite residents into the new arena.

Ivorian officials say they have a post-tournament strategy for the new or renovated infrastructure. Ousmane Gbané, the head of the National Office for Sports, said local clubs like F.C. San Pedro would finally leave Abidjan, where they have trained and played for years, and use the new facilities. International hotel chains, Mr. Gbané said, had expressed interest in managing the residences built for the tournament’s teams.

“We’ve learned from the mistakes of others,” Mr. Gbané said. In only a few weeks, he said confidently, “the infrastructure we built for Afcon will have a new life.”

Image
A stadium lit up at night as cars drive past.

The Chinese-built Laurent Pokou Stadium in San Pedro.

Abdi Latif Dahir, Tariq Panja and Loucoumane Coulibaly contributed reporting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/10/worl ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

The waterborne disease has killed more than 4,000 people in seven countries over the past two years. Experts blame severe storms, a lack of vaccines, and poor water and sewer systems.


In Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, patients were treated in a makeshift cholera treatment center set up inside the National Heroes Stadium, usually used for sports.Credit...Namukolo Siyumbwa/Reuters

Sandra Mwayera wailed as her older brother slouched next to her in the back seat of a car — he had died from cholera as he waited for treatment among dozens of others outside a hospital in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.

“My brother! My brother! Why have you abandoned me?” she pleaded. “Come back, please. Come back!”

In neighboring Zambia, inside the 60,000-seat National Heroes Stadium in the capital, Lusaka, rows of gray cots lined rooms at a makeshift treatment center where 24-year-old Memory Musonda had died. Her family said they were not informed until four days later — the government buried her, and they have yet to locate her grave.

Ms. Musonda’s uncle, Stanley Mwamba Kafula, said the family was “disturbed” and “heartbroken.”

Active outbreaks of cholera, a waterborne bacterial disease, are now raging in five countries in central and southern Africa, ranging from as far north as the Democratic Republic of Congo, and down to Mozambique.

The epidemic has spread over the past two years, infecting more than 220,000 and killing more than 4,000 people in seven countries. This is the deadliest regional outbreak in terms of cases and deaths to hit Africa in at least a decade, said Dr. Patrick Otim, who oversees the cholera response for the World Health Organization in Africa. Public health workers in Africa say it is rare to see so many cases in so many countries at the same time.

Image
People fill up buckets and bottles with water out of three spigots in front of a wooden fence.

People filling up bottles and buckets with safe drinking water in Harare, Zimbabwe. The surest way to prevent cholera is to keep water sources for drinking and washing separate from sewage, public health experts say.Credit...Jekesai Njikizana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Cholera cases in Africa had actually been on a downward slide and hit a low in 2020, he said. But then came an uptick in West Africa in 2021, followed by the current outbreak in the southern part of the continent.

Two countries — Zambia and Malawi — have reported their largest cholera outbreaks ever, while Zimbabwe has seen its second-highest number of cases on record. Of the 19 countries in the African Union that have reported deaths and cases over the past year, nearly three quarters of the cases have come from southern Africa, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The cholera situation in southern Africa — particularly in Zimbabwe and Zambia — is dire,” said Dr. Mounia Amrani, the southern Africa medical team leader for Doctors Without Borders.

The devastation is linked to increasingly ferocious storms, a shortage of vaccines, and poor water and sewer infrastructure, public health experts said.

Representatives from 15 nations in the Southern African Development Community have agreed to a collective mobilization that includes investing in vaccine production and distribution, collaborating on surveillance for the illness across borders and developing reliable water and sanitation systems.

Image
A child lies across a man’s lap as a health care worker treats him with an IV.

A health care worker tending to a patient at a temporary cholera treatment center in Lilongwe, Malawi. The country has reported its largest cholera outbreak ever.Credit...Fredrik Lerneryd/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Zambia has been hit the hardest by the disease and is experiencing its deadliest outbreak on record. Since October, more than 650 people have died and more than 18,500 have been infected, though cases and deaths have slowed since they peaked in January. Five deaths were reported in the 24 hours leading up to Monday, compared with the more than 15 fatalities that were recorded daily last month. Schools reopened on Monday after a delay of about a month.

Still, there are worrying signs. The outbreak was initially confined to the capital of Lusaka but has since spread to nine other provinces. The death rate of 3.5 percent is far higher than the 1 percent rate that health experts say is typical. Dr. Otim said about half of the deaths in Zambia occurred at home rather than at health centers, an indication that people either denied or were unaware they had cholera.

Doctors Without Borders has deployed 50 health workers to Zambia and 30 to Zimbabwe to help manage the outbreaks.

Even as public health and government officials race to battle the outbreaks, the Africa C.D.C. warns of the potential for a difficult situation ahead: Above-normal rainfall is projected across much of the region through this month, the type of weather that floods communities, destroys infrastructure and increases the risk of cholera transmission.

People typically are infected with cholera when they ingest water that has been contaminated by human waste. The surest way to prevent the disease is to keep water sources for drinking and washing separate from sewage, public health experts say.

Many communities across southern Africa are plagued by poor water and sewer infrastructure. Residents often rely on shallow pit latrines as toilets, and, without piped water, use streams or lakes for drinking and washing. This presents a significant risk of cross contamination, especially when there are heavy rains and floods.

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A person wearing full protective gear disinfects areas of an outdoor cholera clinic.

A cholera health clinic run by Doctors Without Borders in Munigi, Democratic Republic of Congo. The organization is helping countries across the region treat suffering patients.Credit...Arlette Bashizi/Reuters

One of the main commitments made by leaders of the Southern African Development Community was to invest more in developing resilient water and sewer systems.

“If we don’t address the water, hygiene and sanitation issues, we will not stop the cholera outbreak,” Dr. Otim of the W.H.O. said.

Vaccination is also a major issue. A surge in cholera outbreaks globally in 2021 and 2022 depleted the stockpile of vaccines, Dr. Otim said, and there is only one manufacturer that produces the cholera vaccine at a global level. Last year, about 37 million doses were produced, even though the demand was about 60 million, he said.

Dr. Amrani said that cholera had received less attention than other diseases from the pharmaceutical industry, also contributing to the vaccine shortage.

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A health worker administers the cholera vaccine to a woman through her mouth.

A health worker administering a cholera vaccine in Kuwadzana, Zimbabwe, last month. Last year, about 37 million doses of the vaccine were produced, even though the demand was about 60 million.Credit...Nyasha Mukapiko/EPA, via Shutterstock

While longer-term solutions such as creating better water infrastructure and increasing vaccine production may take time, organizations like Doctors Without Borders and the W.H.O. are helping countries across the region tend to the immediate problem of treating suffering patients. They are providing hydration treatments, medical workers and supplies.

At a treatment facility set up at a school in a dense suburb of Harare, nurses wearing latex gloves tended to patients splayed on cots. There were groans and cries, and some patients propped themselves uncomfortably on benches, waiting to be treated.

“I’m dying! Please, I’m dying!” one woman at the school shrieked as nurses tried to put intravenous tubes into her hands to give her fluid for hydration. “What shall my children do? Who shall take care of them?”

On a recent morning inside the Sally Mugabe Central Hospital in Harare, where Ms. Mwayera’s brother had died outside in the car, a nurse delivered bad news to members of another family waiting in a hallway. Jethro Nguweni, 52, had lost his battle with cholera.

“What shall I do?” his wife, Melia Nguweni, sobbed, removing her head scarf and throwing it down. “My husband is gone. He has left me.”

Image
A woman carrying a giant bundle on her head walks down a flooded, muddy street between houses.

A flooded street in Lusaka, Zambia, last month. There is an especially high risk of water contamination when there are heavy rains and floods.Credit...Namukolo Siyumbwa/Reuters

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/13/worl ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

OLD WORLD
YOUNG AFRICA

The Father, the Son and the Fight Over Their King



A student’s vow to overthrow one of Africa’s last ruling monarchs faces a roadblock: his own father, a soldier sworn to protect the throne.

The riot police appeared out of nowhere, charging furiously toward the young protesters trying to oust King Mswati III, who has ruled over the nation of Eswatini for 38 years. The pop of gunfire ricocheted through the streets, and the demonstrators started running for their lives.

Manqoba Motsa, a college student, and his fellow Communists quickly slipped into disguise, pulling plain T-shirts over their red hammer-and-sickle regalia. They ducked down a sloped street and raced away, thinking that, somehow, they had escaped.

Then Mr. Motsa’s phone rang: A close friend at the protest had been shot. They found him splayed on a bed in the emergency room, a bloody bandage around his torso, a tube in his arm.

“We can’t stop fighting,” the wounded protester, Mhlonishwa Mtsetfwa, told the dozen red-clad Communist Party members surrounding his hospital bed. “We’ll do this until our last breath.”

Across much of Africa, that anger is palpable in restless young activists, like Mr. Motsa, who are pushing, protesting and at times risking their lives to remove long-reigning leaders they view as barriers to the continent’s true potential.

While the world grays and nations worry about collapsing without enough workers to support their aging populations, Africa — the youngest continent, with a median age of 19 — sits at the opposite end of the spectrum. It boasts ample young people to power economic growth and global influence.

But to the frustration of its youthful population, Africa also has some of the world’s longest-serving leaders, who often place their own personal gain and political longevity above the welfare of their nations, experts on the continent’s politics say.

At least 18 heads of state in Africa have held power for more than two decades in the post-colonial era, and many have left legacies of poverty, unemployment, unrest and a wealthy ruling elite far removed from the everyday struggles of their people.


ImageTwo men, one in a red shirt with a yellow hammer and sickle, put up on a pole a matching flag with a hammer and sickle.

“We can’t stop fighting,” said Mhlonishwa Mtsetfwa, in hammer-and-sickle shirt. He and other members of the Communist Party of Swaziland placed a flag outside the courthouse in Nhlangano, Eswatini, in May.

Image
A young man in a baseball cap holds an animated argument with an older, bearded man, outside on a street.

An anti-monarchy activist, Manqoba Motsa, arguing with Sibusiso B. Dlamini, the secretary general of the African United Democratic Party, who says the monarchy and democracy can coexist.

Age is a huge political dividing line. The 10 countries with the biggest differences in the world between the leader’s age and the median age of the population are all in Africa, according to data from the Pew Research Center. The widest gap is in Cameroon, where President Paul Biya, who took office in 1982, is 91. The median age there is under 18 — a difference of more than 70 years.

Many African youths feel their governments are rotten to the core, and are demanding something far beyond tinkering with traditional politics.

“Any African leader today is very aware that young people can come out and cause trouble, serious trouble,” said Alcinda Honwana, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics from Mozambique, where young people accusing the governing party of rigging elections flooded the streets last October.

The Arab Spring in 2011, when young people helped to overthrow leaders in Egypt and Tunisia, set the stage for other youth uprisings in Africa, Dr. Honwana said.

That same year, rappers in Senegal formed a youth movement known as “Fed Up,” which helped oust the president in elections. His successor, Macky Sall, has not fared much better with the country’s youths: They led fierce street demonstrations last year demanding that he not pursue a third term. He eventually said he would not run, but then recently postponed the elections by 10 months, prompting more protests.

Musicians in Burkina Faso started a similar movement that fueled enormous demonstrations in 2014 and forced out the longtime president. And in Sudan, young demonstrators also helped to lead the charge to oust President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in 2019 — and they stayed on the streets to protest the regime that replaced him, with hundreds killed and thousands more wounded in crackdowns by the military.

In few places have the youth uprisings been as surprising as in Eswatini, a kingdom of 1.2 million people that shed its colonial name, Swaziland, in 2018 on the order of the king.

The map locates Eswatini in southern Africa. It is bordered by the country of South Africa to the north, west, south, and southeast.

BOTSWANA

ESWATINI

Mbabane

Johannesburg

Matsapha

LESOTHO

SOUTH AFRICA

Indian

Ocean

Cape Town

200 MILES

By The New York Times
King Mswati, 55, the last ruling monarch in sub-Saharan Africa, took the throne as a slender, baby-faced teenager in 1986 — making him one of the world’s longest serving leaders. His place in the nation’s culture is so revered that, traditionally, people hoping to address him in one of his palaces approach by crawling.

But the king presides over a country where youth unemployment is a suffocating 58 percent. Many of the nation’s children are orphaned, mostly because their parents have died of AIDS.

Yet, to many young people, the king seems to almost flaunt his indifference. Critics said he showed up at a traditional ceremony wearing a watch that sells for 13 times the annual income of most of his subjects.

Image
The king and a group of men carry wooden staffs and wear leopard skin loincloths over cloth skirts. They are greeting a large group of young women.
King Mswati III greeted young women at a traditional reed dance ceremony in October in Nhlangano, Eswatini. He has been criticized for wearing expensive watches and jewelry while many of his subjects live in poverty.

Image
Barefoot women holding tall reeds line up in a dirt field. A woman in a blue uniform stands in front of them.

Women gathered at the gates of the royal residence for the reed dance ceremony. Many in Eswatini revere their monarch and believe he has special powers.

Thousands of citizens, most of them young, erupted in furious protests at his stifling reign in 2021, lighting up the skies with the flames of ransacked businesses, many connected to the king. Soldiers and the police responded with bullets, killing dozens.

The king’s father, King Sobhuza II, banned political parties from elections in 1973 and gave himself absolute power. A Constitution adopted in 2005 put some checks on the king, but political parties are still banned from elections, though individuals can run on their own. All laws must get the king’s approval, lawmakers cannot override his decisions, he appoints the prime minister and he can dissolve Parliament at his pleasure.

Mr. Motsa, a 28-year-old college senior struggling to scrounge enough tuition money to graduate, regrouped with activists last year for the 50th anniversary of King Sobhuza’s decree, vowing to cause enough chaos to press an admittedly ambitious demand: They wanted a democracy.

Short of that, they hoped people would at least boycott last year’s national elections, arguing that voting merely gave the appearance of credibility to a bogus system.

“There will never be a situation that will come that will make us give up the fight,” Mr. Motsa said.

Even his own family cannot seem to stop him, a sign of how wide the generational chasm can be.

Mr. Motsa’s uncle says his activism will get him killed. His mother fears it will get the rest of them killed, too. And they are aghast at his treasonous demands to abolish the monarchy.

After all, his aunt is one of the king’s many wives, and his father is a soldier in the king’s army, sworn to protect the throne against all threats — including his son.

Now, the government is hunting him down.

This month, the police pulled a Communist Party leader into an interrogation room and told her that Mr. Motsa had better watch his back.

He was wanted, they warned. For terrorism.

‘On Your Way to Death’

Mr. Motsa recounted the day he said his father threatened to kill him.

Dozens had gathered to bury Mr. Motsa’s grandmother on a bushy slope near the family homestead. The local chief’s representative was supposed to speak, but Mr. Motsa, who showed up at the funeral with his Communist allies, shot down the idea, calling the envoy a symbol of a tyrannical regime.

As the mourners stood by the grave, Mr. Motsa said his father was enraged at the gall, demanding of his son, “Who are you?” and threatening to kill him.

“It won’t be easy,” Mr. Motsa recalled responding. “I am also a soldier. I am a member of the people’s army.”

His father, Samuel Mahlatsini Motsa, 55, said he never made any threats, adding that his son and the other Communist Party members at the funeral were drunk.

Father and son barely talk anymore, their relationship icy, their differences symbolic of a national rift made violently clear during the unrest more than two years ago: While many demand radical change, others ardently embrace tradition and the monarchy.

Image
Manqoba Motsa, in a baseball cap, near a gravesite in a rural area rimmed by hills.

Manqoba Motsa near his grandmother’s grave in Matsapha, where, during her funeral, he said that he and his father had a bitter argument.

Image
A man in a red polo shirt that says “50” stands in the doorway of a home.

Mr. Motsa’s father, Samuel Mahlatsini Motsa, is a soldier in the king’s army and is loyal to the king. The family lives in Luve, in central Eswatini, in a modest cinder-block home where the tap has run dry.

As Mr. Motsa recounted the clash at the funeral, he sat across from his father on the floor of his parents’ living room, a shell of his ordinary self. Usually boisterous and blunt, his body stiffened and he spoke softly, barely looking in his father’s direction.

He was once an “obedient” son, his father said.

Mr. Motsa, in fact, almost followed his father’s path. After high school, he took an uncle’s advice and went through a ritual to become a member of the regiments that are duty bound to protect King Mswati. He thought it would help him get a job, perhaps as a police officer or, like his father, a soldier.

Instead, Mr. Motsa found himself in a position all too familiar to young Africans: He could not find work. Data from the African Development Bank Group shows that 15- to 35-year-olds on the continent are vastly underemployed or do not have stable jobs. The effects can be devastating, sometimes forcing them to migrate, turn to crime or even to extremist groups.

In Eswatini, “We have a lot of educated people that are unemployed, and they are frustrated,” said Prince David, a half brother of King Mswati’s. “They are young, educated, unemployed and not knowing what to do.”

Mr. Motsa ultimately found a job in a very different sector of the economy — as a laborer on an illicit marijuana farm, where he earned enough to pay for his first year of university.

He was struck by how many people struggled to buy food, despite working hard, while the king’s lavish life unspooled before them all on social media and in the news: photographs of a smiling royal family standing next to elaborate, multilayered cakes at birthday parties in any of the king’s dozen or so palaces.

Opposition figures publicly accused the king of buying 19 Rolls Royces and 120 BMWs for his large family, while public servants protested for better pay. Headlines recounted the royal family’s multimillion-dollar trip to Las Vegas and the $58 million spent on the royal plane, a decked-out Airbus measuring nearly three-quarters of the length of a football field.

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A line of men dressed in red cloths worn over one shoulder stand outside at an airport looking at a huge airplane at sunset.

Officials waited for the return of King Mswati III at the airport named after him. His royal $58 million Airbus plane is nearly three-quarters the length of a football field.

Image
A framed picture of King Mswati III waving, dressed in academic robes and a mortarboard.

King Mswati is also the chancellor of the University of Eswatini. Students went on strike there last year, and later professors and staff struck, too, over wages and working conditions.

A government spokesman, Alpheous Nxumalo, said the king had fairly inherited his wealth and put profits from businesses controlled by the royal family into scholarships and other programs to alleviate poverty.

“The king is not a cause for poverty, but a solution,” Mr. Nxumalo said.

Mr. Motsa’s opposition to the monarchy stiffened when he started at the University of Eswatini in 2019 and joined the Communist Party.

Even by the standards of the king’s most fervent detractors, the Communist Party is seen as radical. It calls for the total abolition of the monarchy, while most democracy advocates would accept a largely ceremonial role, like in England. Many Communists embrace violence, if necessary, to oust him.

At his family’s rural homestead, Mr. Motsa began describing the king as selfish and out of touch — views that his father, after three decades of protecting the throne, considered untrue.

King Mswati, the elder Mr. Motsa said, had paid his medical bills when he fell ill. He recounted how an aide once urged aggression toward dissidents, yet the king refused. “Why should I?” he recalled the king saying. “They also have babies.”

Political party leaders were “the worst dictators,” the elder Mr. Motsa said.

Now his son was one of them.

“Once you join any political organization,” he said, “you are on your way to death.”

‘True Leaders Die Young’

Loved ones repeatedly told Mr. Motsa that his activism would bring death — and not only for him.

“This will cause people to kill us,” said his mother, Badzelisile Mirriam Motsa, 48, worrying that her son would turn the whole family into a target.

“You get a bullet and die,” warned his uncle Thando Dludlu, 55.

Even Mr. Motsa’s comrades often painted their struggle as a path to an early end.

“We’ve got to commit suicide,” a veteran activist, Mphandlana Shongwe, told Mr. Motsa and dozens of other students before a planned protest at Parliament on the 50th anniversary of King Sobhuza’s decree.

Mr. Shongwe, 63, belonged to the country’s largest political party — the People’s United Democratic Movement, or Pudemo — but the government banned it, calling it a terrorist organization. As a young man, he was arrested and accused of trying to overthrow the government. But this new generation has advantages, he said — namely technology and a country much more openly dissatisfied with the king.

Still, the monarchy would not surrender without a fight, he said, so students needed to step into the line of fire.

“True leaders die young because they are a threat,” he told them.

Image
A group of men, some wearing red shirts with a yellow hammer and sickle, dancing in a group.

Student activists dancing and chanting the day before a protest in front of Parliament, where they were planning to deliver complaints about the lack of funds for higher education.

Image
A man wearing a mustard yellow and black shirt and a black beret stands speaking to a group of people, who are blurred out in the photo.

The first woman elected president of the national student union, Gabisile Ndukuya, sat at the organizers’ table as Mphandlana Shongwe, a veteran of the anti-monarchy movement, told students that they must be ready to face a violent government response.

The message did not faze the activists in the room, many of whom had dodged bullets during the uprising three years ago.

The upheaval had begun with mourning: a memorial service for a law student found dead on the side of the road. Many suspected foul play by the police. After a scuffle between students and officers outside the memorial, the police invaded the service, firing tear gas at the mourners.

Mr. Motsa said he and other activists struck back, throwing stones at a nearby police station. Some protesters tried set it on fire, he said, and gathered tires to burn in the streets. When the police swooped in, local residents blocked the officers, enabling Mr. Motsa to get away.

The rioting across Eswatini’s lush, mountainous landscape peaked in June 2021. Gruesome pictures and videos of young protesters with holes in their bodies circulated online. A top Communist Party official reported being tortured by the police at a roadblock. Mr. Motsa described joining a crowd rioting outside a grocery store and helping carry a young man who had been shot in the stomach by security forces.

The unrest was a release of simmering discontent. Surveys in 2021, shortly before the uprising, found that 69 percent of people polled were unsatisfied with the way democracy worked in their country, according to Afrobarometer, an independent research network.

Beyond the 27 deaths reported by the government — activists argue the actual number was more than 70 — the upheaval caused about $160 million worth of damage, according to King Mswati.

“Something like this is pure evil,” the king said after the unrest. “You cannot say the country must burn to the ground because there is something you want.”

Mr. Nxumalo, the government spokesman, said the king had no problem making changes and pointed to the Constitution, drafted with the king’s blessing nearly two decades ago after citizens raised concerns. What the king would not tolerate, Mr. Nxumalo said, were young activists acting like insurgents.

“No government negotiates with terrorists,” he said.

The fires of the uprising cooled and the ransacked businesses were spruced up, but the anger remained. Mr. Motsa and his fellow student activists wanted to keep up the pressure by handing a petition directly to Parliament last year, bracing for a violent crackdown.

Image
A man in a blue shirt stands holding his cellphone as if he’s filming something, while other young men stand nearby.

Mr. Motsa and fellow student leaders staging a night rally to encourage people in Eswatini to protest the monarchy on the 50th anniversary of the royal decree that banned political parties from competing in elections.

Image
Two people can be seen backlit in an open doorway from outside at night.

Communist Party members use a modest one-room flat in a rugged community on the outskirts of the industrial city of Matsapha as their home base. The police have raided it several times.

“This is the year to determine the democracy we want,” said Gabisile Ndukuya, a Communist Party member and the first woman to be elected president of the national student union.

“We are here, comrades, ready for anything,” she added, thrusting a fist into the air.

When the moment of truth arrived in April, on the anniversary of King Sobhuza’s decree, Mr. Motsa was pacing in a panic.

It was 9:30 a.m. and the students were already 90 minutes late. They had hit the most basic and exasperating snag: They could not get a ride.

It turns out, others wanted to protest the monarchy, too — and the national transportation union’s way of doing that was to go on strike. The bus company the students had hired suddenly bailed out.

Mr. Motsa feverishly made calls to try to salvage the students’ big moment, but the bad news kept coming. Soldiers and police officers were everywhere, searching cars at roadblocks. Bus drivers were too scared to ferry around a group of radicals. The students gave up and went home.

“Where have we failed?” one student asked himself and others. “Just by not having enough buses?”

‘I’m a Problem’

Mr. Motsa’s mother feels sick — physically, emotionally, mentally.

“My hands are not working good because of the depression he caused me,” she said of her son. “I have pain in my heart.”

“I’m a problem in your life,” Mr. Motsa said, visiting home after the failed protest.

“Yes you are,” his mother replied.

Image
A woman in a pink tank top looks at a young man in a black shirt while they stand outside on the grass.

Mr. Motsa’s mother, Badzelisile Mirriam Motsa, said that his activism against the king caused her physical and mental distress. “I have pain in my heart,” she said.

Image
Three people, all wearing black, sitting in a vehicle. A woman in the forward seat is on a phone.

Mr. Motsa, center, uses a taxi to travel to his parents’ rural homestead in central Eswatini. He hardly visits anymore because of tension over his stance against the monarchy.

His mother, a chicken vendor who attends church every Sunday, despises his political activity so much that she would rather he work in the illicit marijuana business, like his older brother does. At least with marijuana he would earn a living.

The Motsa family might be loyal to King Mswati — and even related to him — but their lives are far from the glossy palaces and luxury motorcades of the monarchy. The family homestead consists of modest cinder block structures with no running water. A tap out front, once used by the whole community, has been mostly dry for years.

Mr. Motsa’s parents live in a square, two-bedroom unit with a corrugated tin roof. Inside, a large calendar with King Mswati in a military suit greets visitors. Next to that hangs a small framed picture of the king flanked by three men, one of them Mr. Motsa’s father, from his more chiseled days.

“The king’s world is given by God,” Mr. Motsa’s mother said. She noted that the heads of state in most countries live much more comfortable lives than their constituents do.

The modern kingdom of Eswatini began around 1750, when the Nkhosi-Dlamini clan arrived in the region and absorbed other clans. The kingdom generally avoided direct battles with other nations. At times, it tried to appease white settlers by working with them to defeat other African kingdoms, according to the national museum, but its people never earned the reputation of warriors like their neighbors, the Zulus.

What made the country special today, many supporters of the king said, was its peacefulness. That is why, to many, the unrest has been so jarring.

“Why would you go to the extent of burning stuff?” said Simiso Mavuso, 20, who also performed the ritual to join the king’s regiments, just as Mr. Motsa had.

“When you want change,” Mr. Mavuso said, “do it in a respectful way.”

Image
A young man stands bent over in the middle of small, domed straw huts.

Simiso Mavuso, 20, standing among the thatched huts where he and others participated in a ritual to join the regiments sworn to protect the king. He believes the monarchy is good for the country.

Image
A round shield made of animal hide lying on the ground, next to a man and his shadow.

A traditional shield used in a ritual by men and boys pledging their loyalty to King Mswati.

Even Mr. Motsa has moments of doubt. Trudging through the green hills near his home village, he came to a clearing. Neat rows of marijuana plants sprung up near a creek — the business enterprise of his older brother.

Marijuana farming looked enticing. The university, facing a multimillion-dollar deficit, was enduring its longest closure yet. First, students went on strike to protest the lack of scholarships. Then, the faculty went on strike to demand higher wages.

Mr. Motsa, a fourth-year student in economics and statistics, said he was $97 in debt and needed another $162 to register for classes.

He scraped by with a few bucks from the occasional odd job, borrowing from friends or asking his parents. He felt he could get by on about $2.50 per day, but it was never guaranteed.

He bent over one of the plants and rubbed a leaf. This single plant could sell for more than $40, his brother’s business partner said.

Mr. Motsa’s eyes lit up.

He can riff endlessly about Marx and Mao and Lenin and the Bolsheviks. He dreams of a world of shared prosperity where everyone gets what they need.

But, sometimes, theory meets real life — and Mr. Motsa has to confront his choices.

“You are creating wealth over here,” he told his brother. “I need to join you.”

‘He Is Still My Son’

About eight police officers surrounded Ms. Ndukuya, the student union leader, in a dark room at police headquarters this month, pelting her with questions and threats of arrest, she said.

They held a printout of the statement she and Mr. Motsa released this year on behalf of the student union, urging students to “violently remove Mswati and his cronies from power.”

Mr. Motsa had better go into exile, she recalled an officer saying.

“Once we catch him, he’ll never be out of jail,” Ms. Ndukuya said the officer warned.

After seven hours of interrogation, she was released, she said. But the message stuck.

“We don’t feel safe,” Ms. Ndukuya said.

Image
Two people stand in a classroom in front of tubs meant to gather ballots for an election.

Despite calls among young activists to boycott Eswatini’s national elections, many citizens turned out to vote anyway.

Image
A person stands outside in front of a brick wall with the words “Mswati Must Fall” spray painted on it.

In the village where Mr. Motsa spent part of his youth, some people openly expressed their displeasure with the king, scrawling graffiti that said, “Mswati Must Fall!!”

A few months earlier, a squad of officers had barged into the concrete room that the Communist Party used as a base, carrying rifles as a helicopter hovered overhead, witnesses said.

Before that, one of the king’s most vocal critics had been shot dead inside his home in front of his children. The government vehemently denied involvement; many, including the European Union ambassador, called the killing an assassination.

Now, Mr. Motsa worries he could be next.

The police say they are seeking him for the burning of an Eswatini flag and an empty police truck on Sept. 30, 2022. Hundreds of students had gathered that day to demand scholarships, but they scattered when tear gas and rubber bullets began to rain down, protest organizers said.

Some took cover at a nearby hospital, where they found a police pickup truck sitting in the parking lot, like a plum waiting to be devoured. Students set upon the vehicle, bashing and torching it, witnesses said.

Since then, the chaos of that day seemed to fade — one of many violent flare-ups between the young rebels and king’s security forces.

Or so the Communists thought.

Last month, the police arrested a party member and charged him with terrorism in connection with the burning of the truck and the flag.

Then, the police went to another party member with a list of people wanted for the vandalism.

Mr. Motsa was one of them.

He went into hiding, trying to figure out his next move in what seemed to be a losing battle against the king.

The government was bearing down, while he and his comrades barely had enough money to pay their cellphone bills, let alone hire buses for protests. Peace had largely returned to the country, despite their best efforts to stoke chaos. Thousands of people had lined up to vote in last year’s elections, ignoring their calls for a boycott.

“If you don’t vote, it’s like you are saying, ‘Yes,’ to what is happening,” one voter, Fanelo Magagula, 23, said as he left a polling station.

Sure, Eswatini was run like a dictatorship and the king sometimes abused his powers, he said, but voting was the only way to do something about it.

The activists also have failed to get other world leaders to back their demands for change.

Last June, the United States gave the king two awards for Eswatini’s progress in treating people with H.I.V. and AIDS.

Then, in September, King Mswati took to the podium before the United Nations General Assembly and declared himself a defender of democracy.

Image
King Mswati speaking into two microphones on a podium featuring the U.N. logo.

In a speech before the United Nations General Assembly in New York last September, King Mswati said that he and his nation are defenders of democracy.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Image
Two young men, one in a white dress shirt and tie, sit at desks in a classroom.

At a private school in the town of Matsapha, students are taught to revere the monarchy.

More than 95 percent of eligible voters in his country had registered, he said, in “a ringing endorsement of the support for the system of government.”

The words did not match the mood back home.

An Afrobarometer survey released in 2022 found that more than 80 percent of respondents said the country was headed in the wrong direction. Approval of the government’s management of the economy had plummeted to 12 percent.

Mr. Motsa takes heart in some shifts, notably the willingness of people in his country to complain openly about the government, which he considers a step toward democracy.

There is hope for his relationship with his family, too. His father occasionally calls him and offers support, like a box of food he gave his son around election time.

“He is still my son,” the elder Mr. Motsa said. “I’m still ready to mold him and show him the right way.”

But that will have to wait.

With the police after him, Mr. Motsa caught a ride to the border and walked into South Africa this month, he said, hoping to continue the struggle in exile.

“We have not left because we fear the regime,” Mr. Motsa said, presenting his predicament as an opportunity — “to organize better, and organize with some anger, some anger necessary for us to gain the freedom we desire.”

Image
A small group of people outside at night are seemingly lit up by only a car’s headlights.

Even as young activists continue to take to the streets to push for democracy and an end to the monarchy, they are short of funds and appear to be fighting a losing battle.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/worl ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

Risking a Society’s Retribution, Growing Numbers of Girls Resist Genital Cutting

Sierra Leone is one of a few countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have not banned cutting. Now, young women are defying mothers and grandmothers by refusing to undergo the procedure.


When Seio Bangura, 18, told her family she did not want to participate in a ritual ceremony that involved genital cutting, they forced her to leave home and seek refuge with friends.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

KAMAKWIE, Sierra Leone — When Seio Bangura’s final high school exam results arrived not long ago, she learned she had earned grades high enough to get into college. It was a thrilling moment for the daughter of farmers who never finished primary school. But Ms. Bangura is not making plans for university. Instead, she spends most days sitting on a bench, watching others head to class or work.

Ms. Bangura, 18, left home almost five years ago, after her parents gave her a choice: to be initiated in a ceremony centered on genital cutting, or leave. The ceremony allows entrance to bondo, or “the society,” a term for the gender-and-ethnicity-based groups that control much of life here.

“My mom said, ‘If you won’t do bondo, you have to go,’” Ms. Bangura said, her voice low but her chin defiantly raised. The choice cut her off from her family’s financial support and left her unable to pay for further education or to marry.

For more than two decades, there has been a push across the developing world to end female genital cutting, a centuries-old ritual tied up in ideas of sexual purity, obedience and control. Today, Sierra Leone is one of only a few countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have not banned it. Cutting is still practiced by almost every ethnic group in every region of the country. But the practice is now at the center of intense debate here.

Progressive groups, many supported by international organizations, are pushing to ban cutting, while conservative forces say it is an essential part of the culture that is practiced across tribal and religious lines.

As that battle plays out in the media and in parliament, growing numbers of girls and young women like Ms. Bangura are taking the matter into their own hands. It is an act of defiance almost unimaginable a generation ago: They are refusing to participate in initiation, telling their mothers and grandmothers they will not join bondo.

More than 90 percent of women over 30 in Sierra Leone have undergone genital cutting, compared with just 61 percent of those ages 15 to 19, according to the most recent household survey on the subject, conducted by UNICEF in 2019. The practice is normally carried out on girls at the onset of puberty, although there are areas of the country where it is done on girls who are much younger.

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A “bondo devil,” a key figure in women’s rituals, in Port Loko, Sierra Leone.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

Refusing bondo comes at great social cost. Women who have not joined are, by custom if not by law, not permitted to marry; to represent their communities in religious or cultural events; to participate in celebrations or funerals; or to serve as chief or in parliament.

In most cases, the initiation involves excision of the clitoris and labia minora with a razor by a senior society member called a sowei, who has no medical training but is believed to be spiritually powerful. The ceremony is carried out in women-only encampments, which were once rural but are now sometimes in towns, known as the “bondo bush.”

Laws against cutting have had uneven enforcement and mixed results. Some countries, such as Egypt and Ethiopia, have seen rates fall dramatically. But in others, such as Senegal and Somalia, the decline has been negligible. Globally, the number of girls at risk of being cut continues to grow, because countries without laws or enforcement against cutting have large and rapidly growing youth populations.

While Sierra Leone has one of the world’s highest rates of cutting, it is also one of the few places where the practice seems to be showing a sustained decline, as more and more young women resist.

Every morning as she gets ready for school, Isha Kamara and her grandmother, Hawa, debate bondo. Hawa Kamara says it is high time for Ms. Kamara to be initiated. Ms. Kamara, 20, who is in her last year of high school and wants to manage a bank one day, says she’s not interested

All her life, Ms. Kamara, who has lived with her grandmother since she was orphaned as a small child, has heard about the plans for her initiation. But after she read about cutting in a magazine and heard lectures at school — “They told us that anything God put on our bodies belongs there and should stay” — she started saying she would not join the society.

Her grandmother warned she’d have no friends. Ms. Kamara said her friends were also planning to refuse initiation. Her grandmother warned that she would die single and lonely; Ms. Kamara said she expected plenty of people would want to marry a bank manager.

Her grandmother tried bribery and promised new outfits. Ms. Kamara just cocked an eyebrow at that one.

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Isha Kamara, 20, is not interested in the ritual and wants to go to college and manage a bank.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

The nagging is most fierce on the days when the sounds of the traditional drums echo through Port Loko for an initiation. Ms. Kamara has offered to do a no-cutting bondo, a practice being promoted by some feminist groups, but her grandmother has said that is worthless.

Only one counterargument has found any resonance: “It’s a lot of money,” Hawa Kamara said, referring to the cost of the ceremony. A family must pay the sowei who leads the rites, and stage a feast or contribute to a community celebration. “I suppose we could spend it on her studies rather than calling people to come for a feast that will be eaten up quickly,” she said.

While big international organizations such as UNICEF and U.N. Women are driving the push to end cutting, the views of many girls and young women are being influenced by homegrown activism. Radio shows, billboards and traveling drama groups have spread the message that cutting is dangerous, can cause serious difficulties for women in childbirth, undermines their sexual health and violates human rights.

Ms. Bangura, who has been living with the family of her friend Aminata since she left her family home, heard the message that cutting was dangerous from her pastor at church and from a teacher at school. Most of her friends were eager to join bondo, she said, but, like her, some were hesitant, and they discussed it quietly among themselves. This is a significant change from years past. Everything about the society is meant to be secret, and breaking the taboo of discussing what happens there, including the initiation rites, is said to bring the risk of a curse.

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Ms. Bangura, with Kai Samura and her newborn, whom she is staying with in the town of Kamakwie, after being forced from her home village.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

The problem, Ms. Bangura discovered, is that social change does not happen fast, or neatly.

Kai Samura, who owns the house where Ms. Bangura stays now, said she thought Ms. Bangura’s family was overreacting. “If they abandon her because she refuses, it’s unjust,” she said.

Ms. Samura, 39, underwent initiation at age 8, but has told her own daughters they are free to choose, and should wait until they are 18 to decide. (Her husband is a vehement opponent of the practice, but says the affair is a woman’s domain.)

She reckons she and her husband are less rigid about bondo because they live in a town and social controls are more lax, but she understands the village view:

Getting a daughter initiated is crucial for the family’s social status, and for the girl’s own future.

“People don’t hate their kids,” said Chernor Bah, who runs Purposeful, a feminist advocacy organization in Freetown that works to end cutting. “They are making what they perceive as a rational, best-interest decision for the lives of their children.”

A proposed amendment to the Child Right Act, which has been under review by Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Gender and Children Affairs, would codify cutting as a “harmful practice” and make it illegal to perform the procedure on girls under 18. This is far less than the outright ban than many opponents want. But the path to outlawing the procedure is not a clear one. Powerful individuals and institutions continue to champion the practice — some overtly, some discreetly — on the grounds that it is a key part of Sierra Leone’s culture and values. They often bolster the claim with the assertion that the anti-cutting movement is a Western import, an attempt to erode traditional values and a push to promiscuity.

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Haircare in the village of Fonkoye in northern Sierra Leone.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

Sierra Leone’s first lady, Fatima Bio, a powerful political figure with a public profile as high as her husband’s, has said publicly that she underwent cutting and that she has seen no evidence that it is harmful, but when confronted by activists she agreed to give the issue further study.

Sierra Leone’s education minister, David Moinina Sengeh, said in an interview that he was “not aware” if education about cutting was part of the national curriculum and that he did not feel the subject should be addressed in schools.

“I don’t control what people do at home,” he said.

His position is emblematic of the contested ground of cutting. Dr. Moinina Sengeh, who holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is known as one of the most progressive figures in Sierra Leone’s government. He is credited with ending a ban on pregnant girls attending school. On cutting, however, he will not take a position. The curriculum should not “be making a moral decision on whether something is good or right” and should not say, “Get cut or don’t get cut,” he said.

Politicians seeking votes often volunteer to pay for a mass initiation in a community — even politicians who have publicly opposed cutting, said Naasu Fofanah, a prominent Freetown entrepreneur and deputy chair of the progressive Unity Party. She said that several years ago, when she was advising a former president, Ernest Bai Koroma, on the issue, she successfully convinced most sowei leaders to endorse a ban on cutting children, which, she said, would have been a major step forward. But activists seeking a full ban blocked the move, she said.

Ms. Fofanah herself underwent the cutting at age 15 and remembers the pain and shock of the actual procedure (about which she had no forewarning). But she also said it was, overall, a positive and affirming ritual.

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Girls’ school uniforms hung to dry on a laundry line in the Congo Town area of Freetown.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

“It was a beautiful experience for me,” she said, recalling her grandmother leading dancers in celebration of her transition into womanhood, and being told “that nobody’s ever going to speak down to you. You’ve now become this woman.”

It wasn’t hard to reconcile what had been done to her body, because she knew her mother, her grandmother and her aunts had all been through it as well. “So you endure, and you’re just like, ‘OK, that’s done, let’s get on with it,’” she said.

Still, Ms. Fofanah, who studied bondo initiation for her masters thesis at the University of Westminster in England, did not take her own daughters for initiation and talked a niece out of it, telling her she “didn’t need it” because the family had sufficient resources to open other paths for her. Yet, she felt a blanket ban was ill-conceived.

“If we are saying, when it comes to this practice, women cannot express themselves and say, ‘I am 18 or I’m 21 or I’m 30, it’s my culture, I’m going to’ — where do human rights meet my rights as a woman?” she said. “Are you saying I’m not capable of making an informed decision, of saying I want to go through this practice?”

UNICEF surveys have found that the proportion of women who think that cutting should stop is rising steadily; in the most recent survey it was nearly a third, and the opinion was held across education levels. But even women who said they thought cutting should end often also said they would send their own daughters to bondo; the top reason they gave was “social acceptance.” In a third of couples, women wanted the practice to continue while their husbands said it should be ended.

When Sierra Leone experienced an epidemic of Ebola virus from 2014 to 2016, the government temporarily outlawed the practice, and traditional and faith leaders helped promote the ban. It has since ended, but activists said it made a space for a public conversation about bondo that had never existed before, and likely contributed to a rise in young women resisting.

A number of anti-cutting groups in Sierra Leone have been trying to build support for an alternative process, what they call a “bloodless rite,” that preserves the instruction about the role and responsibility of women but does not include cutting. This approach also has the advantage of preserving an income stream, and social power, for soweis.

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Kadiatu Bangura, with her daughters Adama, left, and Mariama, inherited the role of sowei but was convinced by her eldest daughter, Zeinab, to quit.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

Kadiatu Bangura inherited the role of sowei and estimated that she cut more than 100 girls in the town of Port Loko before her daughter Zeinab, who is now 22, asked her to quit. Zeinab heard anti-cutting messages at church and confronted her mother, shocked that this was the core of the role her mother was esteemed for holding.

Kadiatu Bangura said she tried to help her daughter see the whole picture: “The bad side is the cutting — but the good side is there is dancing and celebrating and they drum for you and when you lead, they follow.” There was community and a sense of shared values in the society, and the rites without cutting did not have the same power, she said.

Nankali Maksud, who leads work on the subject for UNICEF globally, said that the public conversation about cutting in Sierra Leone, and in other countries where the practice has prominent proponents, had evolved. “As people get more educated they are challenging the blanket ‘F.GM. is bad’ messaging,” she said, using an acronym, often used by opponents of the procedure, for female genital mutilation. “UNICEF has had to regroup. We’re now having to be much more clear: We mean in children. We don’t mean in women. Women should have a right to be able to do what they want to do with their bodies.”

In other countries where cutting is practiced in some communities but not in others, girls can find it easier to leave home, she said. In Kenya, for example, there are shelters and organizations that support girls who resist cutting. Sierra Leone, where the hegemony of bondo is still entrenched, has nothing of the sort.

That leaves young women who resist the ritual, such as Seio Bangura, reliant on charity when they find it. Some turn to commercial sex work as one of the few ways a woman on her own can earn a living. Ms. Bangura sometimes sells nuts and cakes in the market, trying to save enough from the dollar or two she earns every week to pay for college. She goes to church. Mostly, she sits, waiting for Sierra Leone to catch up to her.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/heal ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

Senegal’s new president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, took the oath of office in Tuesday’s ceremony. Close behind him sat the popular opposition leader who had clinched the win.


Newly elected President Bassirou Diomaye Faye takes the oath of office as president during the inauguration ceremony in Dakar, on Tuesday.Credit...Abdou Karim Ndoye/Reuters

Still reeling from a whirlwind campaign, young people in Senegal threw jackets over their worn election T-shirts on Tuesday to attend the inauguration of an opposition politician who went from political prisoner to president in less than three weeks.

Their new leader, Bassirou Diomaye Faye — at 44, Africa’s youngest elected president — took the oath of office promising “systemic change,” and paying homage to the many people killed, injured, and imprisoned in the yearslong lead-up to the West African country’s election.

“I will always keep in mind the heavy sacrifices made so as to never disappoint you,” Mr. Faye said, addressing a vast auditorium in which African heads of state and dignitaries sat at the front. From the back, hundreds of supporters of Mr. Faye and his powerful backer, the opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, shouted for joy.

Hours later, Mr. Faye appointed Mr. Sonko prime minister in the new government, according to a post on the president’s official account on X.

It was the culmination of months of drama, after the former president, Macky Sall, canceled the election with just weeks to go, citing irregularities at the constitutional council — and then, under intense domestic and international pressure, agreed to hold it after all.

Mr. Sall’s handpicked candidate was resoundingly beaten by Mr. Faye, a tax inspector and political rookie who got more than 54 percent of the vote, despite having only 10 days of freedom in which to campaign. He had been jailed on charges of defamation and contempt of court, and was awaiting trial when Mr. Sall announced the adoption of an amnesty law and was released.

“You’re Senegal’s uncontested and dazzling choice,” said the president of the constitutional council, Mamadou Badio Camara, presiding over the inauguration.

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People in campaign t-shirts celebrate in the streets, with women drumming on wooden bowls.

Supporters of Mr. Faye celebrating in Dakar, on Tuesday.Credit...Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

But Mr. Faye was not the only politician that Senegal had effectively endorsed. Mr. Sonko, the man whose support helped get Mr. Faye elected, was sitting in the second row.

“Thank you, Sonko, thank you,” yelled his supporters at key moments in Tuesday’s ceremony.

Mr. Sonko, until now Senegal’s foremost opposition leader, was also in jail until three weeks ago, barred from running for president himself after convictions on charges of defamation and “corruption of youth” in relation to accusations brought by a young massage parlor employee.

When he was released, he immediately went on the campaign trail with Mr. Faye, telling his supporters that a vote for Mr. Faye was a vote for him.

Mr. Faye made no mention in his speech of Mr. Sonko, who cut a low profile in a black hat and tunic. But Mr. Sonko was a constant presence. He hobnobbed with the African presidents who waited for the ceremony to begin in an antechamber of a conference center in Diamniadio, a new city still under construction and a pet project of Mr. Sall.

Then, in the hangar-like room where Mr. Faye would take his oath, Mr. Sonko took his place in the second row, just behind the two first ladies — wives of the polygamous new president. And Mr. Sonko got the biggest cheers of the day, every time his face appeared on the large screens at the front of the auditorium.

Much cheering also rang out for the military president of Guinea, and the representatives of Mali and Burkina Faso, three West African countries whose governments were overthrown in coups in recent years and are now ruled by juntas. The rhetoric of those juntas — focused on sovereignty from France, the former colonial power perceived by many West Africans as continuing to meddle in their affairs — mirrors that of Mr. Sonko and Mr. Faye.

“The youth of Senegal is connecting with the youth of those countries, over these issues of sovereignty,” the president’s uncle, also named Diomaye Faye, said in an interview on Tuesday.

Mr. Faye and Mr. Sonko have pledged to drop or change the terms of the CFA, the regional currency backed by France, and renegotiate Senegal’s contracts with foreign-owned companies to extract newly discovered oil and gas.

In his speech, Mr. Faye stressed that Senegal would remain open to relations with other countries that are “respectful of our sovereignty, consistent with our people’s aspirations, and in a mutually winning partnership.”

After the swearing-in, a motorcade carried him to the presidential palace. Last week, Mr. Sall had welcomed him and Mr. Sonko, his former archrivals, in a stiff but determinedly friendly meeting — official photographs of which were later given to the media.

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Mr. Faye, Senegal’s new president, in African dress, walking alongside Mr. Sall, the former president, dressed in a suit. The men are not smiling.

A photograph released by the Senegalese presidency showing Mr. Faye, Ousmane Sonko, and President Macky Sall at the Presidential Palace in Dakar last week.Credit...Senegalese Presidency, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

On Tuesday, Mr. Sall, a two-term president who had served for 12 years, welcomed Mr. Faye once more, who arrived this time with a presidential guard.

After sitting chatting for a while and handing over the important documents, Mr. Sall climbed into a Toyota, pulling out of the palace gates and leaving for good.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/worl ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

Thirty Years After a Genocide in Rwanda, Painful Memories Run Deep

The Central African country is marking the anniversary of a monthslong rampage by militiamen that killed some 800,000 people.


President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and his wife, Jeannette Kagame, lighting a remembrance flame on Sunday in Kigali as part of commemorations of the 30th anniversary of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.Credit...Luis Tato/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Abdi Latif Dahir
By Abdi Latif Dahir
Abdi Latif Dahir interviewed a dozen genocide survivors in Rwanda and attended commemoration events of the 1994 massacres being held in the Rwandan capital, Kigali.

April 7, 2024
When the marauding militiamen arrived at her door on that morning in April 1994, Florence Mukantaganda knew there was nowhere to run.

It was only three days into the devastating 100-day genocide in Rwanda, when militiamen rampaged through the streets and people’s homes in a bloodshed that forever upended life in the Central African nation. As the men entered her home, Ms. Mukantaganda said her husband, a preacher, prayed for her and their two small children and furtively told her where he had hidden some money in case she survived.

He then said his final words to her before he was hacked to death with a hoe.

“He told me, ‘When they come for you, you have to be strong, you have to die strong,’” Ms. Mukantaganda, 53, recalled on a recent morning at her home in Kabuga, a small town about 10 miles east of Kigali, the Rwandan capital. “There was nothing we could do but wait for our time to die.”

The agony of those harrowing days loomed large for many on Sunday as Rwanda marked the 30th anniversary of the genocide in which extremists from the country’s ethnic Hutu majority killed some 800,000 people — most of them ethnic Tutsis — using machetes, clubs and guns.

“Our journey has been long and tough,” President Paul Kagame said on Sunday at a ceremony at an indoor arena. “Rwanda was completely humbled by the magnitude of our loss, and the lessons we learned are engraved in blood.”

Representatives from regional and global institutions like the African Union, the European Union and the United Nations were present at the ceremony, as well as ministerial delegations and current and former leaders from some 60 nations.

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The clothing of victims displayed outside some houses.

Victims’ clothing recovered from mass graves hanging on clotheslines in 2019 in Kabuga, where Florence Mukantaganda lives outside Kigali.Credit...Yasuyoshi Chiba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Those included Bill Clinton, who was president of the United States at the time of the genocide and has acknowledged America’s failure to swiftly stop the bloodshed. President Emmanuel Macron of France, who did not attend the event but has in recent years talked of France’s role in the genocide, released a video urging for the continued study of the past. His statement stopped short of going as far as his office had promised last week, when it said that he aimed to say France and its allies had lacked the will to halt the slaughter.

The daylong event in Kigali included the lighting of a remembrance flame, a night vigil and a wreath-laying ceremony at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, which is the final resting place for the remains of over 250,000 victims of the slaughter.

For many, the event was a reminder of the horror that began after a plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down. While those responsible for the crash were never identified, the Hutu-led government blamed it on Tutsi rebels and immediately began a campaign of systematic killing. The rebels, led by Mr. Kagame, said the Hutu extremists downed the plane as a pretext for genocide.

In interviews with a dozen survivors across Rwanda in the two days preceding the commemoration on Sunday, many spoke about the paroxysm of violence that gripped this lush, landlocked nation. They spoke about the horrors they endured for over three months as their towns and villages became giant killing fields. Many remembered how they fled their homes and hid in bushes and forests, churches and mosques, in coffins and closets, only to be found and forced to flee again.

One man, Hussein Twagiramungu, spoke about hearing his mother calling out his name as her killers hacked her to death. Velene Kankwanzi said she had survived by lying still, pretending to be dead, among relatives killed by militiamen. She said she had heard the men saying that they should take a break because their “hands are tired” from all of the killing. Rashid Bagabo recalled how his own hands went numb as he and five others buried some 300 people.

Ms. Mukantaganda, the woman whose husband was killed, spoke about how neighbors, friends and family turned against each other.

When the carnage began, she said a close Hutu friend, who was a leader of her church’s choir, suggested locking her and her family in their home so that when the militiamen came, they would think they had left. But, she said, the man went and informed the killers where they were.

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White strings hang from the ceiling over dances on a stage in a dark arena.

Dancers performing during the commemoration event on Sunday at the BK Arena in Kigali.Credit...Guillem Sartorio/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“It’s been 30 years and I am still learning how to forgive,” she said, crying on a recent afternoon as she twisted the gold wedding ring on her finger that she said her husband had given her. Ms. Mukantaganda lost eight other family members, including her parents, in the genocide.

The commemoration event in Kigali will also be a testament to the power of Mr. Kagame, whose governing Rwandan Patriotic Front party ended the genocide. Mr. Kagame has led Rwanda since then, and has transformed his nation from a byword for genocidal violence to an African success story.

Since 1994, this hilly nation of about 14 million people has grown economically, significantly reduced maternal mortality and poverty and improved education and health access. Rwanda has also become a major conference and tourist destination, and each year it hosts a star-studded gorilla-naming ceremony that has attracted people like Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and philanthropist, and Idris Elba, the British actor.

But even as he pulled his nation back from the brink, Mr. Kagame became increasingly authoritarian, jailing opposition figures, limiting press freedom and targeting critics at home and abroad. Mr. Kagame, 66, is up for election this year, and is expected to win another seven-year term.

Rwanda has also been accused of backing rebel forces in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo and plundering mineral riches in that country’s eastern regions — accusations that Mr. Kagame’s government denies.

On Sunday, Mr. Kagame thanked Congo for hosting Rwandan refugees during the 1994 genocide. But he also accused the country of providing “state support” to the remnants of Hutu rebels whose intentions were to “reorganize and return to complete the genocide.”

“Our people will never — and I mean never — be left for dead again,” Mr. Kagame vowed at the end of his half-hour speech.

For some in Rwanda, the solemn commemoration on Sunday also marked a day when humanity triumphed over hate.

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People and motorbikes on a street.

Kigali this month. Since 1994, Rwanda has prospered, growing economically, significantly reducing maternal mortality and poverty and improving education and health access.Credit...Jacques Nkinzingabo for The New York Times

This is true for Mariane Mukaneza, a mother of four whose husband was killed in the city of Rubavu, in the west. As she fled, Ms. Mukaneza said she was given shelter by Yussuf Ntamuhanga, an ethnic Hutu, who became well known for hiding Tutsis and helping them cross into Congo.

Mr. Ntamuhanga is also Muslim, who like many in the Rwandan Muslim community did not participate in the bloodshed. At the onset of the genocide, Muslims were socially and economically marginalized in Rwanda, said Salim Hitimana, the mufti of Rwanda. As such, their leaders were not as close to the political establishment, he said, and from the outset, they denounced the violence and saved those fleeing in their homes and mosques.

“He is my family and my hope,” Ms. Mukaneza, 68, said of Mr. Ntamuhanga on a recent afternoon as the two sat across from each other during an interview. “He did not care about my religion or where I came from.”

Mr. Ntamuhanga, 65, who was fasting for the holy month of Ramadan, said he personally helped rescue more than three dozen people. “My father raised me on love and compassion,” he said, “and Islam reinforced that message, too.”

For now, Ms. Mukantaganda, betrayed by a close friend, said she was learning how to heal. But reminders of those bloody days are constant, she said: places around town that trigger memories of killings; the bodies that continue to be exhumed; and even the rain falling on her rooftop on a recent afternoon, reminding her of similar rainy days in April 1994.

“It all feels like it happened yesterday,” she said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/07/worl ... 778d3e6de3